Butch Thompson Trio, Garrison Keillor, Leo Kottke, Dave Moore, Karen Morrow, Peter Ostroushko, Studs Terkel.
I'll Be Alright Someday ( Dave Moore ) My Sister Kate ( Dave Moore ) Everybody Gotta Make a Change ( Dave Moore ) Last Steam Engine Train ( Leo Kottke ) Sweet Home Chicago ( Dave Moore ) Light another light ( Garrison Keillor ) What a wonderful world ( Garrison Keillor ) At the jazz band ball (Butch Thompson Trio ) What I like is you ( Karen Morrow ) I can do anything ( Karen Morrow ) Too late now ( Karen Morrow ) I got rhythm ( Karen Morrow )
Anderson, Ella Arctic Rex Snow Blowers and Hair Dryers Bigger Hammer Enterprises Bunsen, Clarence Bunsen, Clint Bunsen, Irene Pastor Ingqvist Raw Bits Rick the TV Dog Sidetrack Tap Thorvaldson, Senator K Tollefsen, Val
This transcription may have been auto-created from the audio. Can you help improve the text? Email us!
Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. Winter finally arrived. First major storm blew in last Saturday night as we were doing the show. Came in out of the west about six inches of snow and some high winds. Moved it around a little bit there in town and out on the farms. So winter was all around at last. Settled in. People who had been saying they weren't quite ready for it found that winter was quite ready for them and was all around them and there wasn't a whole lot to be done about it unless you wanted to pull your window shades and paint palm trees on them.
It was that time of year to come to appreciate the color white in all of its shades and permutations and to make your peace with winter, that peaceful season. the mayor of Clint Bunsen, making a few phone calls around town. Clint decided he couldn't do anything about it, so settled down to watch a little television on Saturday night, sort of like pulling your window shades, and watched a show he didn't even know the title of, because as Clint says he doesn't watch television, Irene watches it, and sometimes he looks at it, And this was a show that Irene used to like a lot on Saturday nights, and he would stand in the doorway and watch it. But now she has lost interest in it, so he has to turn it on himself. A show, one of those shows, there are a lot of them, in which rich and attractive people sit around in the sun and break the Ten Commandments in the course of 60 minutes. go at it pretty much in order, one through five, and then from the other end, ten down to six, which is usually the last one to go. This was a show in which a guy named Biff and a woman named June, who was his neighbor's wife and whom he had been coveting for really since the first commercial, sitting around a swimming pool and bearing false witness. And there had been a number of false gods and some other false gods before them, and they were kind of heading down there towards number six and seven.
There was a commercial then in which rich and attractive people sat around a pool and made long-distance phone calls using wireless telephones. And Clint felt a little bit dizzy, kind of like motion sickness in a way, kind of an emptiness behind the eyeballs. He went up to the kitchen and gave himself a glass of water and looked out the window over the sink, and there was the snow coming down. Beautiful snow falling. He turned on the yard light to make it shine as it came down out of the black sky.
Down out of the black and went outside to stand in the snow and to watch it come down. So beautiful. So light in the air. So bright in the dark. Snow falling all across the north. snow falling, like little pieces of starlight reflecting, reflecting the light. And as it drifts down and slowly falls, a person watches and feels yourself rising. You rise. You watch snow fall, you rise, you feel like you're going up to the stars, up to the Milky Way where all this came from. The great euphoria of watching snow come down. People feel this all across the North. when winter comes in, this sweet, cold purity, the cleanliness of snow, as if nature is putting the lid on riffraff, putting the lid on meanness and commonness and cruelty, so that when winter comes in, You go outside with a feeling that everyone you meet will be glad to see you in winter. Not always true in summer.
In winter, it's always true. And when it gets down to 20 and 30 below, anyone you meet outside is your friend, is your closest friend. If you've never seen them before, there's a euphoria. when it's 20 and 30 below and the snow has fallen and winter is on us and you walk outside among your friends and love and comradeship flow from one person to another. Euphoria. So that people who are weaker and have bum tickers, we have to send them to Florida to calm them down. When winter comes in, Clint was watching the snow falling and thinking back to a major snowstorm. Twelve years ago, when there was a knock on his door, and there were five people on his doorstep in the teeth of a blizzard, snow swirling around them. Two big people and three little people. He let them in, of course. They stayed the night, of course. They stayed three nights. It was a big blizzard.
The Roths, David and Amy Roth, they came from Chicago. They were driving through this strange little town and didn't think they could go any farther and they were right. They stopped. They headed for this house, this white house and its yard light and knocked on the door and walked in. And because there wasn't any choice about it, the Bunsons and the Roths skipped that first part of friendship where you decide if you're going to like each other or not and went straight on to the next part and liked each other a lot immediately and spent three days together. Three days snowed in, sat around in the evening, sat up half the night and told stories about themselves going back to when they were young, stories they didn't even know they remembered. sat in the dark on his cold snowy nights. And he always has remembered them since and remembered when they said goodbye. And Mrs. Roth turned to him and said,
I don't know if we'll ever see you again, but I know 40 years from now I will remember you. They left. And ever since when a blizzard comes in, Clint Bunsen has always hoped for some traveler to be stranded, someone to be snowbound. But thanks to better snow plowing, it doesn't happen so often as it used to. He's thinking about them when he saw headlights light from headlights on his garage door, and then the car come up alongside the house, but it wasn't anyone stranded. It was Pastor Inkvist and his daughter. Clint said, yes, sir. How you doing? What's up? Pastor got out of the car. Clint noticed there was a dent on the side of the car. It looked self-inflicted to him. It, uh, Clint's in the auto mechanic business. He can kind of tell a boot mark there. Kind of looked like it might have been a Red Wing work boot, a right foot delivered right in behind the left front wheel there. He was going to say something humorous about this, like these don't come with Kickstarters, you know, but decided he wouldn't. Because Pastor Inkfist looked a little steamed, Clint said, what are you doing out tonight on a Saturday night? The pastor said, looking for that stupid dog. Have you seen that dumb dog around here?
Clint said, you mean Rick, the TV dog? He said, yep, looking for that one. What you doing looking for Val Tollefson's dog?" he said. The pastor said, well, it's a long story. But it isn't such a long story. Rick the TV dog was Val Tollefson's dog. Val Tollefson got him from some people he knew, the Ohlmans, who gave him Rick for reasons which he was beginning to discover as the Ohlmans were backing out of his driveway. Rick the TV dog was a dog who loves garbage, not just to sniff it, not to study it, but to actually eat it. And he also loves to watch television, and to watch television sitting on your lap. He's an old dog, an old Irish setter, loves black and white television, especially, and old movies. And it was kind of a surprise, that dog was. sitting and watching television and you hear a dog groaning as he crawls up onto your lap and you see the coffee grounds on his lips and you smell the essence of orange rind and coffee and Froot Loops. and maple syrup and scrambled eggs and this dog with his large brown eyes looking at you pleading, pleading enough to make a man say, who is this dog? There's a dog down here. Whose dog is this? Even if you're the owner of the dog, you still feel this way.
A dog who now, more recently, has taken to climbing into bed with people late at night. Poor old Rick the TV dog. No, Clint said, I don't believe he's been around, but you could go across and ask Clarence. A lot of dogs go by there. How did he come to be Pastor Inkvist's dog when he was Val Tollefson's dog? Well, I tell you. Val Tollefson learned about all he needed to learn about Rick the TV dog. and decided that he was a dog who needed another home, a home where people would understand him better than Val was interested in. Now, Val is the president of the church council there at Lake Wobegon Lutheran, likes to sit down center pew, about four pews back, and take notes on the sermon and send notes to Pastor Inkvist about the sermons later. helping him out a little bit on organization and theme, and sending him notes like, could have been better.
I believe most of us are getting a little tired of hearing about redemption by grace, could use a few more humorous anecdotes. When one Sunday morning he heard a sermon on this theme of being kind to the dumb and the helpless, remembered his TV doc and thought, yes sir, after the sermon came up to Pastor Inkvist and said that he was afraid that if he couldn't find a home for Rick soon that he didn't have much choice but to put this dog away. as he looked down at Pastor Inkvist's little daughter, Mary, who was looking up with tears running down her cheeks. Val Tollefson said, yes, he didn't want to do it, but he just needed a place to keep Rick for just a few days. And if he couldn't find someone who would be willing to take in this poor old dog, that he'd have to. So he became the ink vests dog, temporarily, just until a new home could be found.
And that was back in August. A dog who loves late, late at night to climb up into bed with the ink vests. From the foot of the bed, putting his old paws, his old hush puppies up on the foot of the bed, and ooh, easing himself up. and tiptoeing up towards the head of the bed. He put his head there on the pillow, and Pastor Inkvist smells, oh, little animal lard, some tater tots. Gets out of bed, throws the dog out, out, go, get away, leave us. And a little girl comes to the bedroom door, tears in her eyes, oh daddy, daddy, daddy. They went across the street looking for a dog he did not want to find. And then a Saturday night snowstorm knocked on Clarence Bunsen's door. Clarence came to the door, Pastor Inkvist, he said, don't often see you on a Saturday night. they could hear from the living room a program on TV. A man was saying, ah, your husband will never know. He'll never know June. He doesn't know anything about love. How could he? He's never known love not like ours. Come on.
Pastor Inkvist said, is Arlene home? Clarence said, yeah, it's... some program on television. I don't know. Arlene is watching it. I look at it from time to time. I don't really keep track of it. Looking for a dog, he said. Rick, the TV dog? Yes. Looking for Rick. Heard the woman on the TV say, But I just don't know if it would be right. I just don't know. Arlene came in to see if Clarence had poured her a glass of sherry. She saw Pastor Inquist, she said, just coming out to get a glass of water. Won't you come on in? Sit down in there. All right. We can turn the TV off. And now he said, I've got to move on. I've got to move on. Looking for a doc. Drove up the street, up to the Anderson's house, Ella Anderson sitting and playing solitaire. Henry Anderson, oldest man in town, senile now, part of the time. The rest of the time he's just forgetful like he always used to be.
He was sitting watching something on television. a man on television saying, what does right have to do with it? This is bigger than right, June. This is you and me. This is us I'm talking about. Henry mumbling to himself. I'll let myself out, Ella. Thank you very much. Pastor Inkfish said, appreciate it. If you see him, give us a call. drove on down the street, and stopped at a few more houses of people who weren't used to getting a call from their pastor on a Saturday night when they thought he should be home preparing his sermon. Yes, there were a lot of people, a lot of people who came to the door and who said, why, Pastor Inkvist! Warning those in the next room. He could hear glasses being moved under sofas. He could hear children being hissed at, go get dressed. People came out wiping their hands, arranging themselves. People backing away from him, putting their hands behind them to rearrange something, to turn a magazine over the other way, to take a book, to put it under the cupboard. Relieved to find out this was not a pastoral visit, just looking for a dog. Looking for a dog he didn't really want to find. drove up past Senator Kay Torvaldson's house, didn't go in. It was dark. Senator Kay had been turning in early this week. His lady love had gone back to the state of Maine. Something happened. Nobody knew what. She left in a great big hurry. There was some misunderstanding.
Senator Kay didn't say much about it, but Pastor Inkvist got the idea. that the old man needed her so bad, wanted that woman so bad, was so deeply in love with her that it made her frightened. When he begged her never to leave, that was the first thing she had to do, was to go back without any promise of returning. Broke his heart. Almost poor old man. People down at the sidetrack tap, they understood it quite well. We're talking about the old guys at the bar. Said, yes, sir, that goes to show you don't throw yourself at a woman. Never throw yourself at a woman. Keep them guessing. Keep them off balance. That's the secret. Old bachelor farmer said, yes, sir, I believe you're right about that. Keep them guessing. That's the truth. He should have known. He should have known. That's where they found Rick, the TV dog, was out back of the sidetrack tap. He was kind of having a snack back there.
They picked him up and put him in the car. Shortly after that, the car pulled up in front of the Val Tollefson home. The pastor tried the front door. It was open. He eased it open slowly, and the old dog tiptoed in. Val lay in bed hearing those old toenails click along the hall floor. Heard the dog come to the door. Heard that familiar... as the immense old Irish setter crawled up in bed. And he got an odor of something that smelled like Rick had been involved with muskrats for a while. And Pastor Inkvist headed on home and put his little girl into bed and sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, why did Rick want to go back to the Tollefson's to live? Well, he said, I think they understand him better than we do. I think that they're more, have more in common there. She said, how come we can't watch television whenever we want to and other people do? He said, well, he said, you're growing up so fast. I want to see you when you're little because pretty soon you'll be all grown up and gone. But when you grow up, you can watch television all day and all night.
You could watch 48 half hour shows every day. Wouldn't that be a good deal? She looked up at him, thinking. She said, tell me a story. He said, all right. He pulled the quilt up to her chin. And he said, once upon a time, there was a little girl and her name was Mary. Mary Inkvist and she lived in a little greenhouse with her mother and her dad and her brothers and her sisters and she was amazing and magnificent because God loved her and she took that love and she saw the whole world through that love So that things that were common and ordinary became elegant and graceful and wonderful to her. Even an old dog became a wonderful friend. And looked down and she was asleep. Her mouth open. And he pulled the shade and closed the door. And that's the news from Lake Wobegon. Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
History of the Auditorium Theater. GK plays radio announcer and Chuck Cruel as a child.
Miami Herald Dec 2 1985
Archival contributors: Frank Berto