Liberty

by Garrison Keillor

  Due to an artistic disagreement with Delivery Day management, the Ladies Sextette (founded 1924) has withdrawn from participation this year. We regret this and wish the Committee a great success, which has been our goal all along. And thanks to all of our friends for their encouragement at this very painful time. You have meant so much to us. “There is no such thing as defeat when one still has loyal friends and true.”

  And then last year Clint killed off the reading of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Detmer had done the reading for thirty-odd years, standing on the steps of the Central Building, paper in hand, four feet away from the microphone, reading into his shirt front in a flat, droney voice and if you tried to move the microphone closer, he jumped back as if it were a snake. Five years ago he lost his place two-thirds of the way through and started again from the beginning. Pure torture. People hated it. But nobody dared say so. They said, “Isn’t it remarkable that he’s been doing this for thirty-three years? The man sure is dedicated.” (Yes, and so are mosquitoes.) The man had become a visible symbol of pure idiocy, reading slowly and incomprehensibly something nobody wanted to hear. It might as well have been in Urdu, but a little crowd stood like dumb cattle and listened to it, with as much pleasure as if you watched a man mow his lawn, and since the Fourth was about pleasure, Clint took him aside three years ago and suggested that the Declaration be edited down and the long list of grievances against King George III be dropped.

  “But that’s part of the Declaration,” Mr. Detmer said.

  “I know, but the king is dead and the British are gone and we’re all over it now.”

  “It’s history. We need to know these things.”

  “It’s in the library if anybody needs to go read it, but we don‘t have to listen to it every year, do we.”

  The old man shook his head and said that rather than reading an inaccurate version of the Declaration, he’d prefer to not read at all.

  “Fine. Then we’ll do that,” said Clint. “Let’s give the Declaration a vacation.”

  Well, Mrs. Detmer had a fit, and she got a posse together and there were secret meetings that were no secret to anybody and the next Sunday a flyer appeared, anonymous, under windshield wipers of cars parked at Lake Wobegon Lutheran and Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.

  We think it’s pretty self-evident that all men are created more or less equal, considering, that they are endowed by their Creator with enough basic intelligence to know what they want, and whenever Tyrants come along who Abuse and Usurp, it is our Duty to throw them out. The present Chairman of the Fourth of July has established an absolute Tyranny over our Community. Let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

  He has refused to allow Long-Time Residents to participate in the Parade, though they have as much right to do so as anybody else.

  He has forbidden our Performers to sing the Numbers they have performed for lo these many years.

  He has refused to allow Families to drive their Pickups or Threshers or Tractors and Hay Wagons in the Parade, unless they conform to his Unreasonable Demands which are fatiguing and expensive.

  He has endeavored to introduce Outsiders to our Lake Wobegon Independence Day Observance so that it scarcely represents us anymore.

  He has made Decisions without our consent and harassed with ridicule those who dare to speak against him or question his Edicts, which have plundered our treasury, ravaged our spirits, burnt bridges, and destroyed the goodwill of our people.

  Now, therefore, we the Citizens of Lake Wobegon solemnly publish and declare, That henceforth we shall observe the Glorious Fourth exactly as we wish, regardless of who attempts to restrict us, as a matter of Sacred Honor.

  What a kick in the shins! It really burned his bacon. People you’ve known all your life can be meaner than skunks and total strangers can be sweet as can be. Elsewhere he was practically a celebrity.

  Fourteen speaking invitations in the past year!—to come give his Glorious Fourth speech, “Dare To Make A Difference”—about why the Fourth was important. “You need to keep sticking your neck out and making Large Occasions, otherwise you sink down into the drift and debris of life,” he said. “You have to think big because the future doesn’t arrive ready-made. You have to welcome it.” In Lake Wobegon he was just a guy who fixed your brakes, but if he drove thirty miles in any direction his reputation rose and people lined up to shake his hand. (They knew what he’d accomplished with the Glorious Fourth in Lake Wobegon. People in Lake Wobegon might think he was a tyrant, but outsiders admired him for it.) And when he was introduced to speak, the master of ceremonies always pointed out that everywhere the Fourth is in decline, but over in Lake Wobegon it’s a major success and the reason is Leadership, my friends—Leadership—and that’s why it gives me great pleasure, etc.—and Clint stood up and walked to the lectern and people applauded and applauded and he spoke. He said, “Politics today is all complaining. People moaning about how the big guys are picking on the little guys, and the family farm is no more, and the schools are rotten, and Wal-Mart is destroying Main Street, and I just want to say, it’s a great country. Let’s love it for a change. (APPLAUSE.) So things change. Deal with it. Okay, so Wal-Mart comes in and some stores on Main Street have to close. People like to get stuff cheap. When was it any different? You don’t like it, pass a law against human nature. But stop bad-mouthing our country. Government isn’t going to solve all these problems, believe me. So let’s have one day in the year when we can stop hammering on each other and just stand and wave the flag and sing the national anthem and be proud of who we are.”

  A standing ovation at the end. Always a standing ovation. People leaped to their feet, their eyes shining, and whooped and whistled. In Lake Wobegon he wouldn’t get a standing ovation if he set the seats on fire. But in Brainerd and Willmar and Sauk Center and St. Cloud and Little Falls he was recognized as a guy who had dared to step on toes and spend some cash and make something truly illustrious. He hadn’t gone to New York to learn that, he had learned it at Lake Wobegon High School. Helen Story, his 11th-grade English teacher, who gave her class a talk about daring to be smart, even if people made fun of you, and she wrote on the blackboard, “Keep away from people who belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” And under it, MARK TWAIN. The belittlers were everywhere to be found, and what a price they paid—it became more and more clear the older they got. To see Berge, his old classmate, a good fullback, a promising student, turn into a crank and then the town drunk. His face blasted by drink, you’d think cougars had been chewing on him, and walking around like he had a load in his pants, which maybe he did, you didn’t want to ask. Tragic and also a big bore. “Aim high,” Miss Story said. And the lesson stuck with him. So he had tried to do. “Ad astra per aspera.”

  But in this town you got not much credit at all except the grudging admission that, yes, you were a good worker and you showed up on time and got the job done. Nobody was awestruck by anything you did, no matter how awesome. Michelangelo: he worked hard on that chapel ceiling and he cleaned up after himself too. Bach: he got that St. Matthew Passion done on time and the copies were very clean, very readable. War and Peace: no mispellings, no grammatical mistakes. Living in Lake Wobegon was like being stuck in a bad marriage. Which Clint knew something about. It had taken him years to figure it out, but he and Irene just plain didn’t mesh. “Marriage is the truest test of character,” wrote Dr. Biggs in his best-selling Reviving the Romance , and Clint thought maybe he’d like to take the test over with somebody else. “To make a life with your best critic is tough, no doubt about it. You have many critics but your spouse is by far the best-informed of all of them,” wrote Dr. Biggs. Okay, but sometimes a critic is operating on old information.

  It was like the Herdsmen, the Lake Wobegon Lutheran ushers who flew to California and won the National Church Ushers Competition in Santa Barbara, sponsored by the National Church Assistants & Acolytes Ass
ociation, the NC-Triple-A, and brought home the first-runner-up trophy, even though it was a rough trip out there and the little plane from L.A. to Santa Barbara bounced like a trampoline, steam gushing from the vents, the wings flapping, and the flight attendants in back were saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud, and the plane landed so hard on the tarmac that oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and the Herdsmen had to rush to the auditorium to compete and it was a four-aisle venue, which they’re not used to, and a motley crowd of Unitarians and blind people and 140 kids from St. Vitus’s School for children with ADD—it was like herding fruit bats and water buffalo, and there were only 20 stalls at the Communion rail but the Herdsmen got the job done and divided the people into a slow line and an express line, the sippers and the dippers—won first runner-up, came home, marched into the Chatterbox Cafe, and set the trophy down on the counter.

  “What’s that, a bowling trophy?” Dorothy said.

  “We won first runner-up in the national ushers competition.”

  She looked at them as if they had geraniums growing out of their foreheads. “Well, aren’t you special.”

  You got no credit for accomplishment in this town. You could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and they’d say, “Peas! The man never grew peas in his life! Wouldn’t know peas from lentils!”

  His own son Chad, a good 4-H’er who stood up and pledged his head to clearer thinking, his heart to greater loyalty, his hands to larger service, his health to better living for his family, his club, his community, his country, and his world, was taken over by aliens and got video games and malt liquor. Went to college and sat in his room watching movies on a computer. Dropped out, talked about bartending school, talked about going into the moving business, talked about what he might do one of these days and never did it.

  “Leave him alone,” said Irene, so Clint did, ignoring the marijuana fumes from the basement. And then Irene discovered the pornography in the computer. “Out!” she cried. The boy wept and promised to do better. “Do better somewhere else!” she said. “Out!” And now he had a job delivering plants and lived in a basement apartment with four high-school buddies, not an achiever in the bunch.

  His cheerful, capable boy had turned into a slacker and a whiner, slouched in a beanbag chair, sucking smoke, hypnotized by images of violence and degradation, and for this, Clint blamed the Democrats. They were the party who encouraged two-thirds of the country to imagine they were oppressed by the other third, their chances cut off, their gas siphoned from the tank, pure paranoia, the fear of radon coming up from the ground or growth hormones in milk or secret cabals spreading the AIDS virus, low-frequency sound from high-tension powerlines—everyone a victim of the big drug companies, the big HMOs, Wall Street bankers—ignoring the simple facts of life. It is filled with risk. There is no free ride, people. This is how much health care costs and somebody must pay it, probably you. To do that, you’ll have to buckle down in school and do the work so you can get a decent job and maybe forego spiderweb tattoos on your neck. Simple. Chad chose to fritter away his life. His choice. Nothing to be done about it. The responsibility did not lie with the public schools and the lack of nurturing programs for kids like him. He did it to himself, so let him deal with it. Let him experience the dawning of reality. The helping hand is at the end of your own arm. Use it.

  3. INGRATITUDE

  The accusation of tyranny stung him. He tried to ignore it, but it hurt. His brother said, “Look at it this way. People resent you because you’re the mechanic. You know how much they don’t know about cars. That takes away a little piece of their manhood. They resent you for that. You drive the wrecker and haul them out of the ditch in the winter. A guy can’t start his car on a cold morning, you come out and hook up jumper cables and bang, she starts right up. He’s embarrassed. He resents you for it. That’s what this is about.”

  “Pay no attention to it,” said Irene. “A handful of soreheads. You’ve got that type of person in any community. Don’t judge the town by what a few barflies think. Ignore it and it will all pass over.”

  It was more than a handful though. It was the bitter chip-on-a-shoulder German Catholics who clung to a sense of being oppressed, going back to the anti-Hun propaganda of World War I—Oh just get over it! And dark Lutherans who believe that life is misery and if it doesn’t seem so now, just be patient, and if you are lacking misery, they can supply you with all you need. If they had been at the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus brought forth the miracle of the loaves and fishes, they would’ve thought: “Did he wash his hands? Where are the napkins? How long was that fish cooked?” Lighten up, people! Life is short enough—why spend it in the shadows?

  In June came the revolution. The Committee had gone along with Clint for years, murmured their Yeas, shook their heads when asked for objections, but they got their backs up over the issue of an official Hospitality Suite. Viola Tors’s idea. She sat opposite him at the long table, sharp-nosed, frizzy-haired Viola in a little pink knitted number, tapping a pencil on her spreadsheets, sending deadly vexation waves his way. She was the treasurer, ex officio as Lake Wobegon town clerk—the town council demanded that as a condition of its support. But why was she making a big issue of this Hospitality Suite? There never had been one in the past, but she had a bug up her butt and browbeat the Committee into voting 5-1 a month before the Fourth to create one with a wine bar, espresso machine, fresh fruit, and frozen yogurt, since the governor had indicated he would be attending and so (they hoped) would the national press and maybe other celebrities. Viola was beating the bushes for celebrities left and right, TV weathermen, retired sports figures, even authors. “If they come, and I hope they will, we need a place where they can relax, out of the spotlight,” she said. “You can’t expect these people to stand in line at a Port-A-Potty.”

  “Why not?” said Clint, the lone No vote. “Afraid someone might sneak a peek?”

  Viola made a face at him. “Don’t be nasty. The bottom line is that at the end of the day, when all is said and done, anybody who puts on a function and expects celebrities is going to provide a Hospitality Suite and that is just the simple truth.” All of her favorite phrases in one sentence plus the word “function,” which she liked, too. And this is how she wrote it up in the Committee minutes:

  TORS moved that the Committee create a Hospitality Suite to be staffed by volunteers to offer the usual courtesies to visiting dignitaries and disseminate accurate information to the media about our town, its history, and the tradition of Delivery Day as distinct from the Fourth of July. Motion was discussed and adopted, 5-1.

  No reference to his objections—“You create a roped-off area for the big shots and then you have to decide which of the little pissers get to be there and you’re going to have hard feelings,” he said, and she glared at him and said, “Well, we’re no strangers to hard feelings now, are we.” A reference to Clint’s plain-spoken style.

  “Who is upset now?” he said.

  “You know perfectly well.” She sniffed and looked around the room for support. Father Wilmer looked like he might jump up and run, as he always did at any hint of disagreement. (Don’t wimp out on me, pal, Clint thought. She won’t bite you.) But Diener was in Viola’s corner now. He said, “We’ve been a little rough on farmers, just to name one. One group, that is.”

  True, Clint had told several people in the past few weeks that they couldn’t drive their tractors in the parade. Not even antiques, unless they were pre-1950. And no pickups either. Sorry. Not even brand-new ones. It’s a parade, not a procession.

  A parade demands a little dazzle. He was anti-dinge, anti-drag. The St. Cloud Shriners Precision Rider Mower Unit was okay because the Shriners wore showy fezzes and Arab shoes with curly toes. Fat men in overalls on John Deeres, no thank you.