Roy Blount Jr, Butch Thompson Trio, Bruce Calin, Prudence Johnson, Garrison Keillor, Bertram Levy, John McCutcheon, Howard Mohr, Dick Nunneley, Peter Ostroushko.
Look at the Rainbow ( Prudence Johnson ) All God's Children ( Prudence Johnson ) Blow Ill Wind ( Prudence Johnson ) The Story of Love ( Prudence Johnson ) A is for Eighteen ( Prudence Johnson ) Ukraine polka ( Bertram Levy ) Doc Cameron ( Bertram Levy ) Flowers of Edinburgh ( Bertram Levy ) Homage to Garcia ( Bertram Levy ) Red Davis ( Bertram Levy ) Sell the Car ( John McCutcheon ) Christmas in the Trenches ( John McCutcheon ) Keep on the Sunny Side ( John McCutcheon ) Casey's Last Ride ( Garrison Keillor ) My Dog Has Fleas ( Roy Blount Jr ) The Gol Durn Wheel ( Roy Blount Jr ) Minnesota street rag (Butch Thompson Trio )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bob Humdee Bed Shaker Chatterbox Cafe Minnesota Language Systems Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Raw Bits Sidetrack Tap Thorvaldson, Senator K Tolefson, Byron Tolefson, Jim
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. A few things going on there this last week that I heard about just only indirectly. Don't know if I can pass them all on to you accurately, but I sure try. There was a bunch of kids come down from the high school down to see the ballet in St. Paul this last Tuesday. I wish I'd known they were coming. I would have... I don't know what I would have done. Gone to see him, said hello to him or something. They almost did not get to come.
A group of five seniors from the high school because there was a bad smell in school which they detected about noontime when they were all down in the cafeteria getting their macaroni and cheese on their trays. There was a terrible smell that made people uneasy and move away from each other. But it wasn't that. It was something else. And they had to get Earl the janitor to look at the ventilation system and it was Earl who was going to drive the seniors down to see the ballet in St. Paul because he's the only one who can drive the new school van who's been approved as a driver for that or who has the keys. But eventually Earl did find... The problem, it was a cat that had crawled into a part of the heating system to spend its last couple hours on earth in comfort. It had been there for a while and he removed it and got the van out of the garage behind the school buses and pulled up and Loaded them all in about 2 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. Four girls and the Tollefson boy and Miss Classy and Earl at the wheel. Lowered his head and his big black eyebrows and barreled south towards St. Paul to have a cultural experience downtown. Got down here about 6.30 and left them all off over in Rice Park by the old courthouse and said, I'll pick you up here at 10. Don't be late because I'm not going to wait. And there they were. Miss Clossie headed off towards the Hotel St. Paul.
She said she was going to go freshen up for a while. She would meet them at the ballet. And so there they were, four girls and Jim Tollefson standing around in that big empty park full of snow with the library on one side and the theater on the other, the hotel and the old courthouse. Denise said, you ever been to St. Paul before? Jim said, oh, yeah. Used to come here quite often. She said, what is there to do here? Any place we can go? We've got an hour and a half to kill. He said, well, it depends on what you're interested in. She said, is there any place to go eat?
He said, yeah. We could walk and find some place. He said, you want to get pizza? They said, nah, you can get pizza at home. Let's eat Chinese or something. They settled for pizza. And got to the theater at 7.30, a half hour early, to walk in and to see the ballet. Okay. Five teenagers from Lake Wobegon who had never seen people dance on a stage just for sheer pleasure and expression before. It's a project that used to be paid for by an enrichment fund that the school district had, but the school board cut it out. So the kids had to pay for their own tickets.
Jim paid for them money that was sent to him by his... great uncle, Senator K. Torvaldson, who sent him some money up from Florida where the senator has been spending the winter and where he thinks he may be heading home soon. He sent Jim a long letter about this. He's been living in the condo down there in Fort Myers with his cousin Frank and Frank's wife Eunice and their dog. who has not cared for Senator in the last couple months that they've been living there in the two-bedroom condo. They went to pick up Senator at the bus depot when he arrived, and the dog took one look at him and bit him just right on the calf above his left ankle. And the poor old man just folded up on the floor. He was kind of groggy from the long trip. He just folded up. Eunice said then, she said, it takes him a while to get used to people.
But that was back in January. It's been two months. $215 a month he pays for his share, and then about two weeks ago, Eunice's aunt, Tibby, came to stay with him, and without so much as a buy-your-leave, Eunice had moved Senator Kay out to the couch in the living room and moved the old lady into his bedroom. so that all he had was a fold-away bed and one-third, one-fourth use of a bathroom for $215 a month. It was no bargain, especially when he found out that the dog was used to sleeping on the couch. So he lay awake at night in that fold-away bed and listening to that dog growl at him, the dog growling at him in its sleep, And he was afraid that the dog might attack him in its sleep, do some sleep walking, do some sleep biting. And he lay tossed and turned on that convertible bed with a bar across that caught him in the stomach when he lay on his stomach and caught him in the small of the back when he turned over. Miserable. He sent all these details to Jim when he sent him the money. He sent him $100. in the mail because he knows that Jim's father Byron is so tight-fisted with money he's a hard man with money so that when that boy goes to ask for his allowance every week it's just like squeezing blood out of a carrot Byron sits and looks at him and wants to know what he did with the $10 that he had two weeks ago. So that's how he got to go to the ballet.
He got some money from Senator Kate Torvaldsson, who's down in Florida and thinking about coming home early. He was so excited. He took all his money with him, including what he didn't need for the ticket. He felt better with money in his pocket, Jim did, in downtown St. Paul. because he'd never seen people like the people he saw come to the ballet. They didn't look as if they had ever thrown hay bales in their lives. They didn't look like people he knew. And he saw as he walked into the theater his reflection in the glass And he felt funny.
He noticed that his jacket was about six inches shorter than his sport coat. So that about six inches of plaid sport coat hung down below his winter jacket, which when it was zipped up tight, made the sport coat kind of stick out a little bit, like a skirt around his hips. Nobody else seemed to be wearing a jacket and a sport coat like that. It seemed people kind of looked at him when he walked in and he could see what they were thinking. They were thinking, oh, you're from Lake Wobegon. He took off his jacket. And he held it. And he tried to straighten his sport coat where it had gotten scooched out. And he tried to look cool. As cool as a 17-year-old boy could who was in a strange place and was full of curiosity. Full of curiosity on the inside, but cool on the outside. looking at everything never seen anything but trying to look as if he'd seen it a hundred times before watching people go in the carpets the brass the wood railings the glass windows floor to ceiling and the beautiful hall where they walked in and sat in the dark and watched the ballet he'd never seen people dance on a stage just like that before it was so wonderful but he didn't know how hard to clap the people behind him weren't clapping very hard so he kinda clapped about as much as they did as they performed on stage one ballet after another short ballets there were people down front who were liking it better and who were yelling and who were standing and clapping and shouting But Jim clapped about as hard as the people who were behind him, who said, they don't seem to have the sense of line that they used to have.
Jim tried repeating that to one of the girls during the intermission to see how it would sound. She said, how do you like it? He said, they don't seem to have the sense of line that they used to. She said, have you been to the ballet before? Oh, yeah. Not for a while, but years ago I went. Where'd you go to the ballet, she said. Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Ballet. What kind of dancing they do there, she said. You didn't go there. Oh, ha, you didn't either. He said, yeah, I did. They did all kinds. I did Italian and French, Portuguese and German, a lot of different styles.
He was glad when they went back in for the second half. There was one dance that he remembered. One dance that he remembered so clearly. It was two people dancing on stage in the Grand Pass de Dukes. And it's a man and a woman. So there couldn't have been dukes. There was just one duke, just a guy. Okay. And it was so lovely, the way the man held the woman when they danced together and the way that he put his hands on her and the way that he lifted her and carried her so high and how she enjoyed it and the way that she arched her long back and her long neck and her legs and the line that she made as he carried her. but then when they dance separately they seemed so alone on stage and especially the man as he took a turn and came across the stage This man with a sort of olive complexion and a dramatic nose and hair combed straight back, black hair, as he came across the stage and took two short steps and a long step and leaped, such a tremendous leap. And what Jim remembered was his face as he leaped and looked out in the dark and the grace but the sadness in his face so handsome and so sad he remembered it all the long drive home four hours home that magnificent leap the man hanging in the air and turning and looking out into the dark with a tragic face and his eyes seemed to be filled with tears even as he leaped as high as a man could leap.
He remembered that all the way home and thought of it especially as he got closer to home and looked in his pockets and couldn't find the rest of his money. three twenty dollar bills and a ten and a five and some ones which he had rolled up and had put in his right pants pocket and he looked in all of his pockets and couldn't find it he said did anybody find some money nobody had one of the girls said how much did you lose he said oh it wasn't much but his eyes burned as he said it he looked around and groped under his seat he couldn't find the rest of it so when he got home he knew that he would have to ask his father for his allowance so that he could have lunch at school the next day he was going to ask him for money over breakfast but he took one look at Byron and he knew it wasn't the time He was in a bad mood. He was wondering why in the world any kids would want to go down and why the school board would encourage this sort of thing. Go down to St. Paul to see what?
A dance. So he waited until evening. Waited until after supper when his father was sitting there at the kitchen table eating ice cream and butterscotch. and was about as mellow as his dad could be. He said, I need some money. I need some money, Dad. He said, I thought Senator Kaye sent you some money. Yeah, he did. But I spent some of it, and I lost the rest. You lost it. How in the world could you lose it? Well, I was in my pocket, and we went out for pizza, and I paid for the pizza, and I don't know, I must have just dropped it on the floor or something. You paid for pizza for everybody. I have to buy food for the home, and then you expect me to give you money so that you can eat out as well? Look at me. Look at me when I talk to you. He looked at them. I didn't come around expecting money from my parents when I was your age.
I worked. I knew money didn't grow on trees when I was your age. When are you going to learn something about money? So you hang on to what you got. Byron pulled out a roll of bills from his pocket, peeled off a $10 bill as if it was the only one ever printed. Held it up in his right hand. He said, someday you're going to have to find out where this comes from. Somebody had to work for this. There was a cat sitting on the chair next to him. Jim's young cat. who, when Byron held out the $10 bill, looked up at it, fascinated, this green piece of paper in the man's hand, and watched it carefully as Byron gestured with his right hand, and the green $10 bill fluttered in the air. I tell you, my father wouldn't have put up with one half of what I put up with. Every day around here, my father wouldn't have stood for it.
The cat watched as the bill plunged through the air and dove and rose as he gestured with him. I tell you, in my day, we understood the meaning of the word discipline and the meaning of the term hard work. The cat tensed, crouched. We didn't expect things to be handed to us on a silver platter. There was some discipline. The cat disciplining itself, not expecting this green bird overhead to be handed to it on a silver platter, knowing it would have to work for it. watched as Byron's hand moved as he said, I'll give it to you this one time, but after this, ah! It was a tremendous leap. It was a tremendous leap in which the cat seemed to hang in midair, in which it turned its little white face toward Jim, with a look of nobility and sadness, in which it seemed to hang in the air. And then it hung onto the man's hand. And then it was flung out into space. and landed perfectly on its feet on all fours with a $10 bill between its teeth. The most money that that cat had seen in its entire life. 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 all.
Roy Blount is an officer of The Singing Impaired and he can't dance. Cats can't sing or dance either. The theory of Free Association
1986.01.30 Iowa City Press / 1986.03.02 Star Tribune
Archival contributors: Frank Berto