Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

by Garrison Keillor

  If Daddy knew what’s under my shirt, he’d tell Mother and have her deal with it.

  If the big sister had her way, I’d be sent to an institution for the sex-crazed. A dark stone building surrounded by a ten-foot fence, with steel mesh over the windows, and the hallways smell of piss and boys lie strapped to bunkbeds with thick leather straps—a place like the place Grandpa died in, except for sex lunatics, and the cure is to dunk them in ice water and zap them with electricity and give them anti-sex drugs and if necessary slice off their wieners so for the rest of their lives they have to pee sitting down, like girls.

  Tonight Mother is engrossed in the story of Ricky Guppy, 17, of Millet, eight miles away, who got in a loud argument with his mother yesterday, around 4:37 P.M., after she refused to give him ten dollars on the grounds he’d only fritter it away on pinball and cigarettes, as he had done in the past. Ricky had arrived home from Lake Wobegon High School, where he is enrolled in summer school to make up for two classes he flunked in the spring, and he yelled at her so loud that neighbors two doors away heard it. She was cooking him a hamburger for his supper, thinking he had to be to work at the HiDeHo Club in St. Cloud at seven-thirty. Actually, Ricky had been fired by the HiDeHo for tardiness and was intending to take his girlfriend Dede to see James Powers in Give It the Gun. The boy was enraged by her refusal to give him ten dollars and threw several china plates at the kitchen wall, busting them to smithereens, and cursed her and tried to kick her, causing the cast-iron skillet to slip from her hand and spatter her with hot grease and causing serious burns to her arms and legs. He then seized the skillet and flung it through a window, and swiped fifty-eight dollars from her purse and also her car keys and sped away in a two-tone green-and-brown 1955 Ford station wagon and picked up Dede who was awaiting him at her house in St. Rosa. Instead of tooling in to the Starlite Drive-In for the twin feature, the two of them headed west at a high rate of speed. An all-points bulletin has been issued. Ricky’s parents have urged him to turn himself in. Authorities in North and South Dakota are on the alert. The Civil Air Patrol sent out several flights in search of them. The FBI has been brought into the case. Kidnapping is a federal offense and so is transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. The FBI searched Ricky’s room and found records by Elvis, Little Richard, and the Sh’Bops and also some pictures of rock-and-roll singers and a scrapbook with lyrics apparently written by young Guppy himself, which FBI agents characterized as “amateurish.” Mother can’t get over the fact that this took place eight miles away from our home and she is reading about it a day later in the Minneapolis paper.

  “What is this country coming to when a boy kicks his mother because she won’t pay for his cigarettes?” wonders Mother.

  “Wake up and smell the coffee,” says Daddy. “That’s where this country has been headed for a good long time now. Look around you. The disrespect for parents and authority. You see it everywhere. Lookit who this kid’s brother is. Go ahead. It’s right there in the paper.”

  Ricky is the youngest brother of James Guppy, 22, better known as Jim Dandy, a singer in a local pop group called the Doo Dads. Another brother, Ray, 21, is an inmate at St. Cloud Reformatory, serving a sentence for robbing a gas station, and a third brother, Roger Guppy, 19, is a rookie pitcher with the Lake Wobegon Whippets.

  “Quite a family,” says Daddy. “In no time, our town will be famous as the gangland capital of the North. A hotbed of robbery, rock and roll, and matricide.”

  “Do you know these young men?” asks Mother, looking at me.

  “Sort of.”

  “Everybody knows them. I know them,” says Daddy. “James is the guy with the long hair and mustache who lounges around town in his white Chevy convertible and talks about how he’s going to hit it rich someday. A two-bit piker, if you ask me. I repossessed that car for nonpayment. Twice. Fancy new car and the guy doesn’t even have a regular job. Ding Schoenecker lets him do PA for the Whippets, and last year he was peddling Christmas wreaths and gewgaws and giving dance lessons, and whatnot. Lives in the basement of his uncle’s house. A place over near Bowlus, the backyard is full of junk cars. But the whole family is like that.”

  I could say a word in the Doo Dads’ defense, but why ask for trouble? They are all from around our area and very popular not only here but in the Twin Cities. They are an excellent singing group. They appear every Friday night at the HiDeHo Club in St. Cloud. If I could, I’d go see them perform. I’ve heard their music over WDGY (Wonderful Weegee) played by a late-night DJ named Big Daddy Fats. I have a tabletop radio I take to bed under the covers to listen to his show. He is “four hundred pounds of rambling boy, built for comfort, not for speed,” who eats ten giant one-pound cheeseburgers during his “Midnight Jukebox Jamboree” (which actually starts at 10 P.M.) and he does a Cheeseburger Countdown and hollers, “Okay, all you duck butts and skinny minnies, time for Big Daddy to TIE ON THE OLD BURGER BAG! HOO-YA!” and a lion roars and bells ring and there is a mammoth munching sound and an elephantine belch and then Big Daddy announces the next tune with his mouth full. Somebody said they’d seen him riding on a flatbed truck in the Aquatennial Parade, stretched out on a rhinestone-encrusted divan like King Farouk, wearing shades, rings on his fingers, a gold jacket, pink shoes, and that he really was about four hundred pounds. Other kids said it was all a big hoax.

  Toledo has now pounded the Miller hurlers for six runs in the eighth inning and Bob Motley is moaning and Daddy turns down the radio. He wouldn’t be surprised if Ricky is a raging psychopath and Dede winds up in a ditch with a bullet in her brain. Some men are like that, and if a girl won’t listen to her parents, what can anybody do? But that’s the trend of things nowadays. Kids listen to this music and, believe me, the lyrics are NOT about saving your money and planning your future, no, it’s all about grabbing what you want and to heck with everybody else. Go off and do whatever you please and never mind the consequences, and if somebody gets in your way, kick them and spatter hot grease on them.

  Mother doesn’t see it that way. She thinks they’re two kids in love. It’s all a big misunderstanding, and if somebody could just sit Ricky down and talk some sense into him, the whole thing could be worked out. There’s no need for the FBI. Ricky only needs some good advice. Somebody like Art Linkletter or Arthur Godfrey. She’s worried that the two kids might be cut down in a fusillade of police bullets like that nice man in Richfield.

  “Nice men don’t rob liquor stores,” says Daddy.

  “He only wanted to give his wife a vacation.”

  According to the Star, the Guppys’ neighbors described Ricky as “quiet and well behaved and always polite to grown-ups.”

  “The neighbors obviously don’t know that kid from a bale of hay,” says Daddy.

  I think Ricky and Dede should go to Canada and change their names and get married and forget about ever coming home.

  Then Daddy looks at me, as if he heard that thought, and says, “You don’t hang around with kids like that, I hope.”

  Of course I do. Quiet and well-behaved kids are who live in this town.

  “Did you know him?” asks Mother.

  “Not really. I saw him around. Some. He was in my gym class, I think.” He and I tried to sneak out of doing the rope climb because we were so bad at it. We kept going to the back of the line, pretending to tie our shoelaces, dawdling at the water fountain, killing time, but Mr. Foster was on to our tricks and made us climb.

  “Did you notice anything odd about him?”

  “He hated gym class.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t do very well on chin-ups.” Neither did I. Two chin-ups was all I could do. Ricky and I were peas in a pod. Both of us with skinny arms and legs, glasses. His were half-rim, mine steel-rim, but the same thing. He wrote poems too. Leonard saw some of his poems. Mr. Foster grabbed Ricky and me by the arms and said, “Come, girls,” and made us do the rope climb. The phys-ed class laughed their butts off. Two long ropes hung fr
om the rafters, with knots for handholds. Mr. Foster showed us how as if we were morons—“You grab hold of the rope, pull yourself up, get a foothold. Pull up, foothold, pull up. It’s simple.” Ricky grabbed his rope and I grabbed mine. I remember seeing the goosebumps on his legs and the glitter of sweat on his brow. The class tittered when I hauled myself up, then Ricky went up, then we went up another knot and hung. Then Ricky dropped off, his shoes squeaked on the floor, and I clung to the rope for another few seconds, trying to muster the strength to go farther, but my feet lost their hold and swung free and I dangled there, turning slowly—the Great Tree Toad—See Him Cling to the Rope, Gentlemen! See Him Dangle & Spin! See His Toad Legs Flail & His Eyes Bulge! See the Sweat Pop from His Slimy Forehead—See His Lips Glisten with Spit! Hear Him Wheeze & Groan! And I dropped. “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Mr. Foster. Ricky and I resumed our place in the back of the class as Mr. Foster hauled out the wrestling mats for the next event, tumbling. The back of the class was where Ricky and I felt safe. We didn’t talk. We knew what we needed to know about each other.

  “It’s the direction this country is going in nowadays.” Daddy again. “You’ve got fornicating music on The Ed Sullivan Show on the CBS Television Network, for crying out loud. You’ve got singers shaking their pelvic areas, lighting pianos on fire, jumping around like monkeys—it’s no wonder a kid attacks his own mother. This group, the Doo Dads—didn’t they get in hot water for some obscene song of theirs?”

  He is referring to “Hot Rod Alley,” which Big Daddy Fats played on Wonderful Weegee—If you got a Ford, you’re on board; a Chevrolet, you’re okay; an Oldsmobile, you’re the deal; a Mercury, you’re in for free; a Pontiac, she’s on her back. With Jim Dandy the bass guy making sounds of rumbling mufflers and Earl the Girl doing the screeching tires. Some Baptist preacher got his picture in the newspaper by kneeling in prayer at the gate of the Weegee radio tower, holding a big sign: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. The preacher had hair as long as Jim Dandy’s and held a big white Bible up in the air and his eyes were squeezed shut and the agony on his face was like someone tied a knot in his lovestick. It was no skin off Big Daddy Fats’s nose, he played the Doo Dads every chance he got. His theme song was their song.

  My baby took one look and she just—ran away!

  Haven’t seen my buddies for a—year and a day!

  I went to church and they—locked the door!

  Even my mama doesn’t—love me no more! (Oww!)

  I went to the doctor and he scratched his beard.

  He gave me a test.

  He said—“Man, you’re weird!”

  Even my buddies, they all—disappeared.

  HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE

  I’M WEEEEEEEEEEEEEIRRRRD!

  And then Daddy says, “I don’t understand how people can sit back and let these things happen. Well, I guess I better hit the sack,” and he’s gone. Poor Daddy. It’s a relief to see him go through the door. He has so little to say, really—how most people pay too much for stuff they could get cheaper, and the immorality of the Democratic Party and its communist wing in particular, and the decline of standards and the sheer waste and people expecting something for nothing in America nowadays, and the ridiculous things people do for status and prestige such as gad about Europe or go to museums full of modern art that chimpanzees could do better than or buy expensive stuff that isn’t nearly as good as what you’d pay half that for, and the dangers of infection, and the evil of rock-and-roll music. That is pretty much Daddy’s entire repertoire.

  I loved it when he toddled up to bed and Mother and I stayed up late. For Daddy, ten-thirty was a moral boundary, the time when decent people put on their jammies and brush their teeth and gargle and crawl into bed, and the only reason for staying up later is to do things you wouldn’t do if decent people were awake to see you do them. But all Mother and I wanted to do was listen to the Trojan Troubadour and drink ginger ale and carry on civilized conversation.

  “How about a game of Rook?” she said.

  “How about Monopoly?”

  The Troubadour came on at ten-fifteen right after Cedric Adams and the news—you heard a rippling melody on a piano and a soft, familiar voice say, “Top of the evening, everybody, it’s just your old Trojan Seed Corn Troubadour Tommy Thompson coming by for a neighborly visit—to sing some old favorites and also tell you about the amazing production records set by Trojan’s new Golden Victor, the talk of the seed-corn world for months now. But before we do—” and then he launches into a song.

  Moonlight on the plains of Minnesota,

  I sit here on the front porch feeling blue.

  Tomorrow it’s a year since we parted, dear,

  Still my mind keeps going back to you.

  I rue the day when I walked away,

  Playing the fool as cool as could be.

  Moonlight on the plains of Minnesota.

  How I wish that you were here with me.

  I always beat Mother at Monopoly, because she prefers Baltic and Mediterranean (she likes the names) and the railroads and utilities and she passes up the red or yellow or green ones or Park Place and Boardwalk because they are too expensive. I scoop up everything I land on and if necessary I borrow from the bank, which she allowed in a game a few years ago when I had the mumps.

  —Is that in the rules? she says.

  —We’ve always played that way.

  Mother does not borrow, it is not in her make-up to borrow. She sits tight and gets creamed. I race around the board, acquiring property, building hotels, winning, winning—it’s easy to see the importance of unlimited credit. I am very contented late at night when it’s just Mother and me. I pretend my ginger ale is gin and I tell her jokes out of Reader’s Digest and she says, “I don’t know how you do it, I can’t remember a joke for two minutes,” and she’s right, she can’t. You can tell her a joke twice in one night and she enjoys it as much the second time as the first.

  —Did this Ricky Guppy have many friends at school?

  —A few.

  —What was he like?

  —Quiet.

  All is peaceful on Green Street. The televisions are quiet. The sprinkler whispers shh-shh-shh-shh in the backyard. A train whistle blows, faraway.

  This may be the last summer for Monopoly. Next year I’ll be 15 and I’ll have a job, I’ll be going to parties.

  On the other hand, who would invite me? Name one person. I can’t. The cool kids in my class—the Guntzel girls, the Jacobsons, the Petersons, the Bunsens, the Nilssons—do they want a tree toad lurking in the corner at their parties, licking his lips, blinking his eyes? No, surely not. I may be playing Monopoly with Mother for years to come.

  —Tell me about when I was born, I say.

  —I’ve told you all about that before. More than once.

  —Tell me again.

  And she does.

  First, there is a certain settling of herself, and rustling, and tinkling of ice in the glass, and then she starts the story as she has always started it.

  —It was February and they were forecasting a blizzard.

  4

  Paradise

  I was born in the great blizzard of 1942. February. It struck at noon, obliterating the roads, and the streetlights were turned on to assist the schoolchildren of Lake Wobegon in finding their way home. The country kids went to their assigned Storm Homes. Daddy was all set to drive Mother to the hospital in Willmar as soon as the pains got bad. The St. Cloud hospital was closer, but it was Catholic, and the nuns were known to put rosaries in the cribs of newborns and smear oil on their foreheads, and why go through all that nonsense? The radio bulletins said to stay home, and that only stiffened Daddy’s resolve to get to Willmar. Luckily, his old Packard wouldn’t start. Engine failure may have saved my life. There were ten-foot drifts of snow across the state highway and we could have run into a ditch and all three of us frozen to death. Or—I might have survived in Mother’s belly and been surgically extracted
and put up for adoption. The Blizzard Baby—Tiny Survivor of Nature’s Frigid Onslaught—Adopted by America’s First Couple of Stage and Screen, Alfred L’Etoile and Jean du Nord, who read of infant’s plight in the papers—“Our hearts were touched. We had to help,” she sobbed—Private Plane Dispatched, Piloted by the Lone Eagle Himself, Colonel Lindbergh—Child United with New Mom and Dad in swank suite at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the celebrated pair go before RKO cameras Monday to shoot And Away We Go! directed by Raoul Oahu. But the engine wouldn’t turn over, so Mother walked three blocks through the blizzard to Dr. Bjork’s house and had me there. Mrs. Bjork was a nurse, she did the delivery, and Dr. Bjork sat in the kitchen and finished his supper. According to Mother, it was liver and onions, and she was nauseated by the smell of frying liver forever afterward.

  A child born in February / Is often stubborn and contrary / And if he’s born in heavy snow / Will follow his own way to go.

  On Mother’s side, I am descended from pale bookkeepers with thick glasses and soft hands and pink-cheeked Methodists who lived with utmost caution, gingerly, regretfully, in little stucco bungalows in south Minneapolis around 38th Street and 42nd Avenue and rode the old yellow streetcar to work and once a year packed a trunk and rode the Great Northern Lakeshore Limited to their summer cabin on Lake Wobegon and waded into the water up to their waists and paddled around in the shallows and fretted about wasps and the dangers of botulism and black-widow spiders and bull snakes and lightning and escaped lunatics and were grateful to return to the city and their daily routine.

  On Daddy’s side, I am descended from country people who woke before sunrise and clambered out of bed and dressed in coveralls or print dresses that smelled of lye soap and took their porcelain chamber pot to the outhouse and emptied it and washed their faces in cold water from a steel basin and made porridge and corn-bread for breakfast and after breakfast read a chapter of Scripture and said a prayer for their loved ones and the President of the United States and then went to their work outdoors, sun or snow, raising cows, pigs, and chickens, and corn and hay.