Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

by Garrison Keillor

  “It got changed, I guess.”

  “Why would they change Saturnay to SaTURDay?”

  “Got me.”

  This is not an important matter to Daddy.

  I spring the next question. “Do you think it’s right for Christians to use the names of pagan gods for the days of the week?”

  He grunts. I have caught him in a small inconsistency of faith. But in matters of faith, could any inconsistency be said to be “small”?

  We are Sanctified Brethren, the Chosen Remnant of Saints Gathered to the Lord’s Name and Faithful to the Literal Meaning of His Word, the True Church in Apostate Times, the Faithful Bride Awaiting the Lord’s Imminent Return In Triumph in the Skies, whom God has chosen to place in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a town of about twelve hundred in the center of the state, populated by German Catholics and Norwegian Lutherans, whom Scripture tells us to keep clear of, holding fast to the Principle of Separation from the Things of the World, Avoiding the Unclean, Standing Apart from Error, which is not such a big problem for my people, because we are standoffish by nature and not given to hobnobbing with strangers. Separation is the exact right Principle for us.

  The Brethren are opposed to having a TV because it doesn’t honor the Lord, but does it honor Him to refer to Saturn or Thor or Wotan when you plan a family picnic? Should we not testify to our faith by changing Saturday to Saintsday? How about Spiritday?

  Daddy ignores this suggestion. He is good at shutting out matters he prefers not to address. Daddy is large and slow-moving, balding, with soft pink hands, smelling of Lifebuoy soap. He and the big brother (the genius) got in some bitter arguments before the genius went away to the U—Daddy yelling, “If you knew the actual number of communists in the federal government today, it would make your skin crawl!” and the genius simply ignoring him, employing his own separation principle—because what is the point of arguing with an old woofer like Daddy? You only make him woof harder. Above his head hangs a glass-bead contraption that dingle-dangles in the breeze. It glitters like a kaleidoscope. The dingling drives him nuts, like a phone that nobody answers, but it can’t be thrown out, because it belonged to Grandpa, Mother’s dad, and Grandpa is dead. This wicker porch furniture was his before he went to heaven to be with the Lord. He sat in this swing in his house on Taft Street and read from Deuteronomy and Leviticus and all about sacrificing calves and what was an abomination unto the Lord and how many cubits long the Temple should be, which made more sense to Grandpa, a practical man, than the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the meek”—what is that supposed to mean?). He was reading from God’s Word and got up to go take a leak and he slipped on a loose rug and fell and broke a hip. What got into the hired girl’s head that she had to go and wax that hall floor? The fool had too much time on her hands, evidently, so she had to go torture an old man, as surely as if she had set out a leg trap for him. Better she should have put cyanide in his prune juice or blown his brains out with a rifle. Poor Grandpa was hauled to the Good Shepherd Home, where he lay weeping and gnashing his teeth for two years, refusing TV, refusing crafts, until God finally called him home; meanwhile, we had been enjoying his furniture, knowing he’d never need it again.

  Her hand brushed against the bulge of his maleness and suddenly his body seemed to rise as if on an ocean wave. His passion was too powerful to resist. “Oh, Jack,” she moaned. He leaned forward so she could better sniff his secret cologne and she began to tear at his shirt buttons. He had viewed her often through his binoculars and well knew the delights that would soon be his.

  And suddenly, on the radio, Bob Motley is in a white froth, yelling, “Goodbye, Mama, that train is leaving the station! Whoooooooooooooo-eeee!”—his trademark home-run cry—and Daddy perks up his ears, but it isn’t a homer, it’s a long fly out for Miller slugger Clint Hardin. (“That ball was on its way out of here, folks! And the wind got hold of it and it’s a heartbreaking out to right field for a great ballplayer and just a wonderful guy! What a shame! And now Wayne Terwilliger comes to the plate.”) The crowd goes back to sleep.

  The noble Huguenots, our Protestant ancestors, are perishing under the rock piles dumped on them by papists, and with their dying breaths the Huguenots pray for God to forgive their tormentors, a truly wonderful touch. A papist sneers at a lovely Huguenot girl as she raises her hands to heaven, as a load of rocks is piled on her. Expertly, Jack’s tongue probed her hot mouth as his lovestick hardened. Laura moaned audibly—she loved it, the little vixen! And now out comes the older sister from the kitchen, all hot and bothered, and cries out, “Why does he get to lie around and read books while everybody else has to do the work around here? I even had to do his laundry today—boy, talk about disgusting!” She makes a face, at the thought of unspeakable things. “And he’s supposed to dry the dishes and he just waltzes away and the pots and pans are sitting there in the dish rack!”

  I close the Book of Martyrs carefully to conceal Jack with his lovestick. But the book is too small! The magazine pokes out!

  Quickly I shift High School Orgies from Foxx’s to my Collier’s Encyclopedia (Volume XI, Passover-Printing), but the sister got a glimpse of the lovestick man. I’m pretty sure she did. She doesn’t miss a trick. The sister smelled the wine on my breath that Sunday morning weeks ago. Walked in and sniffed it and knew instantly where it came from. It was the Blood of the Lord. People go to hell for things of that sort, as she was quick to point out.

  She stands over Daddy, hands on hips, her broad butt in the yellow Bermudas, her pale pimply piano legs. “It takes two minutes to dry a few pots and pans, and he can’t even be bothered to do that much!”

  I explain to her the principle of evaporation, whereby the air absorbs moisture, and objects such as pots and pans become dry in a short period of time with no need for human hands.

  “Why do you have to be so stupid?”

  I am only being reasonable, I explain.

  She leans over Daddy and touches his shoulder, to bring him back to the point. “Why do I have to do my chores and his too? It isn’t fair!” You’d think she had spent ten years on a chain gang.

  I open my encyclopedia, which conceals Jack and his lovestick. A handsome book from Grandpa’s sixteen-volume set, of which each grandchild received a volume. My volume includes Pax Romana, peacocks, the peanut, The Pearl Fishers by Bizet, explorer Robert Peary, the Peloponnesian Wars, the Pend d’Oreille Indians, penicillin—I wish that Penis were here, illustrated, so I could check my own for normality (why does it hang slightly to the left?)—Pennsylvania, the pentatonic scale, the periodic table, the perpetual calendar, perspective, photography (illustrated), the Pimpernel (Scarlet)—Wayne fouls off a Toledo fastball—a full page of Scottish plaids by clan, the planets, the various genuses of plants, the Poets Laureate of Britain, poisons and their antidotes, poker hands, polo, Catholic popes, Presidents of the United States from Washington to F.D.R., the prevention of forest fires, a history of printing— how could a person not love such a book? And right in the middle, surrounded by Scottish plaids, Jack is doing a push-up over Laura with her luscious orbs and his lovestick is between her legs, vanished into a thicket of hair. “Please, Jack, don’t stop!” she murmured, as a wave of pulsating pleasure hit her like an express train and the life-giving sperm suddenly shot over her proud globes of flesh. They were teachers at the high school and suddenly it was spring, they opened the windows, and now look at them. Wayne Terwilliger fouls off another pitch. “It’s a waiting game,” says Bob Motley. “Wayne’s looking for the inside fastball.”

  Daddy says he wishes I would be kinder to my sister and do my share of the chores.

  “I do the lawn.” And this is surely true. When the genius went away to the University I took over the lawn, which he, being a genius, had allowed to go to rack and ruin, and now take a look for yourself. Thick, green turf. Dandelions: vanquished. Massed on the Anderson border, they launched a seed barrage that fell to certain doom, thanks to vigilance. Crabgrass: ditto. “It would mean so
much to Daddy if you’d take over the lawn,” Mother said to me in early April, and that very same day I became the Lord of the Yard, Genghis Khan of the Lawn, the Conqueror of the Crabgrass Race (but to impress Mother, not Daddy)—I fertilized and raked and watered and poked it with steel rods to aerate the soil and fought off two moles by whacking their tunnels flat and flooding them and inserting poisoned Twinkies. I spent several Saturdays prying out dandelions with a two-prong fork, stemming the yellow tide from the Andersons’ jungle, I patted chunks of sod into bare spots caused by winter blight or dog pee. And I was surprised myself at how verdant and thick and green it got by the end of May. I cut it close and soak it regularly and the result is a lawn worthy of millionaires and Hollywood stars—if Clark Gable had our lawn, he’d sit on it every day and grin for the photographers. Every day Daddy looks at this perfection, and once, prompted by Mother, he said, “It’s looking pretty good,” but mostly he searches for flaws, a ragged edge, a few brown blades, a lone clump of skunk cabbage, and he delights in pointing these out. But still—you don’t hear me whining about my sad lot in life. Everybody knows Daddy’s not the backslapping type. But the sister has him wrapped around her little finger. She works him like a marionette. She stands behind him, touching his shoulder, and he tells me to go dry the pots and pans. Even though I have today mowed the entire lawn. “I will,” I say. “In a minute.”

  “Why can’t you do what you’re told to do?” she hisses at me.

  “Don’t make a federal case out of everything.” Wayne fouls off another pitch. Still looking for the inside fastball.

  She looks daggers at me, poor ugly thing. A big shovel-faced girl with Christmas cookies for titties and Percheron legs and chubby thighs and cheesy hair and a very very bad personality. And that is the problem here, ladies and gentlemen. This is not about pots and pans. This is about a personality problem.

  I tell her that a person can’t poke along washing the dishes and complaining about everything under the sun and expect me to stand and twiddle my thumbs and wait for her to finish in a week or two, can she. And steady Wayne Terwilliger takes a called third strike (“Un-believable! Un-believable, folks! That pitch to Twig was in the dirt, ladies and gentlemen! How can a man be expected to hit a pitch like that? In the dirt! And the fans here are letting home-plate umpire Larry Cahoon know they’re upset about that call!”) and the Millers are set down, scoreless, and there’s a commercial for Rainbow motor oil and then the Burma-Shave Boys (“You can put on suntan lotion, where the ocean meets the sand. / Find he-man perfection and a complexion well tanned. / You can dream of sweet amore on your surfboard on the wave, / But listen, pal, you’ll get your gal if you use Burma-Shave.”).

  She says, “I just finished washing your underwear, and if that isn’t a disgusting job. Did nobody ever show you how to use toilet paper?”

  A low blow. I ignore it.

  Daddy says, “I come home from butchering forty chickens and I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown and you kids can’t give me one minute of peace.”

  I have given him plenty of peace. It’s a peaceful night, the sprinkler swishing, school is out, and the humiliations of phys ed are over, I am quite content here with my reading material, but this porky little whiner, Miss Misery, comes and ruins a perfectly lovely summer night, simply because someone knows enough about the scientific process of evaporation to let the pots and pans sit and DRY BY THEMSELVES instead of running in to dry them at her beck and call. This is the issue here.

  “Go dry the pots and pans,” says Daddy. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “As soon as I move the sprinkler, I will go and put away the pots and pans, which are undoubtedly dry already.”

  “So move it, then,” he says.

  “I’ll go check and see if it’s ready to be moved.” I set the encyclopedia down on the porch swing, with the lovestick inside, and set a pillow over it.

  The sprinkler is placed at the exact point where it douses a quadrant of front yard from the birch tree to the sidewalk, allowing a slight overlap. I check the grassroots. Wet but not soaked.

  “Not ready to be moved yet,” I say.

  Daddy says, “Make sure you move it before it floods, for heaven’s sake. Or we’ll have to resod the whole thing. And sod doesn’t grow on trees, either. It grows on the ground.” He chuckles at his little joke. I chuckle too. There is much to be gained by laughing at Daddy’s little jokes.

  The sister is not amused. She shakes her head and stomps into the house, her big yellow butt like two pigs fighting in a laundry bag. And then she comes charging right back.

  “The pots and pans have big water spots on them!”

  I point out that pots and pans will still conduct heat and cook food even with a few water spots.

  I step to the door and stand, one ear cocked to the game, the sprinkler whirring, the circle of drops flung glittering out into the gathering night. Faint in the distance the chugging of a tractor. They lay side by side on the classroom floor, their love juices spent, breathing softly, and then he felt her hand on his thigh, reaching for him, leaning against him, her resplendent breasts, and he thought he’d like to get a hand on those puppies.

  “Boy, you never know how kids are going to turn out, do you,” says Grandpa, looking out the window of heaven, wearing his best wool suit and starched white shirt with the armbands, his hair perfectly combed. “I used to think that kid might become a preacher. Now I don’t see how he’s going to stay out of prison. Nobody in this family ever went to prison for sex crimes. He’d be the first.”

  “Yes,” says Jesus, “you never know about these things.”

  He and Grandpa are drinking cups of coffee and eating ginger snaps. Grandpa says, “When are you planning to return to earth?”

  “Soon as I finish this coffee,” says Jesus. “Pretty good, isn’t it.”

  “Never tasted better in my life,” says Grandpa.

  Back when he was on earth, Grandpa used to drop in on Saturday and cry out, “Who wants to go for a ride?” And for years I said “Me!” and went with him, and then one year I said, “I can’t. I have homework. I’m sorry.” Three lies in five seconds. I hated riding around and listening to Grandpa reminisce about who used to live in that house and everybody they were related to. Once I liked it okay and then I didn’t anymore. I wonder if Grandpa remembers how I treated him, inventing excuses to get away from his perorations against Hollywood, drink, Democrats, Catholics. He was even hard on the Lutherans. Flatheads, to him.

  “Why don’t you just go and dry those pots and pans?” says Daddy. “It’ll take you five minutes.”

  “The pots and pans are probably dry by now,” I inform the sister. “All that needs to be done is to put them away in the cupboard, and I’ll come in and do that in a moment. Soon as I’m done reading about the Huguenots.”

  “It’s not pronounced hug-you-nots,” she says. “For your information, it’s hue-ge-nots. Hue-ge-nots.” I thank her for elucidating this. Her eyes narrow to chinaman’s slits and she leans down and quick as a snake she snatches the naked couple out of the encyclopedia.

  “Give it back. Please.” She grins at me all bony and wolfish, and her muzzle twitches at the smell of blood. She backs away, clutching High School Orgies.

  “Please give me back that magazine,” I say firmly.

  She gazes at it. “What is this?” Her eyes widen in mock horror as she flips through a few pages. “Oh my goodness.” She looks to Daddy, but he has spotted a pair of houseflies and is stalking them into the corner, a swatter in hand. Daddy is a sworn enemy of flies. Flies walk around in fecal matter, and if you don’t kill them you may as well be eating your dinner off the barn floor with the hogs.

  “You really need to go see a psychiatrist,” she says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Talking about this.” She waves the magazine at me, wrinkling the cover. “Touch not the unclean thing,” says the sister, who is getting a bad
Scripture-quoting habit. “Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy, let your mind be fixed on these things.” I could club her.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She wants me to beg for mercy, but remorse is an endless highway where she’s concerned, I know her, so I must take the 100-percent denial route. I never saw those pictures of that naked couple and their hot love juices. I know nothing about this magazine. I have no idea where the sister found it. I had no idea she was interested in such things. Frankly, I’m shocked.

  “You know this would break Mother’s heart. She would cry her eyes out if she knew,” she says.

  “If she knew what?”

  “You know what,” says the sister. “You know.” She tosses her head and reminds me that the dishes are waiting to be dried and wheels toward the kitchen, High School Orgies in hand.

  I will swear up and down I never laid eyes on it, I will lie my face off, tell fibs until I am tied in knots—deny everything. Mother looks at me, hurt, tearful, holding the filth in her hands. How could you, my son?—I never saw that magazine in my life, Mother. I demand a polygraph test! Call in the FBI, Boston Blackie, Sam Spade. Get me City Desk! We’ll get to the bottom of this! Find out who is defiling our household with this despicable literature! But Mother will know. Mother knows all. She will know.

  The tears run down her cheeks, her voice trembles. “I never thought a child of mine would sink to such depths of degradation. What pleasure could you possibly get from this—this trash?”

  And now my eyes are full of tears and one tear rolls down the side of my nose and into my mouth, bitter salt, and, not wanting anyone to see me cry, I slip into the dark living room and up the stairs and into my bedroom and lock the door and in safety now release a gush of tears and a wrenching sob.

  I sit on the bed. What a wretch I am. What a gink. A hayseed Herkimer Jerkimer from the sticks and also a freak and a sicko. A despicable sinner, as Grandpa can see from up in heaven, and soon this will become general knowledge, and Mother and Daddy and even Aunt Eva will turn away from me in shame.