Butch Thompson Trio, Bruce Calin, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, New England Ragtime Ensemble, Peter Ostroushko. Jean Redpath, Robin and Linda Williams,
Heliotrope Bouquet (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) Black Bottom (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) Dizzy Fingers (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) The Entertainer (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) The Charlestown Rag (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) Castle House Rag (New England Ragtime Ensemble ) Ice Palace Waltz ( Garrison Keillor ) Oklahoma ( Garrison Keillor ) 50 Miles of Elbowroom (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) I Love You 1000 Ways (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) Once more (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) After the Flood (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) Holy Unto the Lord (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) Angel Band (Robin and Linda Williams , Garrison Keillor ) Texas gals ( Peter Ostroushko ) Billy in the low ground ( Peter Ostroushko ) Forked Deer ( Peter Ostroushko ) Merry Mac ( Jean Redpath ) Eriskay Love ( Jean Redpath ) Laddie Lie Near ( Jean Redpath )
Aerobic Bluegrass Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Community Car Grief Counseling Center Lake Wobegon Chamber of Commerce Pastor Ingqvist Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
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It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been kind of warm up there this last week and kind of, well, kind of drippy, actually, kind of miserable, this false thaw of January. We've all been through it before, and Minnesota warms up for a few days, and the sap starts running up from your feet, up your legs, and Then it turns real cold, cuts you off at the knees and some people don't recover until April and some not quite then. Warm and you walk outside, hear the whole world kind of dripping off your roof and kind of grayish snow, half melted here and there, patches of brown grass and evidence of animals lying there. Boy Scout training tells me those were made by dogs, by large dogs who maybe need more fiber in their diets. But I walk down the street, it's a depressing time of year, and particularly in Lake Wobegon.
Of course, I'm in show business, so I'm always in a pretty good mood. But in real life, you know, January is hard on people. Father Emil and Pastor Inkvist sat down on Thursday. We're talking about this very thing over their gin rummy game down at the rectory. Sat and played gin rummy as they do every few months, talk about spiritual things and see who's got the cards at the same time. sit there and deal out a hand, and Father Emil always says, always says, same thing, he looks at his cards, he says, look at that, just look at that, would you? Pastor Encovist says, yeah, let me look at that.
Never have seen, never have seen a hand like that. I don't even, I don't believe I even have a pair in there anywhere. Then about three cards later, he goes down with a gin, perfect gin, all clubs from the four on up to the king. They sit over gin rummy and talk about their parishioners. Pastor Inquist said, how's things up on your side? Father Emil said, not good. It's January. Stand up there in the pulpit and I look down at them. I just try not to look them in the eyes. Little eyes. They got those January eyes. They look like pee holes in the snow. They just...
This doesn't look like any light is getting through there. But it'll pass. It'll pass. There's a little bit of history, kind of historic event in Lake Wobegon on Thursday. Pastor Inquist became the longest running Lutheran minister in the history of Like Wobegon Lutheran Church, it was Emma Herdeen called up, told him about it. Of course, she'd know if anybody would. Sixteen years. Sixteen years in the pulpit. He said, I thought I came in 1969. Emma, she said, well, you did, but that was temporary. You were temporary. You didn't become official. until 1970. That was when we knew that Pastor Iverson would not be coming back.
So we date you from that time. Oh, mm-hmm, he said. Yeah, she said, Pastor Iverson, I suppose a lot of people in town have forgotten him, but he was a wonderful, wonderful man. So many of us still miss him, Pastor Iverson. He was a godly man, don't you know? He was a good man. Mm-hmm, yes. She said, you know, I hate to say this. Mm-hmm, he said. But I think that he was a prophet in our time, Pastor Iverson. I tell you, when that man spoke on Sunday morning, I'd close my eyes and the room would just seem to move. Mm-hmm, he said. Mm-hmm. She said, that hasn't happened to me since. You know, she said, I hate to be the one to say it, but the church being in the condition that it is now in these latter times, I just don't think it's possible for a man so godly as he was to last very long in the ministry. All right, well, thanks a lot, he said. Thank you.
It's nice of you to call. It's all right, she said. It was the least I could do, and congratulations, and please give my best to your lovely wife. That was one historic event. The one, actually, I was thinking of occurred on Thursday. when Pastor Inkvist became the first resident of Lake Wolbegon to be enrolled as a member of a frequent flyer program. Mr. Bowser up at the post office saw it come in. It was a letter from North Central Airlines, and he called up Pastor Inquist right away and said, there's something here for you from the airline. He said, I think it's one of those, what you call them. They advertise them all the time, you know, in the whatever it is. But it's down here waiting for you. It was his membership card in North Central Airlines Frequent Fire Club called the Wild Coos Club. Which he had enrolled in because Pastor Inqvist and his wife Judy were planning to fly off on Saturday the 12th down to San Angeles, Texas to the La Casa Alhambra Resort and Golf Complex, 36 halls of golf, waterbeds with magic fingers in every room, free use of tanning facilities and the rest, for the annual Lutheran Winter Minister's Retreat. Sometimes called the minister's stampede.
They were planning to leave on Saturday the 12th and fly down and so they would get the 4,000 free miles for enrolling in the frequent flyer program plus the 4,000 going down to Texas and back and would be well on their way towards earning a free trip to Winnipeg or Duluth or Omaha or any of the cities and North Central flies to them. Going down there for the retreat beginning on Saturday the 12th, featuring the Reverend Isaiah Anderson of the Lutheran charismatic movement, who speaks in tongues and sounds like Finnish actually, but it's tongues. And heals people of various things, mainly listlessness and vitamin deficiency. So they were looking forward to this trip down to the Sun Belt until just a couple days before they were going to leave. Judy said, Saturday the 12th. Saturday is not the 12th. Saturday is the 11th. Mm-hmm, she said.
She said, you don't think that you could have, by mistake, He said, gotten the 1985 brochure. Huh. But then it started to come back to him. He'd read about the Reverend Isaiah Anderson recently and how he had left the Lutheran Church and formed a retreat of his own out in the mountains in Utah and was doing well on cable TV and looked at the brochure and it said, be sure to make your reservations now for January 6th through 8th, 1986. I looked on the front and I said, Lutheran Winter Minister's Retreat, Orlando, 1985. So he wound up in the pulpit himself on Sunday, the 12th of January. Had to cancel out the replacement minister, Fats Anderson, a guy from Minneapolis who'd been in the ministry. He was in municipal bonds, but he liked to keep his hand in. Preach ever so often. Had a sermon all prepared on maximizing spiritual growth while... avoiding inflationary, spiraling spirituality. Instead, Pastor Inkfest was there and looked at him last Sunday.
He felt terrible. He felt so miserable. But he preached a sermon on the subject of love and the peculiar physics and economy of love and how Love can only be given away. It cannot be kept. When love is given away, love increases. When love is kept, it is destroyed. That it is impossible to keep love. Love can only be given. And so when Scripture says it is better to give than to receive, Scripture means you only can give. And by giving, receive. and all the time was thinking about how he would rather be in Texas at La Casa Alhambra on waterbeds with magic fingers. What would those feel like? He wouldn't mind receiving some of that. It wasn't a great sermon, but then he knew that. He can tell a bad sermon from a good one. When he was in seminary, at Wittenberg Seminary, he used to write a column for the seminary newspaper. He was a movie critic. He wrote about shows and concerts, reviewed books, gave it to people who he didn't respect, laid it out on the line. He enjoyed that. But being a critic back in seminary and being a seminarian never really prepared him for the ministry. He was never prepared to fail in all of the magnificent ways that a person can as a grown-up.
When you got out of seminary in those days, You had to give four sermons, kind of term sermons, like term papers. Seminarians called it the Grand Slam. It was a circuit you had to do four of them. He came down to his fourth sermon, the last one before he'd go out in the work. It was at an old folks' home. But there were a lot of different people there, young and old. It was on a Sunday, Visitor's Day at an old folks' home and a whole bunch of his buddies from the seminary went along to see him do the last one. And they had this game going where all of his pals sitting in the back row of the chapel in the old folks' home thought of a common barnyard animal. And in his sermon, Pastor Inqvist had to mention that animal. He had to say the secret word, and then he would win the pot.
You see, all of them put money in the pot. And if he didn't mention that animal, common farm animal in the sermon, then he'd have to pay them. as much money as they had put in. So he got going on the sermon and he got all we like sheep have gone astray. He got in Absalom on his horse, the cattle around the manger. He got in the swine that Christ put the evil spirits into and kept looking back there and they shook their heads. No, no, no, no, no. Somehow he got dogs in there. He got chickens and ducks and geese. He worked all these animals into his sermon. Had a hard time keeping from laughing and was trying to think how he would get goats in there. I guess sheep from the goats, but he'd already done sheep. But he'd get goats in. When all of a sudden a woman stood up and she said, Oh, Jesus, love me, Jesus.
And she walked down front, and she knelt right in front of him. He looked at her. He didn't know what to do. She said, Oh, Jesus, have mercy on me, Jesus. And she was crying. It was a fat woman, a very fat woman, threw herself down at his feet. He looked around for help. There was no help. He wanted to say, This is just a joke. See, I'm sorry. This sermon is just a joke. She was calling out. She was calling out, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Help me, Jesus. He looked towards the back of the room. All of his friends were just all collapsed on each other. Laughing, laughing, laughing. He looked down on her, tears running down her cheeks. Jesus, Jesus, have mercy on me. Looked at his friends in the back, tears running down their cheeks. Tears running down her cheeks. He knelt down by her and he put his arms around her. And when he put his arms around her, that's where his ministry began. He said, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. She said, thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you. I'm so sorry. He said, please forgive me. She said, oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. So he paid $60. $60 and the animal was bull. Bull was the secret word.
She wrote to him years later after he moved to Lake Wobegon and went into the work. That woman wrote to Pastor Engfist and she told him that that sermon of his had changed her life. She had quit drinking. She had lost 150 pounds and she had gone into the Lord's work full time. And she had always been blessed by that sermon. She didn't say which part. She just said that sermon. And she enclosed three dollars. Three dollar bills looked as if they'd been in somebody's pocket for a long time. He felt so strange. He took the three dollars, went down to the sidetrack tap, Had himself a beer and a bump and then had himself another one. Sat there on the dim light back by the Ham's beer sign, the one with the little jewels going around it. And just sat there and had a little Jim Beam and a little beer. They weren't used to seeing the minister in the sidetrack tap.
They sat and stared at him, didn't know what to say to him. They'd never seen Lutheran ministers sitting in there at the bar drinking right in front of everybody. And then when he got up to go and go out the door, don't you know, I mean, it happens to everybody, I think, who goes from a dark place into a bright sunlight, he kind of lurched a little bit. A lot of people saw it on the street. It was a little bit of a lurch. It was just kind of a false step. as he walked into sunlight. He didn't fall on his face in the gutter. He just kind of lurched a little bit. Word got around town. People talked about that for days. Didn't know what to do. Didn't know what to do. Lutheran minister walking around drunk in the streets. Can't have that. Can't have man of God walking up and down the sidewalks in broad daylight where children can see him. What?
Falling down in the gutter, talking to himself, walking into trees. None of them knew how to counsel a minister. So the deacons of the Lutheran Church did the only thing they could think of to do. They went to see Father Emil. The next day he walked up to the parsonage, made the long walk from Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility from the rectory all the way up to the parsonage. They're on opposite sides of town. People looked out their windows as they saw him go by. It was in January. People poked their heads out. People watched him as he marched. Father Emil marched all the way up to the parsonage, knocked on the door. Pastor Inquist let him in. He was in there for about an hour and a half. And then he came out. And they all watched him as he walked back down to the rectory. He looked kind of grim, looked awfully serious.
He had just lost 28 cents in gin rummy. And they were playing for a tenth of a cent per point. So he lost bad. He lost bad. That was the beginning of their gin rummy series. And that was 12, no, 13 years ago. 13 years ago. No, it was 1972, 14 years ago. January, 14 years ago. Play every few months. 14 years of gin rummy. Father Emil is now up $2.38. He's been up pretty much for about the past six years. Sometimes by as much as $5 or $6, now $2, 38 cents. And he was up there again on Thursday night. He said to Pastor Inckvist, he said, you want to pay up now?
He said, it's not going to get any cheaper in the future. You don't want to go too deeply in debt. No, Pastor Inckvist said, deal them. Deal them face down on the table. Let's see the cards. Father Emil dealt them fast as he always did. Picked him up, looked at him. Look at that, he said. Look at that. Let me see him, said Benaz. I'll stick with him. I don't believe I've got a pair. Three cards later, gin. Went down. Perfect gin, including four aces. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Ed Pringle was voted Shy Person of the year.
1986.01.12 Star Tribune
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl