Brunel Brass Band, Philip Brunelle, Butch Thompson Trio, Dan Drieson, Magical Strings. Elizabeth Como Nelson, Peter Ostroushko,
National emblem march (Brunel Brass Band ) Them basses (Brunel Brass Band ) Georgia camp meeting (Brunel Brass Band ) Endearing young charms (Brunel Brass Band ) Swanee River (Brunel Brass Band ) The whistler (Brunel Brass Band ) Liberty bell march (Brunel Brass Band ) Lassa's trombone (Brunel Brass Band ) Barnum and Bailey's March (Brunel Brass Band ) She sang love to me ( Elizabeth Como Nelson , Dan Drieson ) Thine alone ( Elizabeth Como Nelson , Dan Drieson ) When you're away ( Elizabeth Como Nelson ) Elf walk (Magical Strings ) Dance of the twilight (Magical Strings ) Boys of bolly loch (Magical Strings ) Never apart (Magical Strings )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Donna Marie's College of Charm Earl's House of Accents Jack's Auto Repair Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Pastor Ingqvist Powdermilk Biscuits
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It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been a sweet week as the trees are leafing out and grass turning green, mists of green out where the lilacs are. Even the older lilacs are starting to come around and think about putting out some blooms. It was cool this week and so the gardeners in town were cautious. But some of them snuck out and put a few things in, covering them to protect them from frost and also to conceal them from other gardeners in the neighborhood as this great competitive sport gets underway. Clarence Bunsen put in some cucumbers. Carl Krepsbach put in a few rows of onions this week, both of them hoping that they wouldn't be killed by the frost and that sometime in June your neighbor would look over the fence down into your garden and say, you've got onions already. pay anything to hear someone say that. You've got onions already. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, I've got onions. Nothing to it, really. You just kind of heal them up a little bit, and it helps if you put a steak at either end of the row. It's kind of a trick. I don't know. I've got a technique I've used for years, but you'd probably think it was awfully silly if I told you. Well, what is it? He says, well, I'll tell you, I take a little sawdust and I mix it with chewing tobacco. Not the kind with the menthol, that would kill plants, but regular chewing tobacco. And then I put in some onion soup mix. He says, you're pulling my leg. Onion, you don't put that on your onions. You do? Well, you say, well, you say, I know you'd think it was crazy if I told you. But yeah, I use Lipton's dried onion soup mix. I use about two packages of it per row. Never had any problem with frost, insects, weeds, or anything else with my onions ever since I started using dried onion soup mix in my garden. You're kidding. Really? That's a great thing, to be the first one to have your onions come up. To be successful at something so that you can stand there and tell lies about it. That's what we all want. It's what we all want. It was a week when Lyle was out next door to Carl. Grab Spock, Carl had his onions in. Lyle was thinking about it. He was out spading up his garden. They got big lots on that block in Lake Wobegon. Always big lots all through town, but these are even deeper, 200 and some feet deep in places almost the length of a football field. because there is no alley that comes through that block, down towards the lake, down under the hill. Lyle was out back of his house looking at his backyard. Carl put in a new fence between his house and Lyle's. New pine, put it in last fall. Beautiful piece of work, natural finish. It's about six feet high, pine board fence. Kind of makes Lyle's old wire fence look bad now, the one across the back of his lot. Thinking you ought to do something about that, the posts all rotted away. and the chicken wire with holes in it, the incinerator back there where they've been burning garbage all winter, and tin cans burnt lying there in the dirt, ashes, little bits of paper that have blown around, and a place where the dog got in and looked for God knows what. aerosol bombs that kids have put in the fire even though he's told them not to scattered all over the backyard he started to spade up to plant his garden wishing it were smaller wishing it was just a patio and maybe a swimming pool but knowing he'd have to put in a garden Lyle is a biology teacher And this experiment in biology, vegetable growing, is one that doesn't interest him very much anymore. He'd rather try something involving animals, like fish. Go out in a boat and sit. And do experiments with different lures and baits. on those famous fighting sunfish that lie in wait out beyond the dock. Those fighting sunfish that leap from the water these last couple weeks before fishing season starts and then go into hibernation. Lyle would love to go fishing because he's been teaching since September. Here it is, it's May. He's tired of his voice. In that classroom, five hours a day, walking across the front, along the blackboard and down the side, along the windows, saying things that he's said hundreds of times before. Nothing that comes out of his mouth surprises him anymore in that classroom. It's like a tape is playing in his head as he walks along looking at the heads of children bent down low over their notebooks. And here's a voice, his own, talking about amino acids and enzymes and proteins. until walking along the windows he catches a whiff of dust and gasoline and a fish smell coming up from the lake. And then it is quiet, peaceful quiet, and he realizes that he has stopped talking. Interesting. He wonders when he'll start talking again. Ah, there he goes. There's his voice coming out again as he talks about the origins of life walking up and down in this classroom. He thought about the origins of life quite a bit a couple weeks ago when he got a call from his brother out in Los Angeles, his brother Stanley, who told him that he, Stanley, had run into Celeste at a shopping mall. And that she had asked about Lyle and had given him, Stanley, her Celeste's phone number for him, Stanley, to give to Lyle. And Lyle sat in his easy chair looking at this phone number. and suddenly felt that he was 17 years old again and sitting on the back steps of a porch in springtime with a beautiful long-legged 17-year-old girl with green eyes who tossed her head back and her long blonde hair fell away from her face as she looked up towards the moon in a backyard that smelled of lilacs and roses and honeysuckle and as she and Lyle at the age of 17 talked about going to France. At least he thought that's what she was talking about. She seemed to be talking about France and seemed to imply that the two of them might go together without getting married or anything. Because France is more free than this is here in America. And they were young. And France is a wonderful, magical place with wine and sunlight and accordions playing. He thought of all of this and this slender, long-legged girl as he looked at this phone number. And feeling 17 years old again, full of passion and guilt, he dialed the number. And there she was. And they talked. And he was so excited. And he mentioned France. And then suddenly she mentioned the Soviet Union. And had Lyle read this book? And no, he hadn't read this book. And she thought that he ought to read this book because a lot of people weren't aware of the danger. And soon she was talking about germ warfare and chemical warfare and how the Soviet Union was building up its supplies in these areas, even as our country, the United States of America, is slowly stripping its defenses down to nothing. chemical warfare units out in the Ural Mountains, germ warfare units in the Ukraine. Nobody in this country knows anything about this. It's a very complicated subject, she said. She would like to read him a few paragraphs from a book that she had. that was put out by a group called the Council on American National Security, which she was very active in. Could she send him some pamphlets? She thought it was very important that he should find out about this. And he sat and he tried to get her to talk about France. But she was talking about this grave danger that so few people were aware of, citing names of books and articles and getting his address so that she could send him pamphlets from the Council on American National Security. And he looked at his watch, and she had been talking for an hour and ten minutes. LAUGHTER on his dime from California. And he said goodnight. And he sat there and felt suddenly 42 years old again and kind of stiff, and his right ear hurt where he had held the telephone. Oh, Celeste, Celeste, Celeste, all gone. You wanted to get out in a boat, get out on the water, where it would be absolutely quiet for hours. Could you spend hours in silence with nobody talking out on the water? Oh, yes, you could. Oh, yes, you could. Up at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Church, They had a similar experience last Sunday. When Father Wilmer, after weeks of following Father Emil around and learning the ropes in the parish, weeks of praying about his old speech impediment, his old stuttering habit of years ago, his problem consonants, the M and the W, which had prevented him from saying the rosary for years in less than about two and a half minutes apiece, with Mary, mother, and womb right there in one sentence, and women. Father Wilmer finally got up his courage and stood in the pulpit to deliver the homily and sailed through it like a knife through butter without a single problem and was so happy never looked at his clock He had misread his homilectics textbook, which told him to allow one minute for each page of manuscript copy. But he had not looked at where it said triple-spaced, 8 1⁄2 by 11 paper, and had written his homily single-spaced on legal pad, 15 pages. The 15 minutes was up and he was at the middle of page three and looked to be good for the rest of the afternoon and right on through vespers. When finally Mary Ellen's breathing at the organ keyboard became loud and regular. And one of the sopranos poked her and she thought it was the end and turned on the switch and the bellows wheezed in the front of the church and Father Wilmer could feel the air being sucked out of his lungs and came down to the end of the next paragraph and took a sharp turn to the right and sat down. Otherwise, they would have been there for the afternoon. Too much talk. Too long, too long, too long. The congregation, when it was finally released, walked out into the sunlight in a daze of pleasure. Just to feel the sunlight again. To feel the wind in your face and to hear silence, blessed silence. Pastor Inkvist had the same problem on Wednesday when the door of his study opened, and a strange man he'd never seen before stuck his head in and said, Hi, my name is Doug Johnson. I'd like to talk with you for a while. And Pastor thought it was some backslider who had slid back so long ago he couldn't remember him. and invited the man in and he sat down and then noticed he didn't look like anybody from Lake Wobegon. He was wearing a beige sport coat and beige trousers and a sort of a light turtleneck pullover and loafers and beige socks. and poofs of hair around his ears, a little shiny on top. And he started to talk, and he pulled out from his briefcase a little package. And Pastor Inkvest realized that this man was a spook, a former minister who had gone into sales. Salesmen whom there is no stopping. Salesmen who are self-winding. Who will go on and on. He was selling a devotional computer program called Actualizing the Child in Ourselves with 13 sacred floppy desks. for youth in the home, the Bible study group. hoping for something, hoping the phone would ring, somebody would walk in to rescue him from this ordeal as minutes went by. And the man required no straight lines, required no reassurance, not even agreement, not even a nod. He just kept talking and talking. He seemed to have all day available to him, Pastor Inkvist, waiting for something a burning bush, angels appearing, some rescue, until finally he went into a trance. He went into a trance and heard no more of the man's voice, but imagined that he was nine years old and had just woke up in his bed in his parents' house in Lake Wobegon. and was the Inkvist boy again. Woke up and smelled bacon and coffee. and got dressed and went down to the kitchen where his dad was reading the newspaper and ate breakfast and made himself a bacon sandwich and wrapped it in wax paper and put it in a coffee can and walked out back and took a shovel and turned over a spade full of dirt in the garden and pulled out four fat brown angle worms and put them in the bottom of the coffee can in some cool dirt and put the bacon sandwich on top of it and picked up his rod and his reel and walked out past the Kruger's house and down into the tall weeds and the little path that led down past the pine trees to the edge of the water. where he took out a worm and put it on his hook and set the bobber to four feet and cast it out, out beyond the shadow of the elm tree, out into the bright water, and sat holding the end, waiting for whatever life would give him. There was only one thing wrong in this perfect picture of a summer day. Somewhere in the distance, someone had left a radio on. And there was someone's voice, a man's voice, talking somewhere up beyond the bushes, somewhere up in the weeds. He couldn't understand what he was saying or why. But then they turned it off, and it was perfect again. 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.
The Pinkerton Band had an open date. The were hired to play at the 1911 grand dedication of the LW train depot. The discovery of Lake Wobegon in 1836. Letter of criticism from Jack. Flowery newspaper report.
1986.05.02 Star Tribune / rebroadcast on May 7, 1988
Archival contributors: Frank Berto