Chet Atkins, El Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey, Johnny Gimble, Randy Howser, Garrison Keillor, Willie Nelson, Peter Ostroushko, Jim Ed Poole, Butch Thompson, David Weiss.
Hello Walls ( Willie Nelson ) When The Band Begins To Play ( Johnny Gimble , Willie Nelson ) Corinna Corinna ( Willie Nelson ) Seven Spanish Angels ( Willie Nelson , El Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey ) El Gusto (El Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey ) El Gailiero Wapangiero (El Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey ) I Must Be Here in LA ( Garrison Keillor ) Danny Boy ( David Weiss ) Sweet Georgia Brown ( David Weiss ) To All The Cats I've Known Before ( Willie Nelson , Johnny Gimble ) Do You Ever Think of Me ( Willie Nelson ) Crazy ( Willie Nelson ) Paradise Song ( Garrison Keillor ) Twinkle Twinkle ( Johnny Gimble , Peter Ostroushko , Willie Nelson ) You Gave Me a Song ( Garrison Keillor , Willie Nelson ) My Father How Long? ( Garrison Keillor ) Take Your Burden to The Lord ( Garrison Keillor , Willie Nelson ) Poor Butterfly ( Johnny Gimble , Chet Atkins ) Mexico Vive (El Mariachi Los Galleros de Pedro Rey ) Summertime ( David Weiss ) Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain ( Willie Nelson )
Anderson, Charlotte Anderson, Ella Anderson, Henry Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Color cat portrait) Larry Airlines (Bulk Class: So cheap, you're losing money staying home.) Oil Rig Dishwashing Liquid (Willie Nelson) Powdermilk Biscuits (Harold the Turkey escapes the ranch) Prairie Dog Granola Bars (Texas truck drivers RD and Jack (Willie Nelson and Johnny Gimble)) Sidetrack Tap Skoglund's Five and Dime Thorvaldson, Bertie Thorvaldson, Knute Thorvaldson, Senator K
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It's been a quiet week in my hometown of Lake Wobegon. I guess, I don't know, I'm a long way away from there and it's hard to keep track. They're secretive people, they don't tell me a lot over the phone. I had a hard time getting through and in fact did not get through to them the last couple of days. which made me even a little bit more nervous. I get this far away from home, a couple thousand miles, and I stay away for a long time, and I start to wonder if it's a real place, or if I made it up, if it's... If maybe I would go into the airport tomorrow and I'd ask to go back to Minnesota and they'd look at me like I was crazy and they'd say, Minnesota, you didn't know? That's not a real state. That's a mythical state.
Say, no, all my friends, my friends are there, my house is there, my family is there. The woman I love, when she comes over, she's going to meet me there. That's not mythical. And they'd look at me and smile, and they'd say, I know, it really seems real, doesn't it? It's the power of the imagination, I'd say. I'd say, no, I just want a ticket. I'd say, really, believe us. Believe us. It's frightening because all those people, the people who love us, the people we love, they're all so amazing. that when we get away from them and lose touch, we wonder if that all really happened what we think happened in the past.
The exiles be thinking about that I'm sure this week as they drive home with their little kids, driving north up through that landscape, no leaves on the trees, those bare, bare ruined trees. Like Shakespeare wrote, that time of year thou mayest in Minnesota behold When yellow leaves or none or few do hang upon those boughs that shake against the cold bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Was that all real, that part of Minnesota up there that Shakespeare wrote about? Was that all real, that life that we lived in that little town as we drive up through the brown fields over the hills and come up towards the grain elevator and the lake? Did that all happen? That life where we all lived in that little house, all of us kids, and we went to school and we played in the backyard and it got cold and the snow fell, was that all real? all those little kids in all those little beds and at Thanksgiving when we were all sick, all of us were sick to our stomachs and down in bed and mother was sick too but she came around and took care of us and we all had basins alongside our little beds and lay there looking pale and green and she gave us Pepto-Bismol so that when we threw up it would be pink and smell nice. Just lay there in bed throwing up for Thanksgiving. What a wonderful memory.
It felt so sick like we'd been on a 300 mile car trip in a car with the windows shut, squeezed in with four fat aunts, just sitting there feeling sicker and sicker was how we felt. And then of course the kids who were getting over it, they came around to the kids who were just getting into it and tried to make them sicker. Came upstairs and they'd bring us a big glass of tomato juice and they'd say, here, have some nice warm blood. This is good. Mmm. Just got this, collected this from your cat. Mmm. Brought us a little piece of lemon meringue pie, just the meringue part. They said, here, have some real nice green pus. Would you like some? Mmm. Some crushed walnuts here have put this on the green pus. Fresh boogers, boogers. Little children lying in bed, sick, sick to their stomachs for Thanksgiving. Then on Thanksgiving Day, the neighbor came by, bring us a little dinner, and thought we wouldn't be up for a real turkey dinner, so brought us turkey a la king. It was kind of chunky and kind of yellowish. There was a lot of starch in it. She made it with some kind of brownish, greenish soup or something.
I just poured Pepto-Bismol on mine and put it directly in the basin. Skip the middle man. Was that all true? Did that all really happen? And if that really was us, then how did we ever become so distinguished? All those little children from that Thanksgiving that seemed so recent, how did we all get so old and have children who are now about to have children of their own? How did that happen? Well, there'd be a lot of distinguished children coming back for Thanksgiving, and also a mysterious stranger, Senator K. Torvaldson's lady love flying out from the state of Maine to see him. whom he met down in Florida last winter, Senator K. Torvaldsson, and his great love, Laura, who's coming to have Thanksgiving dinner for them. He doesn't dare go pick her up at the airport. Byron is going to drive down and get her. Because he's so in love, he's afraid of driving a car. Afraid he might, he could be just driving along an open road, perfectly dry, clear, bright sunny day, and the car just suddenly flip over and would just flip like that. That's how much in love he is. The car driving along on a flat stretch of open highway, dry pavement, could just flip over like that. He's in love. and starting to worry that when his love, when his true love, when that handsome gray-haired slender lady with the sweet voice that he's talked to on the telephone so many times, when she comes and meets his family, will she find out things about him that will make her love him less? when he meets them all and sits down when she does with his relatives who sit furious eaters, serious, determined, fierce eaters guarding their plates with their left forearm around their head. shoveling with the right hand watching the chow supply out of the corner of their eye as the bowls go by and the platters of meat checking to make sure there's still stuff left and his brother Knut sitting there at the table with his three jokes that he always brings every holiday dinner three is about all he can commit to memory and he's got to get in all three of them in the course of a dinner. He doesn't need a cue or anything. He doesn't need to be reminded of them. Just a moment of silence is enough. And he'll say, so there was the one about the Norwegian and the suite without the parachute on the airplane. No, it was a suite.
I thought, no, I think there was a Finn too or maybe he was the pilot. Anyway, the plane was in trouble. So that was why they needed the parachute. And they were all drunk at the time. And I forgot to tell you they were flying to Norway. And they were over the ocean anyway. And he tells his joke. And there is a moment of silence at the end of it. Strange, strange family. What will she think? What will she think of them? And Knut's wife, Bertie, who reads too much and remembers all the worst part of it, all the bad news. Bertie remembers, stores up, keeps in her memory.
Doesn't need any cue, just a moment of silence and Bertie will tell you something you'd rather not know about. Some studies she read about, about sunshine and having to do with cancer and some things that they don't even want the American people to know about for fear that people would never go out in the sun if they knew it. She's read this. Bombs, thousands of bombs sitting in lockers in airports. Thousands of them. Left there over the years by terrorists. They didn't go off. Anything could set those bombs off at any time. The vibration of engines from mighty jets, they could just go off and you'd never know it.
She heard this from a girlfriend of hers whose brother-in-law is a policeman. They don't tell people about this because they know people would never fly again if they knew about it. Bombs in suitcase lockers, just sitting there. Sitting there like a ticking time bomb. Stuff in food, food, additives, chemicals they put in there, pesticides, stuff that combines with other stuff, and some virus type, amoeba type stuff, algae and things in your food that you can't even see that's lying there, that if you looked at your food through a microscope, you wouldn't be able to eat. And that's why they don't tell people about this, is that it would make you sick if you saw it. forks pausing in mid-air. That's Bertie and that's Canute and his love will meet them all when she comes, when she comes on Wednesday. Oh, he's so in love though, he's so in love, that old man, he stops down to the sidetrack tap every day and sits at the bar and talks to Wally and walks over to the jukebox and says, Boy, you just don't have the good songs on this jukebox that you used to have, Wally. This jukebox. You've let this jukebox just go downhill. I don't know. I don't.
There's nothing here that I really care about anymore. All the songs I liked, you took off this jukebox. But I suppose I'll play something. And always puts in his quarter. And always plays one song. After complaining about it. Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you. And goes to the window, that old man, as Elvis's voice washes around the inside of the sidetrack tap. Should I stay? Would it be a sin if I can't help falling in love with you? She comes on Wednesday. Love stories in Lake Wobegon. It's the only stories I'm aware of up there. Lyle, he's not smoked now in eight months. Amazing. Hasn't smoked, hasn't bothered him. He's noticed some changes. After a few months, oxygen started to get to his brain. He started to have ideas. He used to think he'd give up biology teaching and maybe go into taxidermy. He was thinking about taking a mail order course in taxidermy and do some of this taxidermy where you make little tableaus using small animals. Like you take a bunch of squirrels and you set them, you stuff them, you set them in poses, you dress them in little clothes around a table playing poker or something. Or stuff a bunch of cats at a wedding. You have little cat weddings. take a bunch of little dogs and stuff and pose them as stockbrokers, put suits on and stuff. Bars, taverns, pay good money for this sort of thing.
He was thinking about taxidermy as maybe a career for himself. And now he's been thinking he's going to stay in biology teaching, that he really likes it. And he's been thinking that maybe he and Janice ought to have another baby. One more baby. It's been 11 years since the last one. One last child, a little girl. He can almost imagine her. A little girl. He's been thinking about that for months. He'd like to have one more. Stories of love. Ella Anderson. A couple weeks ago, sitting at a card table in her kitchen, old, old woman with arthritis, married to Henry, the oldest man in town, 86, and as they say, he has his good days. And this was not one of them. He was a long way away and many years in the past sitting there. She was working on a puzzle, a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that her daughter Charlotte had sent to her and it had taken her days to even get going on it. It was a lawn and it was rose bushes and there was a grape arbor and a swing. And she looked at the jigsaw puzzle Ella Anderson, and it reminded her of something that happened sixty-some years ago, when the summer before they were engaged,
She walked to Henry's house and looked over the bushes and he was kissing a girl named Doris. Sixty-some years ago, but the sight of this grape arbor brought it all back to her. The pain, the shame, her face burned. She looked at him sitting there, 86-year-old man. He looked as if he was having a good time somewhere and was murmuring to somebody. And that was Ella's first thought, was that he was with Doris. That he thought he was with Doris. She broke into tears. Sixty-some years later, still jealous. That's love. Well, it's all I can think of. It's all I can think of. How much should I tell you? How much have I told you? Probably told you a lot more than I thought, huh? Well, I sit around thinking about her all the time and thinking back to when I met her again this summer and we talked and we said goodbye and she walked away. And I watched her go. And without meaning to, I followed her. And I started running. And I caught up with her. And I took her hand and I looked at her and she was laughing. And I never turned around. Is she real? I hope so. I hope she's not a story that I made up. Thinking about her this morning, lying in bed, and trying to get my thoughts on the right track, I reached into the drawer of the bed stand and found the Gideon's Bible. And I was going for the Psalms, friend. Honest I was. But I found the Song of Solomon instead. It was back there in the Bible. It's back there.
Rise up my love and come away for lo, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone and lots more terrific verses. I put some of them into a song here. This is a song we did on the show and people sang with me a few weeks ago. An old spiritual called My Father How Long. Try it with me. You'll pick this up. I want to hear you sing in this big dark auditorium. I bet you got sweet voices. If we find our chord, we'll sing this song from the Song of Solomon. And because it's dark in this room, you won't be embarrassed. My father, how long? My father, how long? My father, how long? This poor sinner suffer here Oh, how pleasant and how fair How pleasant and how fair Oh, how pleasant and how fair my beloved is to me. You are beautiful, my love. You're beautiful, my love. You are beautiful, my love So pleasant and so fair And it won't be long It won't be long, and it won't be long, this poor sinner's suffering. Your eyes are like a dove's Your eyes are like a dove's Your eyes are like a dove's And your hair a flock of goats And your hair a flock of goats, your hair a flock of goats, and your hair a Your neck, a mighty tower Your neck, a mighty tower Your neck, a mighty tower And your teeth a flock of sheep And your teeth a flock of sheep Your teeth a flock of sheep and your teeth a flock of sheep, and your neck a mighty tower. Your breasts are too shy, dear, Your breasts are too shy dear Your breasts are too shy dear That feed among the flowers That feed among the flowers That feed among the flowers. That feed among the flowers. Your breasts are too shining.
Oh, where is my love gone? O where is my love gone? O where is my love gone? Where do you keep your flocks? O how pleasant and how fair How pleasant and how fair. Oh, how pleasant and how fair. My beloved is to me. Sing that verse once more and think about somebody. Oh, how pleasant and how fair. How pleasant and how fair. Oh, how pleasant and how fair my beloved is to me. That's the news from Lake Wobegon. All the women are strong. All right, good luck on the show, everybody.
1987-02-07 2001-09-22 2003-03-22 2014-07-12
Chico Enterprise Record Nov 24 1985 Sydney Morning Herald Nov 25 1985 Tallahassee Democrat Jan 5 1986 Gazette Nov 29 1985
Archival contributors: Official website / Frank Berto