Chet Atkins, Butch Thompson Trio, Johnny Gimble, Gary Hansen, Randy Hauser, Garrison Keillor, Peter Ostroushko, Jean Redpath, Sarajevo. Henry Strzelecki,
Black and white rag ( Johnny Gimble ) Evening sun goes down ( Johnny Gimble ) Old Texas home ( Johnny Gimble ) Mandolopin ( Chet Atkins ) Chaplin in new shoes ( Chet Atkins ) Neklepeche (Sarajevo ) Vienna city of my dreams ( Gary Hansen ) Wee Annie ( Jean Redpath ) Cafeteria food ( Jean Redpath ) To another town ( Jean Redpath ) Little more time ( Jean Redpath ) Will you go lassie go ( Jean Redpath ) Dreams come true (Butch Thompson Trio ) Tell Me Why ( Garrison Keillor ) I Think of You ( Garrison Keillor )
Beautiful Heritage Collectibles Bunsen, Clarence Chatterbox Cafe Chicken Feather Siding Fitzlestein Mineral Water Pork Brand Shoes Powdermilk Biscuits Prairie Roast Soybean Coffee Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Thorvaldson, Senator K
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown. It's been chilly up there. Leaves have started to turn. Some already have turned, fallen off on the ground, dried up, burning some of them. In fact, it's that ideal time of the year. Some leaves still on the trees and the smoke from others in the air, majestic in this mid-fall. They had a law against burning leaves in Lake Wobegon for a while, but then they missed the smell of smoke so much they went back and did it in the gutters, in the streets, in the evening, burning leaves.
But they left the law still on the books, of course. So that's a wonderful situation where you are opposed to something and you can still enjoy it at the same time. But I don't need to tell you that. That's just the simple truth.
So about every night this last week while some people were out burning their leaves, dads were raking them up and little kids were running around poking sticks in the fire and scattering the flames around. The volunteer fire department came out, in fact they even brought the truck out. Guys sitting around on it just smelling smoke and looking at the flames. They're opposed to fire. Volunteer fire department, they encourage fire prevention, but they enjoy it at the same time. So they wanted to be there just in case something happened. Old men sitting around on the fire truck, smelling October smoke from October fires, talking about some of the great fires of the past. Little kids sitting listening to stories about fire, disasters that took place in cold weather like this. The great grain mill explosion, 1942, when that grain elevator went up in a blast. Fire lasted for two days. Some of those firemen still remembered that. Fighting that fire so hot, some of those guys didn't have any hair in their noses for months afterward. fire at the Morrow's house that was on Christmas Eve. When was that, 1950? No, it was 56. It would have been 56. Late one night that Christmas tree just exploded in their house, destroyed everything they had, but all of them got out safely.
Parents threw their children out the upstairs window into snow banks, if you can imagine such a thing. And those children sitting listening to the stories could imagine that, yes. Quite a story. Little children sitting in the dirt listening to frightening stories about homes burning down. That's October. Boy, that cold weather just inspires the imagination. It's a good time of year. Mr. Clarence Bunsen has lost quite a bit of weight. That is one of the big items of news in town. Lost about 20 pounds in the last two months, although it is hard to tell because with the cold weather coming on now, of course, he's wearing bulkier clothes.
But he's lost a lot of weight. And is walking, seems to be walking with a lighter step. Though he won't be for long, of course. He'll be walking in a low crouch like the rest of us as soon as snow and ice are around. But he's lost a lot of weight.
It's quite a piece of news in that town where men tend to just increase over the years. Take on proportions that are heroic. Clarence decided to lose weight it was one night about two months ago when he and Arlene had just turned in for the evening had just turned out the light lay down in bed that sweet moment in the lives of people who love each other when you lie in bed next to each other in the dark just a little crack of light under the door and you lie there and you might lie there and talk or you might lie there and tell lies or
You might lie there and touch each other. Or maybe an angel touched you. I don't know. Some kind of signal sometimes. One person touched the other with their foot. Or an angel does, I don't know. Or it's God who touches you. God looks down on you and says, let there be love. And you make love, sometimes. It's a sweet time. Anyway, they did. Sometime after, the gentleman hoisted himself out of bed and walked down the hall towards the bathrooms. But unfortunately, the door to the bathroom was closed so that the full-length mirror on the outside of the door faced him directly.
And the great lover, as he walked along the hall, saw this immense figure approaching him. saw a walrus walking along and a great piece of blubber hanging over the walrus's pajamas. And thought to himself at that moment, thought, fruit, fresh fruit, unbuttered whole wheat toast. No beer, no sausages. And he's done that for about two months. Has sat down faithfully. This faithful husband has, Clarence Bunsen, sat down to a table three times a day for the purpose of not eating. Using the old Puritan diet of not eating until sometime after you have become hungry and then not quite enough and food that you don't particularly like.
All this is kind of strange to the old Norwegian bachelor farmers down at the sidetrack tap who keep track of Clarence and everybody else's business. A man losing weight, especially with winter coming on, what could possess him? to throw his ballast overboard just when you're entering heavy seas. A man sitting at the bar of the sidetrack tap drinking soda in a glass. Club soda. Never heard of such a thing. Sit and watch him. They have been sitting and watching him. Bernie and Axel and Sodi looking down the bar at Clarence. who sits and drinks water out of a glass in a tavern after dark. Why?
So he says, Clarence, he says, you know when you come home late, your wife is going to give you hell anyway. You want to listen to her when you're sober? But to them it's more than just losing weight. It's marriage. That's Clarence's problem. That's what Bernie and Sody and Axel think. All those bachelor farmers. Marriage. That's the problem. It just doesn't make any sense. Why a man would fall for that. A sensible person like Clarence Bunsen. Why you would want to have somebody else run your life. Somebody else tell you what to do. It's to get away from that, that boys long to grow up. They want to become free.
Why once you got loose of the swamp, you'd want to go back in it again. The Norwegian bachelor farmers have a hard time figuring that out. Marriage is something that has, there are structural defects in the basic idea to them. Why you would want to attach yourself to a woman who would ask you where you've been and what you've been doing with whom for how long and why and how long you intend to go on doing it. And when are you going to grow up? Good question. They don't understand. Axel got himself, just a couple months ago, a TV dish out in his backyard, which has been an object of curiosity.
One of the first anywhere in the area. He tries to disguise this dish as a bird feeder. So that his neighbors won't think that he's the sort of person who would spend money on that kind of thing. But he's not fooling them. They know that's a satellite TV dish. They also know When this dish, which is on a motorized mount that turns to catch the particular satellite that that channel is coming from, they know when that satellite dish is turned towards the pornographic channel. They know that comes from the low satellite. The Christian programming, that comes from the high satellite. The porno stuff, the dirty movies, that's from the low satellite. You just drive up there past Axel's house, you look at his dish, you see the angle it's at, you know what he's watching. When he's watching that porno channel, the dish turns up so that the bird seed that's in it all spills out on the ground. That's how you know.
They ask him about it down at the sidetrack tap sometimes. They say, Axel, you probably get all kinds of shows off your TV now with that dish there. I say, yeah, I get a lot of shows on there. You ever watch any of those fornicating movies? He says, no, I don't watch those. Sometimes I see one.
I don't watch it, though. You ask me if I watch them. I don't watch them. I see them sometimes. On my way to the Christian channel, I see them. But I don't watch them. That's the Norwegian bachelor farmer. Poor man. They're just grown-up teenage boys, is what they are. They don't understand marriage. They don't understand it. They understand the miseries of marriage, the mishaps of marriage. They love to tell the story, Norwegian bachelor farmers do, about a man whom you know very well from Lake Wolbegan, but who I won't give you his name. who had the camper, he spent $3,000 on a box for his pickup truck, put a camper on it, so that he and his wife could get away from their children, be alone sometimes. They didn't use it much. They didn't use it one whole summer. So he felt kind of bad as it came on towards this time of year, October. He hadn't gotten the use out of his investment.
He was Norwegian, you know, he likes to feel that he's using things. So he talked her into going out overnight. Drive down to the gravel pit. which is where they'd first met, in the camper, he and his wife. The kids were old enough to take care of themselves. They went down to the gravel pit. And he parked it, and they got in back. And she heard noises in the underbrush. And also the... The truck was parked on a slight incline so that if she lay on her side of the bed, she was going to roll the wrong way. So she wanted him to move it, but he had already pretty well undressed.
So he told her if she wanted to move it, she could move it herself. So she got in behind the wheel, up in the cab, but she'd never driven that truck before. And she wasn't used to the clutch. She revved it up pretty well and went to put it in first gear just about the time that he had removed his underwear and he was standing naked and was just reaching over towards where his pajama bottoms were, was when first gear engaged. And the truck leaped forward and he fell and the door opened. And he hit the gravel, which was sharp. He thought for sure she would turn around and come back.
He thought that for the longest time. as he sat down by the gravel pit where he'd spent so many pleasant hours in his youth, but never on a night as cold as this. And finally he just took some sumac branches, the wrong kind as it turned out, covered himself up as best he could, and headed up towards the Soderbergh sisters' house. Two sisters who lived together up in a house at the top of the hill overlooking the gravel pit, which they ignore as much as they can. He walked up there and he knocked on their front door. It was very late at night and it was an October evening.
It was cold. Weather that could kill you, especially if you didn't have any clothes on. They looked out the upstairs bedroom window, took one quick look, and snapped the shades shut, the two of them. And one of them said, why let him in? He's naked. He'll die out there. And the other one said, we can't let him in. He's naked. Call the police. But we got to let him in. He's naked. He's naked. We can't let him in. What's he doing naked out there? They talked along that line for a while, which is an old discussion in Christianity.
What to do about sinners, whether to call the cops or let them in. And finally they threw him out an article of clothing out the bedroom window. And he put it on, though it wasn't what he wanted. He'd never worn a dress before. But it was better than nothing. And he walked off down the road. Norwegian bachelor farmers get a big kick out of a story like that. To them, that's marriage. That's marriage in a nutshell. Man taking his pants off, suddenly falling head over heels onto sharp rocks. That's marriage. There have been stories around town that one of the best-known bachelors in Lake Wobegon may be getting married soon.
I'm talking about Senator K. Torvalds. There have been stories about him. He had been feeling... kind of old this summer. A lot of people do, you know, in the heat kind of feel their age. But he's planning on going back to Florida this winter, where last winter he met this woman who is from Brainerd, Minnesota, and who is also Norwegian, and whom he met on a bus. And they had a few suppers together at a Methodist church basement down in Tampa, Florida. And last winter and kind of got to know each other. A little bit, but not too much.
Senator Kay has been back in Lake Wobegon this summer, as I say, planning on going back to Florida. But it's bothered him, as he's been feeling poorly, what would happen to him if he died in Florida this coming winter? Would his relatives, his nieces and nephews, cut down on transportation costs and just plant him down in Tampa where he doesn't know anybody. That bothers him. So in order to ensure that he would be buried in Lake Wobegon in the cemetery, he ordered himself a tombstone in September, a big one, figuring that if he invested enough money in it, his relatives would feel obligated to put him underneath it when the time came. And so got himself a tombstone about as big as a steamer trunk with his name, Senator K. Torvaldsen, carved in the marble and his birth date, 1912, underneath it and a hyphen. And then wanted to put a line underneath it, a line in Norwegian, an inscription, and thought maybe he'd have rest in peace underneath it. but then couldn't think of the Norwegian for that. So he decided he would write on his tombstone, talk for alt, thanks for everything. but wondered if that was the correct syntax, talk for alt.
And so called up this woman in Brainerd to check on his Norwegian and they got talking about other things and didn't talk about the stone at all but talked about this coming winter in Florida and suddenly his heart beat a little faster
And the old man just went into a swoon and became lovesick for only the second time in his 73 years. That's the story about him anyway, that he's in love and planning to get married this winter. I don't know if it's true or not, but it sounds plausible. I wish him well. Sweet thing, marriage. So sweet.
And of all the sweet things about it, of all the sweet things, some of which have never been described, some of which there are no names for, the sweet things about being in love. One of the sweetest is those moments in the dark, just lying in the dark with someone you love next to you. touching or not touching, or talking or not talking. Doesn't matter. Just being with somebody. When you're young, of course, you're kind of an overachiever. And you try too hard. And you try and talk and say important and clever things. Or you try and touch in all of the newest, most scientific ways. But as you get older you find out what the real purpose of it is. Just to be with somebody. Be with somebody. Be close to somebody else. In the dark. In the warm, sweet dark. Next to sweet someone. Maybe that's the purpose of this, too. I don't know.
Sing a song here with me. I can't think of another way to get out of this. Sing this old love song here. We'll just sing it together. Is that something like C major? Tell me why the stars do shine. Tell me why the ivy twines. Tell me why the sky is so blue. And I will tell you why I love you. The guy's got to sing the melody. The women can sing that beautiful high harmony part.
Tell me why the stars do shine. Tell me why the ivy flies. Tell me why the sky so blue and I will tell you just why I love you because God loves the stars to shine. He has a name in high divine. He has a That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking.
Fog is good weather for shy people. One-Minute Romance: Laundromat romance. Poems by E. B. White.
1985.10.13 Louisville Courier / 1985.10.12 Berkshire Eagle
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl