Stevie Beck, Butch Thompson Trio, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Peter Ostroushko, Jean Redpath, Robin and Linda Williams, Vern Sutton. Ron Wallis,
In the olden days ( Garrison Keillor ) Down in Arkansas (Robin and Linda Williams ) This old house (Robin and Linda Williams ) One and only little someone (Robin and Linda Williams ) Stonewall country (Robin and Linda Williams ) Don't Let Me Come Home a Stranger (Robin and Linda Williams ) Let us cross over the river (Robin and Linda Williams ) Mahallion ( Jean Redpath ) Children's song ( Jean Redpath ) Moon man (Robin and Linda Williams ) Beauty and tears ( Stevie Beck ) Hey kids ( Vern Sutton ) Hit songs of 1910 ( Vern Sutton ) Lady Be Good (Butch Thompson Trio ) Way down yonder (Butch Thompson Trio ) Let me call you sweetheart ( Vern Sutton )
Automatic Roof Snow Rake Bob Humdee Enterprises Key Hiders Oil Rig Dishwashing Liquid Powdermilk Biscuits Raw Bits Superlight Markets
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Well it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown, on a quiet, beautiful week and a beautiful month of January too, these cold, sunny winter days, cold, brilliant, dazzling days, when the light almost seems to go right through you, makes you feel like a kid again, at least it does me, at least when I'm back in Lake Wobegon it does, but then it hasn't changed very much since I was a kid, so it's easy to feel that way. whether it's cloudy or bright up there. I went up there this last week having just gotten back in the country. Christmas was over up there.
All the Christmas decorations are down. off of Main Street and even the old decorations, the aluminum tinsel, the long strings of aluminum tinsel that hang up behind the back bar in the sidetrack tap, all put away for another year. Those long strings of tinsel sometimes hang up there until fishing season starts in May. All put away. I think they use them for lures, actually. for the sunfish who are visually impaired, but they're all gone now. And all those lights at Christmas, people trying to slowly recover from the holiday, which this sunshine, these sunshiny days certainly must help. Miss Falconer up at the high school, gradually recovering or trying to recover from the choir concert back about a month ago, which included the worst performance of a motet ever in choir history, which says quite a bit. It completely fell apart on her right about the middle of the program. the Palestrina, Hodie Christus Natus Est, just all collapsed in on itself, right there in full view of everybody, and she had to stop them and then start them over again at the beginning of it, which destroyed their confidence, these poor children, and it didn't go well after that. what had been intended as a monument of 17th century contrapuntal polyphony became kind of contrapolyphonous and polypuntal and was more like a tombstone than a monument. Kids kind of came in with a little hodier here and a gloria there, sort of where they thought one ought to go. And the sopranos tried to carry the ball, but they didn't really have the ball. You see, the melody passes from one voice to another, and the tenors died completely, so that when they were supposed to have it, there was no sound at all, but a kind of a... And then the sopranos would come in with the response So there was a powerful echo of something that hadn't made any sound to begin with.
And it was kind of, well, it was better forgotten. Which Miss Falconer would have been glad to do, except that this last week, up in school, she heard snatches of the motet in the hallways and down in the cafeteria. Members of choir humming, whistling little parts of it. Perfectly. A phrase here, a phrase there. She was standing down in the lunchroom trying to ignore the chow mein and heard a voice from nearby sing, And it was a member of her tenor section. Standing there with a plastic tray in hand and a little pool of food on it, heading towards his table, singing his part perfectly. She could have killed him.
Well, they're just trying to forget. Mr. Bowser at the post office, trying to recover from Christmas, during which he, all by himself, handled 2,213 pounds of Christmas packages, an all-time Lake Wobegon post office record, which he mentioned as an item in his Postal News and Views column in the Lake Wobegon Herald Star. Over a ton of Christmas packages moved through that little post office. And nobody ever came in this last couple weeks to say anything about it to him. Say, congratulations, Bob. All-time Christmas package mailing record. Good job. Well done. Nobody came in to say anything about it. He's been depressed a long time, Mr. Bowser, a long time before Christmas, sitting there alone in the post office, little box of a post office, old mobile home, reconditioned. put a postage on the side of it, mail him away someday. They probably will. Sitting there all by himself, thinking these long days since Christmas, if maybe he made the wrong decision going into postal work.
Not a good question for a man to ask at the age of 58. But he's thought about it since last summer. when he went to the reunion of his old World War II unit, the 451st Army Post Office Battalion. The Screaming Sackers, they called them. A crack postal outfit in WWII. He was just a kid, 18 years old at the time, marching with his unit down Broadway in New York City to the APO, putting in long days. Glorious days in postal work, and now what's happened since? He's not sure. Maybe he took the wrong turn. He thought that at the reunion down at the Curtis Hotel as he met a lot of guys from the 451st who had been in postal work for a while, but then they Went into real estate and made a lot of money. Standing around talking about new boats, new homes, new lake homes, new cars, new suits. Got into real estate just when real estate was starting to take off.
Turned to him and said, what you doing, Bob? He said, oh, you know, post office. Gets in your blood, I guess. but he's just wondering if maybe he took a wrong turn. It's depressing. Sit there. And then to go home. Depressing. Go home and Bonnie taking down all the decorations off the tree, wrapping them individually in tissue paper, putting them into their little boxes, putting them into little compartments in the big box. Kind of reminds him of what he's been doing all day. After Christmas then, Bonnie getting her spice rack in order. She does it every year after Christmas, puts it all back in order.
He sat there at the kitchen table drinking coffee, watching her do it. She said, I don't know. She said, I think throw out this powdered garlic. I haven't used any of this in eight years. He said, how do you know that? My gosh. She had little adhesive labels on the bottom of each little tin of spices in her spice rack with the date of purchase written on it and each date of usage. My God, woman, he thought. She got them all in order, all of her little spice tins, in alphabetical order.
And then she sat down to work on her Christmas cards, taking all of the cards that she had received from people this year and checking them off on the Christmas card list so that all of the senders were marked down on their little file card for each person who ever sent her a Christmas card. She marked down 1985 so that next year she would make sure that every sender would become a sendee. And those who had not sent her a Christmas card in three years, her cutoff date, would be put in the inactive file. Bob looked at her inactive file.
There were four file cards in there, all four of them people who had been dead for years. Why do you keep these, he wondered, but he didn't dare ask. Evidently she thought that maybe she would take her Christmas card list to heaven. and meet the senders up there. And they would still exchange cards. He didn't know. He didn't want to know. It was so depressing. So he wasn't feeling especially good back even before Christmas, back early in December, when a group of regular patrons of his stopped in with a package to mail off to Denmark. He was a little miffed. That's never going to get there, he said.
It's never going to get there in time. He'd never mailed a package to Denmark, ever. Some to Norway, never to Denmark. This one was addressed to a person formerly of Lake Wobegon, who was getting married towards the end of December in Copenhagen. It's never gonna make it, he said. Copenhagen. He didn't even know if they had mail service there. Kind of a fairytale city where they have swans and mermaids and Danny Kaye kind of dancing down the streets of houses with strange roofs. Probably have a lot of storks doing mail delivery in Copenhagen, handling some of their outs. That's never going to make it, he said. These people had bought a wedding gift. They had thought long and hard about it and had pooled their money. It came to about $3.25 a piece. Picked out a present, wrapped it in a box, addressed it, and now they wanted to put on the exact right amount of postage so that it would arrive in Copenhagen in time for the wedding But not excess postage so that it would arrive days early or something. Just the exact right amount so it would get there the day before or a couple hours before. Well, he said, I'd say about $6 will do you about as good as anything you could spend.
So he put on $6 worth of stamps, 14 centers. Used up all his Sinclair Lewis 14 centers. Nobody was buying many of those anyway. Covered the front of it with Sinclair Lewis. Hitted a couple of good ones with a rush stamp. Heard kind of a faint tinkling sound inside. I don't think it's going to make it, he said. Threw it in the bag. I'll tell you this, he said, you've seen the last of that. You'll never see that again. I doubt anybody else will either. But it got there on time. It arrived on time. I know because I was on hand to receive it.
Amazing to see that Lake Wobegon postmark in Denmark. And I opened it later. They haven't gotten my thank you note yet because I just finished it. But here it is. I'll read it to you. Dear friends, thank you for the wedding gift which arrived in time, you will be glad to know. We opened it on a happy day at the reception, surrounded by music and affection and friends with glasses of champagne in hand. and when I saw your shiny gift, it made my day complete. In a flash, it brought to mind the pleasure of walking into a cold kitchen on a dark morning and making toast.
The chill in the air, the orange glow of the heating elements, then the smell of hot bread, one of life's sweet moments summed up by one little appliance, a toaster. I was only sorry that Denmark operates on higher voltage and takes a plug with different prongs, so we couldn't toast a slice right then and there. And a couple days later, when it came time to pack our bags for America, I was even sorrier. I want you to know that your toaster was in the running right up until the last bag was zipped. It was first runner-up for both suitcases, and it was narrowly beaten out by a Bjorn Winblad vase for carry-on honors. I miss it already, even though I already have a toaster. But we left a couple crates of stuff behind along with the toaster, thinking that someday we may set up housekeeping in Copenhagen, that magnificent city. And when we do, there your toaster will be, waiting, shiny as new, ready to be of service. If not as a toaster, than as a napkin holder or a vase or a place to keep pencils. Again, thanks for thinking of us. It was a wonderful wedding, or seemed so to me, though I'm not the one to give you a complete account. I am too much in love to notice much about a wedding, let alone participate in one. when she and I stood at the altar and the minister said the graceful old words about love and honor, sickness and health, life and death, and it came time for me to utter my single word, ja, in Danish, spelled J-A. I waited, thinking he might say more, and had to be nudged by my true love, and people laughed, in Danish, spelled H-A-H-A-H-A. The minister, whose first name spelled B-O-R-G-E, a common Danish name that I can pronounce correctly about once in every ten tries, gave me a dry, bemused look. He was doing this part of the ceremony in English especially for me so there would be no confusion.
Ministers have always hated confusion at sacred moments. But love, sacred as it is, is as mysterious in English as it is in Danish, where it is pronounced , a lovely word, one I use as often as I can. Danish is a difficult language full of strange vocal effects, and sometimes it sounds like a person trying to get a hair out of his mouth. but it has its melodious aspects, especially when spoken by my love, or Kerliath, and particularly at our wedding, a word that sounds like a bubble in Danish, bwilip, bwilip. And when I heard her sweet voice singing at my ear, the last hymn of the bwilip service, the first of our married life, featuring the word Kerliath, Tears came to my eyes and then it was over and we receded down the aisle, grinning, followed by all of our children, including three tall boys in tuxedos. The children in tuxedos were a hit with the Danes, who love occasions and have a talent for turning modest ones into grand ones. The fact that the middle-aged couple have all the children they want didn't keep the Danes from showering us with rice on the church steps. And at the reception, they sang farewell songs, including the one from World War II,
Wish Me Luck When You Wave Me Goodbye, Cheerio, Here I Go On My Way, even though we would see them all again a few hours later at the dinner. And at the dinner I learned about the Danish love of dinner speeches in contrast to an American dinner where the food comes, you eat, and then maybe someone talks for a few minutes. The Danish custom is to insert a couple speeches between each course of the dinner and to insert a couple additional courses to sustain themselves through all these speeches and to make an occasion for even more of them. There were thirty-three persons at our wedding dinner, of whom twelve gave speeches, and one brought his clarinet and played us three tunes, including Memories of You and the Wedding Waltz, or Bwilup Waltz, which we had danced twice that day, and hearing it again brought memories of the dance and of my love and of you too, my dear friends.
I didn't know about the traditional Danish ceremony of the bullop-vals until we started dancing, her and I, and I was concentrating on my feet, trying to imagine black footprints on the floor where I should step. when I noticed that we were surrounded by people who very slowly were moving toward us, drawing the circle tighter and tighter. I didn't know that Danes do this at all weddings. I only felt elated and joyful and inspired by it. People smiling, their eyes shining, looking at us, closing around us, closer and closer, holding us in a symbolic embrace, as we embraced, dancing closer and closer.
And finally, when there was no room at all to dance, we stood still, surrounded by people. And I was aware of nobody and no thing except her, my wife. And then they all clapped and found their own partners, and we were free. So do we all surround and sustain each other. And so I thought of you, dear friends, at that sweet moment and wish that you had been there. That's the news from Lake Wobegon. Thanks for the gift. Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
The World Theater is being rebuilt. Jack wrote about the restoration project. Elevator romance
Messenger Inquirer Jan 12 1986 Star Tribune Jan 12 1986
Photos by Rob Levine.