Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

by Garrison Keillor

  Mother folds the letter and puts it under the cushion of her chair. It’s gone. I don’t think Daddy is going to see it again.

  “We could go away for the Fourth,” she says, hopefully.

  “It’s one of the worst times of the year to drive anywhere. You ever see the death toll in the paper? It’s in the hundreds. That doesn’t count the maimed and injured.”

  “How about Chicago? We could go stay at the Blackstone.”

  “The traffic jams are unbelievable. Unbelievable. Somebody told me it now takes you the better part of a day just to get into the Loop and find a place to park. It’s ten times worse than it was when we were there two years ago and it was bad then!”

  “Then you choose. Where would you like to go?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  Mother suggests the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore.

  “Anywhere but out west. I read that the danger of forest fires is at a twenty-year high. Montana is like a powder keg waiting to explode. I was reading an article about forest fires that said they can travel at a hundred miles an hour—a wall of flame—a hundred miles an hour! You could be driving top speed and not be able to escape it!”

  The truth is, Daddy hates to go anywhere and both of them know it. He is a nervous driver, one foot on the gas, one on the brake, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, it makes you green around the gills, but when Mother mentions it to him, he says, “I’m doing the best I can!” This is probably true.

  —Well, I’m not going to drag you someplace if you don’t want to go, says Mother.

  —It’s up to you. I can’t sleep on mushy beds, that’s all.

  —We could go to a resort.

  —To do what? Play golf?

  —To do whatever we want.

  —You can do that at home.

  —You won’t even think about going to a resort?

  —Find one that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and I’ll consider it.

  The ebb and flow of my parents’ conversation is so familiar to me, Mother’s voice and Daddy’s voice, it is like summer music, with the sprinkler whispering and the radio turned low and cars humming by on the soft asphalt and the chittering of birds and dog barks and distant thumping of boat motors and women laughing and someone playing piano scales, up and down, and the tinkling of the glass-bead contraption, Mother suggesting the North Shore of Lake Superior and Daddy saying it’s too crowded there in the summer, Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock lighthouse, Grand Marais, it’s like a madhouse, packed with people from Chicago.

  “I got a letter from Doe today,” Mother says. “She may visit in July. She’s all over the trots.” Daddy looks at the ceiling. This is the price of not taking a vacation: your relatives come and take a vacation with you.

  17

  Flo

  A lovely summer night, almost ten o’clock, the Stenstroms’ house dark, the Andersons growling around in their smoky cave, and up the street comes a shadowy woman clicking along in a pair of flats with cleats on the heels. She sees us on the porch, Daddy inert, Mother paging through the paper, and a comely young man reclining on the porch swing and reading a book. A fine family indeed. And what a handsome lawn! The big sister has gone to bed, miffed about a boy she met at a Youth for Christ party. It was a Shoe Mixer. All the girls took off one shoe and put them in a pile, and each boy was brought in blindfolded, and whoever’s shoe he chose, she was the girl he sat with for cocoa and cookies. The sister was picked last (because her shoe was so big, presumably) and the poor boy plopped down next to her and she tried to testify to him. She told him that, in Christ, the last shall be first. And in contravention of the rules of Shoe Mixing, he went off and sat in a corner by himself for the rest of the evening. She was hurt. Hurt feelings run in the family. Daddy is hurt about the Doo Dads singing on the Fourth, and Mother is hoping that Aunt Doe doesn’t think we don’t want her to visit, and I am feeling guilty about High School Orgies even as I sit and pore over it.

  One story left to go, that of Julie and her drama teacher, Mr. Peters, with a picture of a young girl spread-eagled on a desk with a gray-haired gent leering down at her. Mr. Peters gazed at the front of her blouse and her pert young buds barely visible between the buttons. “Oh, Mr. Peters,” she said. “Do you really think I could be Juliet in the class play?” He had taken the precaution of locking the classroom door. “You certainly have the talent for it, Julie,” he whispered. “It’s only a question of being able to lose your inhibitions onstage.”

  I have a dirty mind and this is a fact. I know it, Grandpa knows it. Someday it will be general knowledge. Be sure your sin will find you out. That’s Aunt Flo’s motto. Never do in secret what you wouldn’t want the world to see, because time brings all things to light. People steal and lie and scheme and do all manner of surreptitious deeds in the dark, but don’t kid yourself, the lights will come on someday. It’s only a matter of time before the ladies in the Bon Marché Beauty Salon find out about Kate and me drinking the wine and sitting in the stall in the boys’ toilet, her on my lap, and my pants pulled down.

  “Is that right?” says Myrtle Krebsbach under the hair dryer. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. That family always acted like it was a cut above the rest of us. Now we know. Fair on the outside, false on the inside. In silk and scarlet walks many a harlot.”

  “And her without a brassiere on,” says Luanne. “According to what I heard. No bra whatsoever. Pulled her sweater off in front of the whole school and she was naked as the day she was born.”

  “Doesn’t that take the cake.”

  “Heard it from two different people.”

  “Those Brethren kids always were wild.”

  “They don’t dance, they don’t drink, they just go off and hump each other in the bushes.”

  The Lake Wobegon Herald Star prints official stories like “Road Repairs Under Way, Says County” and “Awards Banquet Termed Big Success by All,” but the ladies of the Bon Marché have the inside dope on all the hanky-panky in town, they know who’s been fighting like wild banshees and their voices were heard at two A.M. screeching something about wishing they had never met, and them with three little kids, poor lambs, and who fell off the wagon and wound up drunk in a cornfield last week and singing at the top of his lungs and his poor mother had to come get him, his wife wouldn’t, she was ready to shoot him, and who is drinking heavily who you probably think never touched a drop but she’s hitting the vodka and orange juice soon as the kids are out the door in the morning, and whose daughter got in a family way with a man in Duluth (married) and the family is trying to hush it up, as if everybody wasn’t wise to her years ago, and whose husband turned out to be carrying on with the church secretary, whose son is suspected of stealing money at work, who is moving away, who is acting funny, who is on her high horse and needs to be taken down a notch, who is spending money hand over fist, who is skipping church ... Aunt Flo brings us this news every Saturday after her hair appointment. We are Sanctified Brethren and we believe in forgiveness, but we do like to know exactly what it is we are forgiving people for. And are they going to stop doing it or are they going to make it a new way of life?

  Julie offered no resistance as Mr. Peters unbuttoned her blouse. “You see, an actress has to learn how to free herself from self-consciousness and release her innate passions,” he said. “That’s what I look for in an audition. That sense of freedom.” She unclasped her brassiere to afford him access to her delectable young breasts. “Every performance means making love to an audience,” he whispered. His fingers slipped into her panties; she was hot as a furnace.

  Mother is listening to Cedric Adams and the news, shushing Daddy when Ricky and Dede are mentioned, but there’s no news, just that the manhunt continues and authorities are following up all leads. Daddy says he is heading for bed but he doesn’t go. And on comes our old friend the Troubadour singing for Trojan Seed Corn:Put on your hat and put your pajamas on,

  And let’s take a trip down the Amazon, />
  Have tamales and corn tortillas

  Served by señoritas—Si!Si! Buenos dias!

  Fly away to Paraguay and Peru

  For a year and a day, me and you.

  The Troubadour is a nice man and a friend of the family and all, but I wish we had a TV so we could watch Jack Paar and the Tonight show, which I saw at Leonard’s the one time he invited me to sleep overnight. But if I told Daddy I wanted a television set, he’d say, “People in hell want ice water.” His philosophy in a nutshell: You want it, forget it. Desire makes the object of desire recede in the distance—this is the curse of common life. Spring comes late because we want it too much.

  If we had TV, I could watch American Bandstand and learn to dance and become popular. A delicious word: pop-u-lar. He is extremely popular. He is such a good dancer. So smooth. No need to use X-ray binoculars ever again or employ secret colognes. Just be yourself!

  BEFORE: a tree toad, squinting, spasmo face, arms hanging like ropes, goofy clothes. Ay caramba, what a percy!

  AFTER: neat clothes, nice smile, great hair, a real smooth article, and, Lordy, can he dance!

  The Troubadour sends a howdy to Myrtle in Elbow Lake and wishes the Gustafsons of Onamia a happy fiftieth anniversary from their kids in Minneapolis and he sings a request for John, the best hubby a gal could hope for, with love from Marcy—You’re the peak of the Machu Picchu. You’re unique and it’s great to micchu. And the new me is motivating around the dance floor with a little heartthrob who looks up with dreamboat eyes and says, “Spin me, Daddy-o,” and we spin, we swing, I toss her up like a bag of potatoes and slide her between my legs—You’re a Broadway song played along the Great White Way. / You’re a four-leaf clover, the cliffs of Dover, you’re Doris Day. “You are such a good dancer,” she whispers, and we dance close, round and round, sparkling lights play over our bodies, magical moonbeams, fairy dust. You’re a goddess, you’re an Aphrodite. / You’re as hot as Mae West’s nightie.

  Mother is tapping her toe to this. Daddy says, “Do you need to play it so loud? The neighbors’ll think we’re throwing a party and serving free champagne.”

  The neighbors would never imagine any such thing. They know us too well. We are Sanctified Brethren. We can never have a good time if other people are watching. God only knows what we do behind closed doors, but in public we are pills. Walk around like birch trees, grimace, look down at your shoes, mumble hello. Julie was an apt pupil indeed, responding to his every caress, kissing him with a depth of passion seldom found in one so young, and before he could remove his shoes and socks, she was clawing at his trousers, trying to get at his lovestick, and before he knew it, he was buck naked, flat on his back, and she was riding him for all she was worth and moaning like a truck on an uphill grade—

  And Mother turns up the radio—the Troubadour is dedicating a song to Ricky and Dede. “This goes out to a couple of confused kids in Montana who may be picking up our signal in their car on some lonely backroad—Ricky, Dede—two kids who’ve been on the run a bit and maybe are looking for a way to come back home. God bless both of you, and keep you safe and bring you back to us, and if you’re listening and you want to talk to somebody, give the old Troubadour a call, okay?” And he sang to a throbbing accordion—Come live with me and be my love

  Midst valleys, woods, and fields,

  And we will all the pleasures prove

  That this brief summer yields.

  And we will sit upon the rocks

  By shallow waterfalls,

  And listen to melodious flocks

  Of birds sing madrigals.

  “That’s sweet,” says Mother. “I hope they call.” Daddy says he plans to write to the Trojan Seed Corn Company and ask whether the dedication of a song to an escaped felon would be a regular feature on the show or just an occasional treat. And while they’re at it, perhaps they could play a few obscene songs by the felon’s brother. After all, he will be performing for the Fourth of July, so what harm could it do? And finally Daddy is done with us and lumbers up to bed and it’s Mother and me. The street is dark except for our porch, bathed in light, like the bridge of a great ship plying the dark ocean waters.

  She’s a nightowl, like me, she understands: we don’t all have to sleep the same hours, we’re not dairy cattle.

  —Would you care for a glass of ginger ale? she says.

  —That would be nice, thank you.

  It’s just like Tony Flambeau and his mom, Eileen, on The Flambeaus on the radio every Monday night: when the detective dad is off solving a case in Las Palmas or Guadalajara or Ushibuka, Eileen (the real-life star of Lucky Lady and Whoopsido! on Broadway) and Tony sit around in the family’s penthouse suite with their pals Joan Bennett and Bennett Cerf and Jack Benny and have a few laughs and Tony serves drinks.

  For one shining moment I can imagine myself an only child. The older sister is a foster child rescued from her natural parents, two convicted con artists serving time in Sing Sing, and the poor thing is no prize herself, having been shut up in a root cellar for the past two years, but we took her in as an act of Christian charity and are doing the best we can with her, given her limitations. The older brother, the genius, is actually an uncle, Grandpa’s love child by the cleaning girl, and frankly we don’t expect to see much of him anymore. Daddy is gone, in Minnesota, doing his business, whatever that may be. Mother and I are in New York City, our penthouse at the Chadwick Arms. The Lake Wobegon water tower is the Empire State Building. I’m a writer for The New Yorker. A close personal friend of A. J. Liebling. He and mother and I went to a Broadway play last night and it was very disappointing, not funny at all, though the rest of the audience hee-hawed throughout, and afterward the Rainbow Room was mobbed with tourists and we turned on our heels and went to a tiny restaurant, L’Etoile du Nord, that A.J. knew about and we stayed until 3 A.M., laughing, reminiscing about Paris, talking about our magazine pals, Audax Minor, Elwyn Brooks White, James Thurber, George Price, the long-winded lady, Genêt, the whole crowd. Wonderful. Glorious.

  And then Mother breaks the mood.

  —I don’t understand why you and Kate always have to be so different.

  —Everybody’s different.

  —She used to be so sweet. You all were. It’s so sad when children grow up and have to rebel against everything and make their parents worry. I remember you kids tearing around the farm and playing in the haymow. You seemed so happy. And now—

  Mother is lost in thought for a moment.

  I ask her why Aunt Eva is so different.

  —Who told you that?

  —Nobody has to tell me. I can see it for myself. Our whole family is odd, but she takes the cake.

  Mother looks into her glass of ginger ale and shakes it a little so the ice clinks.

  —I don’t know that we’re all so odd. Are we?

  —To ourselves we’re not, but compared with other people we are.

  One odd thing about us is how we are devoted to keeping secrets. Everything that doesn’t belong in the picture, we shove behind the picture. Conversation at the dinner table can be like a walk in a minefield. “Some things are better not talked about” is our motto. Mother gets up, still clinking her drink, and stands at the screen door, listening.

  —Eva is a little odd, but that’s because she’s not right in the head. I thought you knew that. Grandma was sick when she was carrying Eva, and she was just born that way, and that’s all there is to it. It’s just one of those things. She can’t help it and neither can anybody else. We just have to make the best of it.

  I wish I didn’t know this about Eva. I wish it didn’t make any difference to me, but it does.

  —Is she crazy?

  —She has spells when she needs to be left alone. You knew that, didn’t you?

  I can remember Eva going to her room. I didn’t know it was because she was crazy.

  —It’s nothing terrible. It only lasts for a day or so. She has to be alone, without anybody looking at her or talking
to her and especially nobody touching her. It’s something she has to live with, there’s nothing anybody can do. That’s why she never married and had children.

  —Does she hear voices?

  —I don’t know. I don’t talk to her about it.

  —Has she seen a doctor?

  —She won’t go and Grandma won’t tell her to. They’re afraid she might be put in an institution.

  And then there are sharp clicks on the walk and in comes Aunt Flo in her yellow housedress and slippers, carrying a big black umbrella. “I saw your light was on,” she says. It’s late, eleven-thirty. “They say it may rain tonight,” she says. She plops down on Daddy’s daybed. She is his favorite sister, two years older, the one who mothered him. Mother goes to get her a glass of ginger ale. Aunt Flo asks what I’m up to this summer. She already knows but I tell her. Not much. Taking care of the yard. Writing for the paper.

  “Well, the yard sure looks nice,” she says. “A person has to keep up with a yard. You let it get away from you and it’s gone for good. You’ll never catch up.”

  Aunt Flo knows everything about Eva, I’m sure, and could tell me Eva’s whole story, but she won’t, so there’s no point in bringing up the subject.

  Mother brings the ginger ale. Aunt Flo says that the Andersons’ youngest child, Willmar, had to be taken to the St. Cloud hospital because he swallowed paper clips. This morning. The boy puts everything into his mouth. Cigarette butts, clods of dirt. And he won’t vomit. He’ll gag until he turns inside out but he won’t bring it up. All they can do is pour Listerine down him and hope for the best. And then, today, it was paper clips. They fed him a slice of bread and off to the hospital he went and the nurse did something and out it came from both ends. Mr. Anderson has been hitting the bottle more than usual, that’s why he was home at the time: he quit work at the feed mill, he couldn’t remember what day it was and they were afraid he’d fall into the machinery and wind up as flavoring in the cornmeal.