Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

by Garrison Keillor

  “I’m sure you did all you could for your son and I am confident that someday he will thank you, too.”

  “We went out of our way for him, that’s for sure, gave him everything and look what he did to us. Oh well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles! No sense crying over it.”

  “Well, we just have to hope for the best, don’t we.”

  “Who did you say this is?” she said. “I don’t recognize the voice.” I said I was a friend of Ricky’s from school. “You’re not from the paper, are you?” I said I was not.

  Mother and Daddy were heading for Charley’s in Freeport, where it was Chicken Pot Pie Night. Two for the price of one. The older sister was at her girlfriend’s, holding their pity party. I was shutting off the sprinkler. Suddenly there was shouting indoors: Daddy thrashing around, unable to locate his car keys. Shaking coat pockets, digging in the junk dishes, rummaging on the kitchen counter, tearing into piles of things, like an animal caught on the barbed wire thrashing himself to death, until Mother located the keys in the pocket of a jacket.

  When they left, I put on a clean plaid shirt, combed my hair, and headed downtown to the tavern, coming around by the alley and in the back door.

  A cloud of smoke and beery air and hamburger grease wafted out like a big belch and I slipped inside and stood by an empty booth in back. The room was dark, except for the yellow and green and orange neon beer signs, and when my eyes adjusted to the dimness, there was the doleful Wally in his white apron behind the bar and Ding, his big gut balanced on a stool next to old Mr. Berge, and Jim Dandy, wearing his best black shirt with pearl buttons, his hair slicked back, looking like he had the world on a string. Next to him was a stack of 45s he was autographing.

  He told Wally, “You need to get this one on your jukebox. This is going to be a big one. It’s going gangbusters everywhere. Stores are having a hard time keeping it in stock. DJs are going gaga over this. Absolutely bananas. You don’t want to be the last one on the bus.”

  Wally slipped around behind the bar, in constant motion, straightening things, shifting, moving the salt shakers, wiping the counter and the lid of the big jar of boiled eggs, filling the rack of beef jerky, rinsing glasses in the sink below, rearranging the back bar and the cooler.

  “People like to hear the newest thing on the jukebox,” said Jim Dandy.

  “Not everybody. Guys in here go more for the Hank and Lefty stuff. Guys here are still hoping Glenn Miller didn’t die in that plane crash.”

  “Let me play it for you.”

  “What’s it called again?”

  “‘My Girl.’ ”

  “Rock and roll?”

  “You bet. But it’s smooth, it’s not a screamer.”

  He stepped to the jukebox and unlatched the cover and put the 45 on the turntable and pressed a switch. And there were the Doo Dads humming like the Mills Brothers, and the bass going hmm boom boom ba da da doom doom, and Earl the Girl cutting loose into his falsetto wail.

  Saturday I went to town

  Met the guys I hang around

  Had a smoke and a glass of gin

  Waiting until she came in

  My Girl

  Is she beautiful? Oh my

  I see her and almost die

  I would kneel in the street

  And place my forehead on her feet

  My Girl

  Jim Dandy slow-danced to it as if a girl were in his arms and his left hand were stroking her thigh.

  “I don’t think so,” said Wally. “These guys come in here and try to forget women. They already put their forehead on some girl’s foot and she gave em a swift kick with it. ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’—that’s the song they want. Getting tears in my beer crying over you. They don’t want teenager songs. Anyway, we already got two by the Doo Dads.”

  Jim Dandy smiled. Fine. He didn’t care. He was only giving Wally a chance to get in on the ground floor of something that was going to be a major sensation. If Wally wasn’t interested, it was no hair off his nose. A guy makes an investment in a tavern like this, you figure he wants to keep up with modern trends and draw the young crowd and make a few shekels for himself. You can’t turn a profit on farmers, pal—they will go through the free popcorn like locusts and nurse a 15¢ beer til the paint on the barn dries. Every week or two, they’ll splurge on a boiled egg. No, sir, drawing a younger clientele is the formula for success here. Attract young women and young men will spend money hand over fist to make them happy. Throw the bucks in the air! Pound it down rat holes! Appeal to the lass of 18 and you’ll be rich in six months! But if Wally’s not interested in making a go of it, then that’s okay, there are plenty of others who are. Like the HiDeHo. He just figured he was doing Wally a favor trying to clue him in.

  Mr. Berge pointed to Wally’s belly and said, “No reason for him to worry about business, he looks to be eating regular.”

  “I am,” said Wally, “though for a man with my hemorrhoids, eating regular isn’t the fun that it ought to be.”

  “I know all about that,” said Berge. “Had them when I was in the Army. Had a bad habit of reading books in the barracks after lights out. I’d go sit in the can, where the lights are on all night, and I’m on the throne getting engrossed in this book and about six hours later I got hemorrhoids as big as prunes. I could hardly roll out of bed. The docs took one look, said it was the worst case they’d seen, maybe a national record. They took pictures—somebody told me I’m in all the medical textbooks. Sent me to the hospital to get reamed and this lady runs a metal thing up my tailpipe until it about comes out my left ear and after that I never could sing as well as before. Used to have a nice tenor voice and sang at weddings. Now—nothing.”

  “Get yourself a foam doughnut to sit on,” said Ding. “They’re a lifesaver. Had a bad case of hemmies myself about three years ago, and some of the boys spooned some Tijuana Cat Whiz into my hot-dog relish. It’s made from cactus and it gives you a hard stool. I sat on the crapper, and I cried, it hurt so bad. It was like trying to pass a brick.”

  Jim Dandy studied Mr. Berge for a moment.

  “How much can a good hairpiece cost anyway?” he said. “I would think you could get something for twenty bucks that’d improve on what you got on your head there. That toupee looks like a highway casualty.”

  “Don’t discuss my hair and I won’t tell what I saw when I stood next to you at the pisser,” said Berge. He signaled for another whiskey.

  “You were so drunk you were looking down at your own,” said Jim Dandy. “You never saw a well-hung man until you seen a bass singer. That’s what gives that deep voice. Extra-large equipment. Ask the ladies. They’re the ones who know quality.”

  Wally pointed a hairy hand in my direction. “Watch your language, there’s a youngster here.”

  The three of them swiveled around and cast their eyes at me lurking beside the booth.

  “It’s the sportswriter!” said Ding. “Watch what you say.”

  “How you doing there, Larry?” said Jim Dandy. “You care for a root beer or something?”

  I asked if this would be a good time to show him my poems or should I come back later?

  He thought about this. “Sure,” he said. I handed him a sheaf of poems, four of my best, folded in thirds. He thumbed through them. “This one is about trees, I see. That’s nice. I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. And spring—this is nice.”

  O gentle spring, you have banished winter, our angry dad

  Who yelled at us to dress warmly and to do our duty

  And to work hard and save our money as he had

  And now you give us all this vernal beauty

  As a little child is given his mother’s breast,

  The precious gift of life without price.

  And now the snowy fields of the Upper Midwest

  Have you turned into a green paradise.

  “You got his attention there where you mentioned a breast,” said Ding. “Add another one of those and
you’ve got him hooked.”

  Jim Dandy browsed through the others. “You got any love poems in here?” I shook my head. “Why not?”

  Well, the answer stood right there before him. The World’s Strangest Creature, Half Boy, Half Toad. Yes, It Is Alive! It Walks, It Talks, It Crawls on Its Belly like a Reptile!

  Ding took a hard drag on his smoke, pulling the coal almost to his lips.

  “If you’re looking for help with your writing, kid, you’re hollering up the wrong drainpipe. This feller”—he nodded at Jim Dandy—“he’s an authority on getting drunk and pissing his pants. He knows as much about writing as I know about the H-bomb.”

  Jim Dandy sighed and shook his head. “It’s the old story! Somebody with talent and ambition comes along in this town and they got to cut him down to their size! That’s what small people do. And in ten years this town’s going to be even more of a dead end than it is already. ’Cause people like you run out all the talent! Everybody with ideas! You belittle em!”

  He turned to me. “This town is one big cemetery, kid. Some folks above ground, some below, but it’s about the same one way or the other. The ones above ground can’t leave either. They’re afraid to. Afraid if they went to California nobody’d know who they are or how smart they are, so they stay home. Plant their feet in the ground and start sinking.

  “Well, what the hell,” he said. “In six months, when this record hits and I’m in New York on television, it isn’t going to bother me worth a rat’s ass then, so why should it bother me now? Right?”

  “In six months,” said Ding, “you’re gonna be sitting on the same stool except with more stains on your shirt.”

  “Small minds! One of these days I’m gonna write a song about it. And dedicate it to you.”

  24

  The English Language

  I slipped out the back and strolled home, where I soaked a big rectangle of lawn so as to soften it and dig out the latest dandelion assault from the Andersons. When the older sister came out and ragged on me for my latest story, which referred to Roger as a horsehide magician and said he aired the orb for a threebagger, I only smiled and said I was grateful for her interest.

  “I don’t know what you imagine you’ll ever do for a living,” she said, “but let me tell you: writing isn’t it. A word to the wise.”

  I thanked her for the advice and promised to keep it in mind.

  She snorted. She said she didn’t see much evidence of my being aware of anybody except my own stupid self. She said that Mother and Daddy were worried about how I’d changed and that it broke their hearts to know the sort of smutty magazines I brought home and the filthy stories I wrote about myself and my own cousin! My cousin! Did I understand what I was talking about? And did I think they don’t know what goes on in their own home? Did I take them for utter fools? No, they were well aware of what I was up to and were disgusted by it and ashamed.

  I let her blow, and when she was done, I said coolly, “There is no such magazine and no such story.” I looked her unblinking straight in the eye and said it without a tremor of a doubt.

  “You’re not even very good at lying,” she said.

  “You’ll have to be more specific. I’m sorry, I don’t follow you at all.”

  “L-i-e. Know what it means?” She gave me a little shove.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I smiled sympathetically at her, as if she had gone mad and was drooling.

  “The English language! That’s what! Listen, jerkhead—I’m on to you. Okay? I read your story, the whole disgusting thing about having sex with your own cousin! My gosh. Does the word incest mean anything to you? Do you ever even glance at your Bible? Is there no limit to how low your mind goes? Is there?”

  “Jerkhead—is that a Biblical term?”

  She was poking me in the shoulder, pushing, her voice a little shrieky. “You are about to be exposed for the slimy person you really are,” she said, “and all the old ladies who dote on you are going to get a mighty big shock. I hope Grandma and Aunt Eva don’t find out. It’d kill the both of them.”

  I asked her if the story she referred to was the same story Miss Lewis had shown to me last week. The story about swimmers.

  That threw her for a moment. She faltered—and I came in with the uppercut. I said, “Miss Lewis asked me if I thought you wrote it.”

  “You liar.”

  “I looked at the story and said I was about ninety percent certain you couldn’t possibly have written it. I mean there was a lot of stuff about kissing that you wouldn’t know the first thing about. And what good would it do you if you did know? Kissing requires two people and there is never going to be anyone who cares to do it with you. You know it and I know it. If you want to know why, ask me sometime and I’ll try to explain it to you. It’s your personality.”

  And I turned and walked away. She fumed at me about what a monster I was and how I wouldn’t get away with it, and I returned to work on the lawn.

  Grandpa looked down, speechless. Jesus had gone back inside to talk to somebody. With the ground wet, those dandelions came up lickety-split, roots and all, and into a bucket, dead soldiers. Mrs. Anderson called out to ask what I was doing. I said I was digging worms. She said, Oh.

  25

  Poison

  It was the middle of July and Aunt Eva had sent me two plaintive notes on bits of index card:Dearest Gary: I am avidly following your stories in the newspaper thanks to Flo, who is diligent about forwarding copies, and I must say I enjoy them tremendously, and so does Mother. You are making baseball fanatics out of us both. We miss you keenly, Mother & I, & wish you here, tho of course you are all grown up now & busy with your own affairs, but we do wish sincerely that you could spare a day (or two) for yr old relatives. Do let us know when you can visit. All our love, Eva

  Dearest Gary, Mother keeps asking when you will honor us with your presence and I tell her that you are occupied with your duties at the paper and all, but do want you to know that if you could spare even an hour you would make two old ladies very happy. I am making banana bread and it’s not much fun without you here to enjoy a slice of it. Let us have a look at you. Kindly greet your dear family. All our love, Eva

  So I hopped on my bicycle and rode out to the farm. Eva was kneeling in the yard, weeding a bed of petunias inside a truck tire, and when she looked up I saw a flash of dread in her face, the old fear of strangers, and then she grinned and jumped up and ran and gave me a hug.

  “Let me look at you.” She held me at arm’s length. “My, you are a feast to the eyes.”

  She was the only person in the world who’d ever say such a thing to me. Nobody else considered me even a light snack to the eyes. Most people would consider me a light purgative to the eyes.

  She led me by the hand and sat me down on the front step and grilled me about the Whippets and whether the Guppy boy was really as good as I said in the paper and could the team win the New Soo crown and go to the State Tourney at Nicollet Field in Minneapolis, and after we exhausted that topic, she asked about the entire family and wanted a day-by-day account of their activities, and then she said, “Come and let’s get you a bag of tomatoes to take home. Those town tomatoes taste soapy to me.”

  We walked down that long dirt road I’d walked with her ever since I learned to walk, and there was the garden, majestic in the sunlight, everything where it should be and always had been since Adam and Eve.

  Grandma was talking about death these days, Eva said, and she was studiously planning her funeral and which hymns should be sung, and who should preach and who should conduct the grave-side service and how there absolutely would be no open casket and no flowers—“Give me the flowers while I live,” said Grandma, quoting the old song—and which neighbors she wanted to be there and which ones not.

  And then Eva said, “I don’t think I could survive two weeks around here without Mother,” and she sat down in the dirt and got out a hanky and dabbed at her eyes. “I told Mother that
if she’s intending to go then she can plan mine too. Have a double funeral.”

  She made me promise not to tell anybody about any of this. I promised.

  “A lot of people would clap their hands to see me dead. They could sell off the place and pocket the money and never have to lower themselves to coming out here to visit us poor old hillbillies.” I patted her shoulder a little and then she jumped up, mad, and said, “People move to town and suddenly they’re too good for the likes of us! Our own flesh and blood. They buy a fancy house and expensive clothes—I’m no dummy, I know how much they pay! All that brand-new furniture. All the luxuries they’ve got. Think they’re better than those of us who have to make do! Oh yes! I know. They see me coming and they get out the Air-Wick and the Lysol! Think they’re better than us.”

  I got the idea she was talking about Mother. I said, “Nobody thinks they’re better than you.”

  “They do so. Some people, you’d never know they were Christians, the way they look down on their poor shirttail relatives. I know what they’re thinking. It’s a great big chore for them to take an hour and visit their own family. They come through the door like they were entering a loony bin and they brush off the chair before they sit down lest there be spiders. And they’d rather go home early than have to go out back and use the biffy. Imagine that. They think they’re too good to put their little bottoms down on a wooden seat and do their business in a hole! Too good for it! Too good to eat home-butchering! Have to buy their meat in a wrapper! My own relatives! I’m just plain ashamed of them. I wish I’d never lay eyes on them again.”

  This speech in the tomato patch came out of nowhere. It rocked me back on my heels. If she was talking about Mother and Daddy, I didn’t care to have to listen to it.

  And then she started patting my head and saying how I was her favorite person in the whole world and always had been like a son to her, her baby, and the relative who was most like her and the only one she really cared about aside from Grandma and how it would kill her if I ever turned my back on her as others had done, and if she thought I would do that, then she’d rather go up to the house right this minute and drink a glass of poison. “I mean it,” she said. She kept a big brown bottle of poison in her bedroom in case of rapists, and if I was intending to high-hat her as others had done she’d go up there and drink it and ask God to forgive me and then go be with the Lord in heaven.