Mollie Atwood, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Prudence Johnson, Max Morath Quintet, Charlie McGuire, George Mushamp. Peter Ostroushko,
Storms on the ocean ( Peter Ostroushko ) Long long ago ( Peter Ostroushko ) Pennies From Heaven ( Prudence Johnson ) Don't give up the Ship (Butch Thompson Trio ) Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas (Max Morath Quintet ) Some of these days (Max Morath Quintet ) Saturday Morning Waltz (Farther Along) ( Prudence Johnson ) How long has this been going on (Max Morath Quintet , Butch Thompson Trio , Prudence Johnson ) Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm gone (Max Morath Quintet , Butch Thompson Trio , Prudence Johnson ) Small Fry (Max Morath Quintet ) Radio and TV Theme Songs (Max Morath Quintet ) B-O-R-S-C-H-T ( Peter Ostroushko ) Easy Winners (Max Morath Quintet ) Toddler ( Charlie McGuire ) Rain Has Turned to Snow ( Charlie McGuire ) Dept. of Folk Song - 3 Little Fishes, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, Down by the Station, Eency Weency Spider ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Pennies From Heaven (Max Morath Quintet , Prudence Johnson , Butch Thompson Trio )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Bed Cats) Fearmonger's Shop (Personal Safety) Fruit Farm Micro Chips (Robot Cricket Laser) Powdermilk Biscuits (Wimpy vs. Shy) The Phy-Ed Zone (Coming up tonight on many of these Public Radio Stations.)
This transcription may have been auto-created from the audio. Can you help improve the text? Email us!
Well, sir, it's been a quiet week and Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown. This last week it was cold yesterday up there. It was really cold. Chili, windy, cloudy. Everybody looked around and said, well, it's time to put on storm windows hoping to put it off as long as possible, but the time has come. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to say that. I think the rest of the country knows that this happens to us up here at this time of year. It's not disloyal to point it out. Yjalmer Inquist got a call from an old pal who is down in Tampa, Florida, who said, how's the weather up there? Has it snowed yet? Yjalmer hung up on him. He just put the phone right back down. It's a sensitive time. The ball is kind of like getting older. Maybe like when you turn 40 or 50, this time of year is for us. You just rather go through it without comment from other people, especially younger people or people in warmer places. Just handle it yourself. So they're putting on storm windows today, which I remember putting on, and which made me feel like I was 50. Back when I was 12 and 13 years old, it was always a cold day when we did it, and it was such hard work lugging those heavy things out of the garage, and we'd always clean them with a little vinegar and water solution and wipe them off with T-shirts, which kind of made you think about summer. Then put the ladder up against the side of the house to put on the bedroom windows, but the ladder would never quite reach. And so it had to be put up at about a four degree angle to the house. And you hoist this huge piece of wood and glass up over your head and shove it ahead of you up the ladder, knowing that there were a couple of rungs missing and hoping that you could count the right number as they went by you, and pressing yourself and the window against the ladder, knowing that if you took a deep breath or even had a thought in the back of your mind that you'd go back and crash to the ground. It was miserable work, and more miserable for the fact that the radio was always playing. It was a Saturday afternoon. We were listening to the gophers game. It was static coming over the radio, sound like it was coming from the Russian front, but it was coming from Columbus, Ohio, where Ohio State was beating the cookies out of Us. And the announcer would say something like, well, Jim, I guess with the score 48 to 14, you'd have to say that time is running out for Minnesota. And Jim would say, yes, I guess you could say that, and I guess they could and didn't. It felt like time was running out for Minnesota in general on a cold day in late October. I was imagined when I was a little kid listening to the game that maybe we wouldn't be a state anymore after this, that Ohio would just come out here, Buckeyes that come out, just take over Minnesota, just push us around, tell us what to do for the next year and eat our lunch. I remember thinking that those Buckeyes probably would be a lot like the Hoegland boys, Ronald and Donald who lived next door to us for a few years until they went off somewhere. I'm not sure, Leavenworth, I suppose. They had apple trees next door at the Hoeglands. And about late October was the time when they liked to throw stuff at us from their yard over into our yard. They got a big thrill out of this. Apples and anything they could get their hands on. Sometimes it would erupt into a fruit fight back and forth. The apples that they threw, of course, were the ones that had been on the ground for a while and gone through a few freezes. So that's not like they were real hard. They were kind of like baked apples in a way. But the Hoeglands threw hard and they hurt when they hit you. You'd go out and take a trash out to the trash barrel to burn it and you'd have to watch out for incoming apples, high ones from over in the Hoeglands yard and you'd crouch down behind the trash barrel and they'd keep lobbing them over there until they finally found the range and wanted to catch you right in the back of the neck. I sent my sister out to burn the trash once I remember. I threw her out as a decoy and I walked the long way around two blocks carrying a heavy load with me all the way around so that I could come up to the Hoeglands house from the other side and lay there in the weeds out by the Hoegland raspberries until my sister took the trash out to the barrel and I could see Donald Hoegland come out the back of his house and pick up apples and crouch down behind their picket fence and heave them over toward my sister and I moved towards him across their lawn and as I moved I could feel the juice sloshing back and forth in the pumpkin that I held over my head and I moved up to within very close range and I said hi Donald and the look on his face I wished I had a camera. The Hoeglands were ugly and pasty-faced but he turned white and then he wasn't white any longer. He was brown because this pumpkin split when it hit his little pointy head and then I took off for the picket fence and I was over it in one half second he grabbed onto my tennis shoe and pulled and it came off but I did not stop. I fell across the fence but I kept running even though I was lying down and I got up to the house and I stayed indoors for about two weeks and the tennis shoe lay down there in the corner of our yard just on our side of the picket fence and I never went to retrieve it. Probably still there today. I still wouldn't go out there for it now. He's probably still back there by the apple trees waiting for me. I wouldn't doubt. We had to be careful throwing apples after we put storm windows up because the punishment for breaking a storm window around our place was so awful that our parents did not dare mention it to us. They just said you break a storm window you're going to wish that you hadn't. So we didn't know so we were careful and that was why one afternoon my older brother and I firing apples from our side of the picket fence had Donald Hoegland trapped on the side of his house he ran and he stood right in front of their largest storm window and he said I dare you. I dare you. My brother pulled his hand back and he faked a throw and Donald ducked and then my brother threw a low fastball right in across the knees or where his knees would have been if he hadn't ducked nailed him right there on the ground. It was the greatest throw I'd ever seen in my life. I just never admired my brother so much as when he nailed Donald Hoagland right there. And I guess that it was out of admiration for his throw that I threw my apple. And I guess that it was out of his mouth. I had real good speed on it. I remember that. I'll say that for it. It was a fast one. I went through both windows and it went into the Hoagland's den and it hit Mr. Hoegland on the shoulder who was watching something on television but who was willing to interrupt us and come out and he was a changed man. I was been kind of phlegmatic before but he looked at that window and he looked at us and there was a sound came out of his throat. I never heard from a grown man before. I thought it meant that probably he wanted to be alone for a while and collect his thoughts. But my gosh, one throw. It sure turned things around for a long time. Weeks after that, my mother said, I can't believe you'd do a thing like that. I just can't believe it. Well, I missed. It was one bad pitch. That's all. I've just couple, couple feet high. It got away from me. It sailed on me a little bit. Everybody ought to get one bad pitch but she couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe I'd do a thing like that. She was shocked. And I imagine that many of you are too. Especially probably children listening to this at home shocked by this sort of violence. Children are nicer. They're much sweeter now than when I was a kid. I think it's all of the violence that children see on television. See, back in my day, we had to make our own violence. But now children sit down and watch it. They don't have to raise a hand against anybody. They're much nicer than we are but they have every reason to be because life is a lot easier for a child now. It was much harder when I was a kid and that was one of the reasons we got frustrated. And we were violent and got into fights and did terrible things that I hope children don't do anymore. Was because life was rough. School was harder when I was a kid because we were not as smart as kids are nowadays. It was harder for us. It was hard too because less was known about childhood when I was a child. Now they have books written about this. But back when I was a kid, our parents were just guessing. They were just a shot in the dark for them. I know that when my parents looked at me when I was a little tiny kid, my mother said, well, should be be real strict with him or should we be permissive? And my dad said, I don't know. I've got no idea. My dad said, I'll tell you what. He said, let's experiment will be real strict with him and then with the younger kids after him will be real permissive and let them get away with murder. Just let them do anything they want to do. See, that was child-rearing in my family. Everything was harder, harder for us. Winter was much harder. Winter's are mild now. I don't know why. It's a greenhouse effect or the ice cap has slipped or something. But it was much harder when I was a boy. Snow was deeper when I was, well, you used to come up to about here. Now it comes up to about here. You can see what a difference that would make to a person. Unless was known about winter. I remember being sent out when I was a little tiny child. Being bundled up until we were just circular when they sent us out of the house, piled clothes on us and tied scarves like a noose around our necks. They didn't know about circulation of the blood. When I was a kid, they didn't know about light synthetic fabrics. We had wool, which when it got wet was like wearing sandbags. They piled clothes on us and then they tied everything as tight as they could and they pushed us out the door. Little children, four or five, six years old, sent to school in blizzards, in raging snowstorms. Caps pulled down over our heads. We couldn't see except look down at our feet if visibility was good and it often was not. Cold, numb, carrying heavy weights on our backs, going on and on through deep droughts to school. This was before they had forced busing. We had forced walking when I was a kid. They said, go! And we went, my gosh. So that's why we were violent. Especially in October knowing that all this was coming towards us. Well, I wouldn't throw an apple at Donald Hoagland anymore. I'm way past that age. I think probably my shoulder would go out if I did. I'm at a delicate age. I can't do those things anymore. I wouldn't hit him either because I'm at an age where you start to realize how delicate these things are, your hands. There's not a whole lot there, you know. It's like those mottled planes that we used to build with the strips of also wood and the paper glued to the outside. You could hurt this thing very easily. I, about 10 years ago, punched a hole in the kitchen wall with this thing. And I wasn't proud of it at the time, but my gosh, ever since, every time I shake hands with somebody I remember it. Especially young guys with real firm handshakes. Oof. Gosh, it hurts. Getting to an age where I start to feel all those places on my body where Donald Hoagland never hit me with apples. They achill me late. And especially at this time of year, you start to feel older a person my age does. Back in August, I could take the stairs two at a time. You know, if I thought about it, if I remembered to do it, I could do it. Nowadays,I've kind of lose interest in that as we get on into October, November. I start to feel old.I felt old yesterday morning, woke up cold morning, and I went in to take a shower.It's an awkward time. The body is nervous when you're naked. Do you know that? The body is uneasy. If you walk downstairs, say you got undressed, take a shower. You walk down because the towels are down in the laundry room. And you heard a doorknob click. You jump. Wouldn't happen if you were dressed, but naked, the body is just un-averged a panic all the time. You walk naked down to the laundry room in the basement to get clean towels and step on a jack.Your body just almost, almost comes apart at the seams. See, if you were dressed, that wouldn't bother you as much as it does. But it makes you feel old. Take off your clothes and you feel old. When you wait for the hot water to come all the way up from the basement, you know, in an old house, old plumbing, it takes its time about these things. You feel old when you step into the tub, because it's slippery. You never used to think about that before. I never used to. Young guys don't think about that when they get into a shower. Young guys sing in the shower. They sing, oh, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is one of the world's most beautiful bodies. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But an older guy doesn't sing in the shower. Older guy thinks in the shower. You think I ought to glue treads down the bottom of this. This is slippery in her. You think about it when you reach down for the soap. That's a long way away. You have to tell your body what to do. You have to say, all right, now, right foot move a little bit and knees bend a little bit and do this slowly because it's slippery in her. And it's not that you would fall and hurt yourself exactly. It is what you would do trying to prevent yourself from falling when you start to fall. That's the worst part. When the body starts to fall, the body panics and it twists and you hear a little crack in your back. And right then your life changes. And you become one of those guys who can't pick up quarters off the sidewalk anymore. You become one of those guys who every few months, no matter where he is, has to lie down flat. Even if you're in an airport, you have to lie down flat and stay there for three days and not move a muscle when that happens in your back. There are guys lying in every airport around America in terminals lying very still and flat on the marble floors. People just walk around them. People just don't even pay much attention to them. People look down there, they look at each other, they say, bad back, yeah. So that's what I think about when I come towards the end of October. I don't mean to discourage you on getting older. There are advantages to a long life. But you want to keep that in mind. Sometimes it's not what happens that hurts you, but the things that you do to prevent it from happening. You don't want to argue with the force of gravity. You kids remember now don't throw apples at each other. There's no need for that anymore. Take it from me. Times have changed. And don't put no beans up your noses either. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. We're all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are good at me.
Garrison announces Red Maddocks's Birthday.
1984.10.19 Star Tribune / Frank Berto states that the news 'may be' right for this date.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl