Steve Barnett, Butch Thompson Trio, Dale Warland Singers, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Karen Morrow. Peter Ostroushko,
Tout la nuit ( Steve Barnett ) Poor Butterfly ( Steve Barnett ) Chevy Chase ( Steve Barnett ) Bullfrog Blues ( Steve Barnett ) I Can't Help Falling in Love With You ( Steve Barnett ) How long has this been going on ( Karen Morrow ) My melancholy baby ( Karen Morrow ) Happy Days are Here Again ( Karen Morrow ) Hello Dolly ( Karen Morrow ) Seventy Six Trombones ( Karen Morrow ) God Bless America ( Karen Morrow ) Blues in the Night ( Karen Morrow ) Climb Every Mountain ( Karen Morrow ) New York ( Karen Morrow ) Oklahoma ( Karen Morrow ) Fifteen original states (Dale Warland Singers ) We shall meet someday (Dale Warland Singers ) I am the Rose of Sharon (Dale Warland Singers ) Black is the color of my cat (Dale Warland Singers ) The fishing marching song (Dale Warland Singers ) The mad gardener's song ( Karen Morrow ) Beautiful soup ( Karen Morrow ) The Walrus and the Carpenter ( Karen Morrow ) Cat, you better come home ( Garrison Keillor , Dale Warland Singers ) Child think of me ( Garrison Keillor )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bunsen, Arlene Chatterbox Cafe Fresh Kill Dog Food (PHC Cast) Krebsbach, Carl Midwest Aerobic Farms (PHC Cast... Weight loss working on farms.) Pastor Ingqvist Powdermilk Biscuits (Garrison's Son turns 16 years old/driver's license/) Raw Bits (Guy with deep fires burning/Wedding guest/Clothes) Sidetrack Tap Skoglund's Five and Dime Tollefsen, Val
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And now, in honor of our friends in Lake Wobegon, and particularly the guys at the Sons of Canute Lodge, whom we make sport of so often, here's a beautiful song, the fishing, marching song of the Sons of Knute. The Sons of Knute, Sons of good, we are marching to freedom, looking for our friends, hoping to be them. Saturday morning, we're in our glory, we're up at five o'clock. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Boys, the bomb is thick, where is your compass? Better talk, we'll plow the land when you're bound. Oscar and Elmer, Edgar and Younger, heading out to catch the big ones. Music Are you sure this is where they said we should try for? You're right on the point, according to Ivor. But if my lover could be a whopper, I think I got a bite, I think so. Thank you. The men of the Dale Warland Singers. My gosh, those guys have been fishing. You can tell it, can't you, by the way they sing? I'm going to take them up there. It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. Graduation was on Tuesday at the high school, went off without a hitch, except that the speaker who came all the way up from the cities only, he talked for less than ten minutes. Nobody could figure that out, unless he didn't have anything to say, but that never stopped anybody in the past. And there they all were at the end of it, marched out of the gymnasium and stood in the sunshine in their black robes to have pictures taken of themselves and then took off their robes, the class of 85. And probably a lot of them will never wear robes again. in their lifetime. Not that it necessarily bothers them a lot, but it was an emotional moment. The gardens are all in, in town. The weather's been great. We've gotten a lot of rain and one that hasn't been cloudy. The sun has been shining and so the gardens have been coming right along. Everybody's got something up already. Out behind Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, Father Emil's sets of onions are coming up like weeds back there, and his potatoes too, so it won't be too long. before he'll sit down to a table and have fresh creamed onions and new potatoes, which is a dinner where you don't need an entree when it comes from your own garden and is cooked by somebody who doesn't actually commit vegicide on them. That's better than steak. The gardeners are relaxing. Clarence and Arlene Bunsen sitting on their front porch on Friday late afternoon. They got the screens up. They put the wicker furniture out on their front porch. They sat down to observe the traffic going by and there came Ralph walking down the sidewalk and Mrs. Ralph with him. And Clarence said, come on up. Come on, sit for a while. He said, no, I can't. We've got to go home. We've got a sick dog, and besides, it looks like it's about to rain. He said, no, well, come on up just for a minute anyway. You can come up for a minute. So they came up for a minute, sat down. I said, let's get you some iced tea. No, don't go to any trouble for us. So it's no trouble. We just make it from powder anyway. We'll get you some iced tea. So about an hour later and about four glasses of iced tea later, they finally got up to leave after a long porch conversation that began with that sick dog who was running a temperature and they had to go home and chuck some pills in him and snap him back and hit the back of his throat so he couldn't spit him out. A conversation that started out talking about the sick dog and went on to talk about fishing and about the weather and about Model A Fords and about the Middle East and about the report in the paper of a UFO that somebody saw down in Alabama that was mowing their front lawn. A wide-ranging conversation. And also, of course, they talked about Flag Day, which everyone in Lake Wobegon has been talking about. It's organized this year, as it has been for years, by the Sons of Canute. Not that organization is something they are often accused of. at the lodge. Attendance was poor the last few years for Flag Day, June 14th, so that the living flag, which they do every year down on Main Street, everybody puts on the red, white, and the blue caps and forms into a living flag. If you looked at it from the roof of the central building, which not many people get a chance to do, but if you did, the living flag looked to be mostly the color of asphalt down there. It was just kind of the hint of a flag. So they're trying to get more people out for it this year. And Elmer, who is the chairman of the Living Flag Committee, taking a tip from his brother-in-law, who's in the public relations business in Minneapolis, put an ad in the Lake Wobegon Herald Star last Tuesday that said, Flag Day, Lake Wobegon, June 14th, Sons of Canute, so on. Don't be, quote, left out, unquote, of this year's living flag. Reserve your place now. And there was a dotted line around a coupon people were supposed to clip out of the paper and send in with boxes to check. A box that said, yes, I would like to participate in this year's living flag. I prefer, check one, red, white, blue, star. Star. Nah, I guess I am too busy this year to honor my country and its flag. Well, as of Friday, they had gotten in about six reservations. People in Lake Wobegon are not used to signing up for things in advance, whether it's reserving a booth at the Chatterbox Cafe. I mean, you can't even imagine it, can you? Reserving a pew on Sunday at the church? Of course you wouldn't do that. Reserve a place in the Living Flag? Nah. Let's see if the weather is good. And if somebody asks them, They'll probably go. But Elmer was worried enough about only getting so few reservations in advance, he called up Clarence and asked Clarence if he, Clarence, wanted to be co-chairman. He figured that being co-chairman of a disaster wouldn't be quite so bad as doing it all by yourself, I guess. Well, that's the sons of Canute. The big news in Lake Wobegon, though I don't know if they talked about this on their front porch, certainly wasn't in the newspaper this last week. Harold Starr doesn't print news like this in his paper because he knows by the time the paper comes out, everybody knows this kind of news anyway, except for the people who you don't know and wouldn't want to know, and why tell them? But Pastor Inqvist from Lake Wobegon Lutheran was down in St. Paul this last week taking a course, learning how to be a life insurance underwriter, thinking about changing his job. Boy, people just could have fallen over when they heard about it. They heard about it from Carl Krepsbach, who came down to the cities in his pickup. He was supposed to come down and see a guy about something and then go to the hardware store and pick up a tool that he needed. And somebody knew that he was coming down to the cities and so roped him into giving their Aunt Helen a ride down to the airport so she could go back to where she lives in North Carolina. This is the Andersons' mural, Andersons' Aunt Helen, who lives in a retirement village in North Carolina called Faithland. And she was talking Carl's right ear off the whole way down. telling him all about Faithland, which is a Christian retirement village and a Christian family amusement park. And it is also a Christian office park there, run by the Reverend Jack Maker and his wife, Sammy Kay. And, you know, it's an amusement park and you get on a train called the Grace Line and you ride around and look at Bible exhibits and stuff and Bible characters in robes and so on. They've got the Reverend Jack Makers and Sammy Kay's boyhood and childhood homes that they've brought in there and restored. to their original 1950s splendor and sitting there side by side. You can take a tour of them for $1.75 each or $3 for the both on one ticket. Carl tuned this woman out about halfway down, but she had some kind of effect on him because after he dropped her off at the airport, he was going to offer to go in the terminal with her, but he was afraid she'd take him up on it. After he dropped her off, he went to the hardware store up here, St. Paul, Seven Corners, and he walked in and walked up to the counter, and the man said, what can I do for you? And Carl forgot what it was that he'd come all the way down to St. Paul IV that he couldn't find in Lake Wobegon or St. Cloud. He opened his mouth to say what it was that he wanted and nothing was there in his mouth. So he didn't want to look like a fool. He said the first thing he could think of, he said, I'd like to see some garden hose. So the guy took him back, showed him garden hose. They had four kinds of it in three different colors, in blue and green and a kind of an orange, brown. And he looked at all of them, knowing that wasn't what he wanted at all, but just, you know, trying not to look dumb, but not wanting to buy garden hose either. And as the sales clerk showed him all these kinds, Carl was trying to think of how to kind of criticize it, you know, but it's not easy to criticize garden hose because it mainly just brings water from one place to another. It's hard to look at a piece of garden hose and say, no, that's the wrong kind. That's not what I want. Carl was saying, well, I had some hose like that once and that didn't work out too good. Said, no, I never had any hose like that, so I'm not sure I want to take a risk on that. But in the end, he got stuck. He had to buy 50 feet of garden hose that he didn't need and walk out the door with it and feeling just a little lightheaded, walked into downtown along 7th Street thinking maybe a little walk and a little fresh air would bring back his memory. Walk down Seventh Street past the Dorothy Day Center, past Mickey's Diner, down past over here to where Seventh Street becomes Ninth Street, and then you walk along and it turns into Eighth Street. And there standing up against a chain link fence and looking down into that huge hole in the ground they're digging where the Trade Center is going to go in was Pastor Inkvist of the Lutheran Church. Carl walked across the street, looked both ways, though it was a one-way street. You never know in the city. He walked across and he said, what a coincidence to see you here. Pastor Inqvist turned. He said, what are you doing with garden hose? They stood and talked for a while and it turned out Pastor Inkvist was down here attending a one-day seminar entitled, Introduction to Life Insurance Underwriting as a Career, thinking about leaving the ministry. Things are not good at the Lutheran Church up there. I've known that for a long time, but I didn't realize it was this bad. But Val Tollefson, who is on the board, and some of his friends have been holding Bible readings and prayer meetings in Val's home for some time, and the pastor knew about it. And when he saw Val about a week ago, he said, would you mind if I came? And Val looked at him and he said, no, I don't think you should come. He said, I think we ought to just sit down and look at the Bible ourselves and not just get the liberal interpretation of it. And so it made Pastor Inqvist think that maybe things were coming to a head that had been kind of lying underneath the surface for a long time, the dissension in that church, and that a terrible thing would happen. If the church split up so that one decent small town Lutheran church should become two impoverished little churches in town and all the anger and all the bitterness and how long it would go on And all those children who would be raised and grow up in that bitterness, and who would be told by their parents for years to come, told why anger and bitterness were the right things to have felt, and why all of this was right and good. Pastor Inqvist thought, well maybe All they need is a little drama once in a while. And if that's true, maybe the minister quitting would satisfy the need for it. And then he would get a chance to deliver a farewell sermon. And they would listen to him as they had never listened to him before for twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. And he could tell them that the gospel is not about being right and it's not about having power and authority. It's about loving other people. The incubists have a problem in that town. They have always had a problem. I suppose it's not easy being a minister. One reason that the incubists and Karl Krebsbach are such close friends is that Karl is a Catholic, and when the incubists have work they want done around the parsonage, they don't call up Bud, the carpenter, in their own church. They call up Catholic carpenter, Karl. to come over, because they don't want somebody from their own church poking around upstairs, you know, in the closets and all or wherever or in the basement. They feel like people are staring at them and studying them. They've never felt quite comfortable there. I don't know how this is all going to turn out. I'm not all that anxious to know. Sometimes that little town, I tell you, People who live there sometimes think about becoming from there, if you know what I mean. It's not like faith land at all sometimes. Faith land where you can get on a train, ride the grace line, and ride around the Garden of Eden there and see Adam and Eve. They'd be right there wearing white robes, which doesn't make sense because if they were wearing clothes, if they were ashamed of nakedness, that would mean they'd already sinned, right? So they wouldn't be in the Garden of Eden. But I guess they wouldn't want them naked, so they got them in white robes. Anyway, it's an amusement park, that's all. They've got Bible characters there at Faithland. They've got Moses. They've got Daniel. They've got the apostles walking around in robes. I guess you can walk up to them and ask them questions, you know? Like if there was stuff that you didn't understand, you know, about what Moses had said, you know, you walk up to Moses and get him to kind of amplify on... what had happened back there in the book of Genesis. The Bunsons were sitting on the porch there on Friday night, sitting on the porch before it rained and before the Ralphs came to visit. And Clarence said, you know what I've always wanted to do? He said, I've always wanted to just get in the car and go for a trip. Not know where you were going or anything. Not even look at a map. Just drive and drive. Anywhere you wanted. Go any place you wanted. Stay as long as you like. Leave when you want to. And he said, I don't know if I'd ever come back or not. Arlene was tired. She'd been weeding the flower beds all afternoon. She was muddy, but she was too worn out to go out and take a bath. She didn't feel like getting in a car, just driving anywhere. She said, you know what I've always wanted to do? She said, I've always wanted to live in an apartment. Boy, I think that would be great. Clarence said, where would you find an apartment around here? She said, I didn't say around here. But they didn't go anywhere. They sat on the porch. She took a bath. Ralph and Mrs. Ralph came up and visited. They had some iced tea. They went in and warmed up some hamburger and noodle hot dish for supper. After supper they went back out on the porch and they sat. They sat. As the sun went down, they sat into the evening. as headlights moved up and down Main Street, they could see them. The headlights of 20 or 30 cars carrying the members of the class of 1985 riding in their parents' cars, two in a car or four, sometimes three in a car, Not going any place, just cruising downtown, looking for romance, looking for friendship. Driving from one end of Main Street to the other and turning around and driving back. Driving up and down. Until late at night, the windows rolled down and they'd yell out to each other, Hey, Duke! Steve! As if they hadn't seen each other for years. But in fact, they were just about to begin not seeing each other for years. And that's why they were cruising up and down, riding in the cars, the headlights going back and forth. It was a little parade in honor of love and friendship and our town and loyalty by our children, the future, driving up and down in a car, having one last look at us. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong and all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.
Vern Sutton finds Music from a trunkful of old St. Paul tunes. GK's 16-year-old son gets his driver's license and drives off.
Courier May 27 1985
rebroadcast on June 30, 1990.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl/Michael Owen