Mollie Atwood, Butch Thompson Trio, James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Peter Ostroushko. Harvey Refsal,
Back in the saddle ( Garrison Keillor ) Panama (James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band ) Momma Nita (James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band ) Schreveport Stomp (James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band , Butch Thompson Trio ) Milanburg Joys (James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band , Butch Thompson Trio ) Whoopee ti yi yo ( Garrison Keillor ) Wolverine blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) Tiger Rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Black Bottom Stomp (Butch Thompson Trio ) Satisfied Mind ( Peter Ostroushko ) Blue Blood Blues (James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band ) Mood indigo (Butch Thompson Trio , James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band ) Let's Go to Rio ( Garrison Keillor )
Bunsen, Clarence Bunsen, Clint Krebsbach, Florian Minnesota Language Systems Powdermilk Biscuits (Garrison the shy Visual Artist!)
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been a beautiful winter. This winter has just been so wonderful. I don't know if you feel the same way or not. I do. A little cold weather there just teaches that it was winter back, I don't know when it was, in January. It wasn't all that cold. It's been sunny and gorgeous and bright. It's just been a perfect, beautiful winter. People were kind of starting to lean towards spring a little bit this last week because it was warming up and melting a little bit. And then it snowed up in Lake Wobegon, a few inches of heavy, very heavy wet snow on Thursday. And all the snow shovelers were out, all the guys were out on their sidewalks Thursday evening before supper, kind of a sociable day. Occasion all up and down the street, especially for guys who are in their 40s, like to stop every so often when the snow is so wet and heavy, lean on the shovel, look over at the neighbor and talk a little bit. Guys who are starting to enter into heart attack country. Look over at your neighbor and say, boy, she's heavy. It's about the heaviest snow that we've had this year, I believe.
And he says, yeah, kind of makes a guy think about maybe getting a snowblower. And you say, nah, it's good exercise. It's good exercise. You've shoveled your front steps and about five feet down the walk, and you're starting to sweat. You take off your parka, you lay it on the porch, and you stand and talk. That's good exercise, you see. What you're thinking to yourself is, this would be a ridiculous way to die. Clarence Bunsen had a cousin, 55 years old. He was a mailman. He was in good shape. He died. shoveling his walk a couple years ago in January. And it wasn't the heart attack that killed him. He had a heart attack out on the walk, and he pitched back, and he hit his head on the clean, bare concrete. That's what killed him. A little snow there would have saved his life. Shoveled his walk clean, fell down, cracked his head on it. and died. Tragic story. Should be a lesson to all of us.
If only we could figure out what it is. I don't know. But it's kind of a military obligation in a way. Shoveling, shoveling your walk. And to get a snowblower would require a 4F classification in Lake Bobegon. You'd have to be over 60, I believe, to buy a snowblower in that town, have a bad ticker or a bad back, or else live in a corner lot and have all that sidewalk on the side in order to get one. As Harold Diener has, he had his snowblower out on Thursday evening. Three guys come stand around and look at it, even though he's had it since November, all stand and look at it like it was the lost cord. He said, yeah. He said, I got this bad disc. I got this slipped disc. Boy, I tell you, she sure throws the snow. Finish my walk in a couple minutes. Go over and do my mother's, do my mother-in-law's. Could do yours, he said to them.
They said, no, it's good exercise. They were kind of like his draft board. Looking him over to see if it was all right. Well, the heavy snow didn't do anybody any damage except that it filled in and packed in, the snow did, in those gigantic potholes all along Main Street and up McKinley and the main streets in Lake Wobegon so that you couldn't see where those potholes were anymore. They're the deepest this year that they have ever been because it has frozen and then thawed and frozen again and the ice and the earth has shifted and the world has turned and the pavement has broken up and immense holes appear in the street which were then filled in on Thursday by this snow so that on Thursday evening and Friday people who'd kind of memorized where the potholes were had lost track and had to venture out and sort of feel their way along, but they guessed wrong going through this minefield. There were huge, huge potholes.
Val Tollefson driving down the street in his Ford station wagon, driving along and thinking there was one just a little farther ahead, up by the street light, and suddenly, bam, there it was. Front end of the car went down, hit so hard he forgot where he was going. He was on his way downtown to see somebody at the church, at school. He couldn't remember where. Had to drive around for a while. Try and remember where it was he was going, knowing that it was just blocks away. It was close. Knowing that somebody was waiting for him and that when he finally got there for this appointment, where was it? They would never believe him. if he told them that he'd just run into a pothole but it was a deep pothole and he was driving along and almost thought of it and BAM he suddenly went down into another one and remembered
The name of little Joey's dog on the friendly neighbor's radio show that he used to listen to as a kid. And he'd run into a guy at the sidetrack tap and they were talking about this radio show they'd listened to when they were little. And there was little Tommy and there was Uncle Phil and Aunt Flo and the twins, Buddy and Sis and Gramps and the dog and little Tommy. Tommy lay dying on this show day after day and would say the dog's name and the dog would say, It was Skipper. The dog's name was Skipper. But now he couldn't remember who it was that he'd run into at the sidetracked tap who was interested in this information. That's how deep those potholes were. And like Wobegon, Clint Bunsen ran into one in his Ford pickup. He was driving down to Bunsen Motors, driving slowly and watching and veering out towards the middle of the street to avoid a couple that he knew were up there by the two parking meters by the mercantile, and bam, he went down. And his radio, his car radio, which has not worked for 12 years, suddenly started playing again. and was playing Mood Indigo, one of his favorite tunes that he has not heard since almost that long or longer. Mr. Bowser was driving his wife down to her job down at the high school cafeteria, and bam, they ran into a pothole. The front end of the car almost disappeared in this thing. And she reached over and grabbed him, and she hadn't done that for a long time. And it was interesting. He thought about it all day. That night he brushed his teeth and he put on aftershave. She said, what in the world? She said, what in heaven's name has gotten into you?
Yes, those were deep, deep potholes in town this last week. Clarence Bunsen was not driving around town. He was walking around town. He did not care to drive into any potholes or have any shock to his system while sitting down, knowing that it would bring back memories of a medical operation that he had some years ago. which in fact he was remembering anyway this last week and often does remember when the weather turns cold and the seats are hard. Hemorrhoids is what we're talking about. An unpleasant subject and one that I certainly was brought up not to talk about. one that he was brought up not to talk about until a few years ago when there was no way around it. He had to talk about it because it hurt so bad. And he had to face up to his hemorrhoids in a manner of speech and confront this situation as... as best that you can. It was a few days after Christmas and it hurt so bad that he had to do something about it. He was lying in bed on his side and he was brought up to shrug off pain, same as you and I. But it hurt when he shrugged. His daughter Barbara Ann was still staying with him after Christmas.
And she was then of a mind to believe that all illness was caused by lack of fiber in the diet. So as he lay there suffering, she brought up to him huge bran muffins and big slabs of whole wheat bread like bricks and slabs of soybean loaf and wheat burgers and... Said, this will make you feel better. She said, get it out of your system. He said, no, darling. Until finally he had to get out and go down to see Dr. DeHaven about it. He didn't want to drive, so he just sort of dressed, lightly dressed, and eased into his clothes. and eased out the door and walked down the hill. It was a straight shot down to the doctor's office. It had snowed. It had had a snowstorm. He hadn't really noticed it. His mind wasn't on the weather. They'd had a snowstorm and about a foot and a half of snow had fallen a couple days before.
And the wind had blown big drifts up onto the sidewalk as he walked down the hill past the school. Had blown a huge drift up. up against that retaining wall on the south side of the school so that it looked like one continuous slope, one big snow drift, and a path across the schoolyard and down the slope that some kids had made. And he took that shortcut and he headed down that path. which had been made by kids who weighed about 60 pounds. And he walked over the retaining wall and across the drift, realizing as he did where he was and what his chances were, and suddenly broke through the crust and fell up to his waist. and heard a cry come out and realized it was himself. A lot of us as little children were brought up to be afraid of stepping in bear traps in the snow, but he sat on the bear trap and made some promises to the Lord in those moments years ago that he has yet to fulfill. that he may be trying to renegotiate finally eased out and went on down the hill to the doctor it's an experience you remember sharply teaches you that you can go along for years with a kind of general complaints but one real sharp specific problem will take your mind off all of them You can go along for years kind of worrying about getting old, wondering if you're as good a parent as you ought to be, worrying about secondary education or worrying about the balance of payments problem, and a lot of kind of generalized complaints in the world. And then a very specific problem comes along to focus your mind. And all the rest evaporates. And then when you come back to normal life, it isn't normal anymore like it used to be. Normal life seems miraculous then after something like that.
Just as now in two weeks it will be Easter. And soon, sometime after that, spring will arrive. A normal, ordinary, annual occurrence. And yet even for those of us who have seen it 40 some times, it is still absolutely miraculous. And each time is as vivid and bright and miraculous as the first, as if we had never seen it before. which is why everyone leans in that direction, looks for the first sign of spring, which this last week in Lake Wobegon were very deep potholes in the streets, a sign that something was happening way down below. Florian Krepsbach was driving home from the doctors, on Thursday when he suddenly BAM! ran into the deepest pothole as he came around the corner of McKinley he was looking up to his left checking for oncoming traffic which in Lake Wobegon in mid-afternoon there never would be any but he looked up anyway and BAM! he went down into the pothole and hit it so hard that his teeth half fell out his head hit the roof of the car and crushed his hat which had a couple of fishing lures in the brim which grazed his temple and blood flowed down the worst of it was that he was carrying a cup of coffee on the dashboard and as he hit BAM and hit the roof he saw this coffee cup fall towards him and saw a Niagara of hot black Java starting to fall out, and seeing immediately exactly where it would hit him, he pushed back in the seat. And the seat broke, and he fell all the way back into the back seat. The car went out of control. It hit the curb.
It jumped up over the curb and came to rest on the sidewalk. Not hard, mind you, because he'd lost most of his momentum in the pothole. But it came up to rest on the sidewalk. And he lay there, lay back. Seventy-two-year-old man, a violent experience. Lay there, half thinking, the car would collapse under him like the deacons, wonderful one-hosh-sheh, and sat up in the seat, finally, and looked down the sidewalk. And there were six little children walking towards him. Six little children walking If he'd been one minute later, he would have hit them all and killed them all right there on the sidewalk. Would have been the worst tragedy in the history of that town. He thought back, you know, when he got that coffee at the Chatterbox Cafe, he got that coffee to go. Dorothy offered him a sweet roll if he'd stopped and gotten that sweet roll. and she'd wrapped it in wax paper for him and given it to him. Those six children would have died for a sweet roll.
The shame on his family. Krepsbach massacres six school kids in sweet roll accident. Old geezers slightly bruised as innocent children lied dead on the sidewalk. It was all he could do, just back her up and drive and head towards home. He felt weakened. He felt weakened and he felt a strange tingling sensation in his neck. like his spine had snapped a strange tingling sensation on his back and reached back and found it was a caterpillar it was a caterpillar that evidently this pothole had knocked loose from somewhere where it had been in the cab, a caterpillar looking for a place to build a home and be transfigured into a butterfly.
The first caterpillar of the season. He drove along a little farther. In his old 1966 Ford, old Florian Krepsbach, the old 66 Ford, with 44,000 miles on it, You know, the one, you've seen it, he's pointed it out to you, I'm sure, if you've ever visited. So proud of the fact that that car has such low mileage. He looked at the odometer. You're not going to believe this. But he looked at the odometer and it had knocked 20,000 miles off it. 24,000 miles. He felt 20 years younger. He couldn't believe it, but there it was. 20,000 miles been knocked off his mileage. It was like he'd been giving back years of his life. Sometimes, you know, sometimes he just left that car in town to save putting those extra two and a half miles on it to just drive home. And there it was. He had 20,000 miles that he didn't have before, free. He pushed down on the accelerator, gave her some gas as he headed out of town.
Headed out towards his house and just cruised right on past his driveway. He just drove out down the county road down south of town and turned up west. Out for a drive. Hadn't done that for a long time. What a beautiful day. The sun was out. The fresh snow. It was so bright. He thought he might drive to St. Paul. He wasn't sure, but he was going to go somewhere. 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 earth.
Harvey Refsal carves a Gnome figure out of basswood. Harold's Garden Seeds answers questions from listeners.
1986.03.09 Star Tribune
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl