Lake Wobegon Days

by Garrison Keillor

  Whenever a special Bible study meeting was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at three, we couldn’t drive home after morning meeting, have dinner, and get back to St. Cloud in time, so one Sunday our family traipsed over to a restaurant that a friend of Dad’s had recommended, Phil’s House of Good Food. The waitress pushed two tables together and we sat down and studied the menus. My mother blanched at the prices. A chicken dinner went for $2.50, the roast beef for $2.75. “It’s a nice place,” Dad said, multiplying the five of us times $2.50. “I’m not so hungry, I guess,” he said, “maybe I’ll just have soup.” We weren’t restaurantgoers—“Why pay good money for food you could make better at home?” was Mother’s philosophy—so we weren’t at all sure about restaurant custom: could, for example, a person who had been seated in a restaurant simply get up and walk out? Would it be proper? Would it be legal?

  The waitress came and stood by Dad. “Can I get you something from the bar?” she said. Dad blushed a deep red. The question seemed to imply that he looked like a drinker. “No,” he whispered, as if she had offered to take off her clothes and dance on the table. Then another waitress brought a tray of glasses to a table of four couples next to us. “Martini,” she said, setting the drinks down, “whiskey sour, whiskey sour, Manhattan, whiskey sour, gin and tonic, martini, whiskey sour.”

  “Ma’am? Something from the bar?” Mother looked at her in disbelief.

  Suddenly the room changed for us. Our waitress looked hardened, rough, cheap—across the room, a woman laughed obscenely, “Haw, haw, haw”—the man with her lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke—a swear word drifted out from the kitchen like a whiff of urine—even the soft lighting seemed suggestive, diabolical. To be seen in such a place on the Lord’s Day—what had we done?

  My mother rose from her chair. “We can’t stay. I’m sorry,” Dad told the waitress. We all got up and put on our coats. Everyone in the restaurant had a good long look at us. A bald little man in a filthy white shirt emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands. “Folks? Something wrong?” he said. “We’re in the wrong place,” Mother told him. Mother always told the truth, or something close to it.

  “This is humiliating,” I said out on the sidewalk. “I feel like a leper or something. Why do we always have to make such a big production out of everything? Why can’t we be like regular people?”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “Be not conformed to this world,” she said. I knew the rest by heart: “… but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

  “Where we gonna eat?” Phyllis asked. “We’ll find someplace reasonable,” said Mother, and we walked six blocks across the river and found a lunch counter and ate sloppy joes (called Maid-Rites) for fifteen cents apiece. They did not agree with us, and we were aware of them all afternoon through prayer meeting and Young People’s.

  The Cox Brethren of St. Cloud held to the same doctrines as we did but they were not so exclusive, more trusting of the world—for example, several families owned television sets. They kept them in their living rooms, out in the open, and on Sunday, after meeting and before dinner, the dad might say, “Well, I wonder what’s on,” knowing perfectly well what was on, and turn it on—a Green Bay Packers game—and watch it. On Sunday.

  I ate a few Sunday dinners at their houses, and the first time I saw a television set in a Brethren house, I was dumbfounded. None of the Wobegonian Brethren had one; we were told that watching television was the same as going to the movies—no, in other words. I wondered why the St. Cloud people were unaware of the danger. You start getting entangled in the things of the world, and one thing leads to another. First it’s television, then it’s worldly books, and the next thing you know, God’s people are sitting around drinking whiskey sours in dim smoky bars with waitresses in skimpy black outfits and their bosoms displayed like grapefruit.*

  That was not my view but my parents’. “Beer is the drunkard’s kindergarten,” said Dad. Small things led to bigger ones. One road leads up, the other down. A man cannot serve two masters. Dancing was out, even the Virginia reel: it led to carnal desires. Card-playing was out, which led to gambling, though we did have Rook and Flinch—why those and not pinochle? “Because. They’re different.” No novels, which tended to glamorize iniquity. “How do you know if you don’t read them?” I asked, but they knew. “You only have to touch a stove once to know it’s hot,” Mother said. (Which novel had she read? She wasn’t saying.) Rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, swing, dance music, nightclub singing: all worldly. “How about Beethoven?” I asked, having heard something of his in school. “That depends,” she said. “Was he a Christian?” I wasn’t sure. I doubted he was.

  On the long Sunday-night drive home, leaning forward from the back seat, I pressed them on inconsistencies like a little prosecutor: if dancing leads to carnal desire, how about holding hands? Is it wrong to put your arm around a girl? People gamble on football: is football wrong? Can you say “darn”? What if your teacher told you to read a novel? Or a short story? What if you were hitch-hiking in a blizzard and were picked up by a guy who was listening to rock ‘n’ roll on the radio, should you get out of the car even though you would freeze to death? “I guess the smart thing would be to dress warmly in the first place,” offered Dad. “And wait until a Ford comes along.” All Brethren drove Fords.

  In Lake Wobegon, car ownership is a matter of faith. Lutherans drive Fords, bought from Bunsen Motors, the Lutheran car dealer, and Catholics drive Chevies from Main Garage, owned by the Kruegers, except for Hjalmar Ingqvist, who has a Lincoln. Years ago, John Tollerud was tempted by Chevyship until (then) Pastor Tommerdahl took John aside after church and told him it was his (Pastor Tommerdahl’s) responsibility to point out that Fords get better gas mileage and have a better trade-in value. And he knew for a fact that the Kruegers spent a share of the Chevy profits to purchase Asian babies and make them Catholics. So John got a new Ford Falcon. It turned out to be a dud. The transmission went out after ten thousand miles and the car tended to pull to the left. In a town where car ownership is by faith, however, a person doesn’t complain about these things, and John figured there must be a good reason for his car trouble, which perhaps he would understand more fully someday.

  The Brethren, being Protestant, also drove Fords, of course, but we distinguished ourselves from Lutherans by carrying small steel Scripture plates bolted to the top of our license plates. The verses were written in tiny glass beads so they showed up well at night. We ordered these from the Grace & Truth Scripture Depot in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the favorites were “The wages of sin is death. Rom. 6:23” and “I am the way, the truth and the life. Jn. 10:6.” The verse from John was made of white beads, the Romans of lurid red, and if your car came up behind a Brethren car on the road at night, that rear verse jumped right out at you. It certainly jumped out at me the night I drove Karen Mueller back from Avon, where we had had two whiskey sours apiece on her fake ID. I was going seventy on the old post road when we flew over a hill and there was a pair of taillights and what looked like a red stripe between them. I hit the brakes, we skidded at an angle so that for one split second, looking out the side window, I saw “The wages of sin is death” like a flashbulb exploding in my face, and then we were halfway in the ditch. I hit the gas, and we passed Brother Louie on the low side, and I got Karen home before eleven, and nobody was the wiser except me. “You’re a wonderful driver. You saved our lives,” Karen said, but I knew the truth. Drinking whiskey sours with a Catholic girl and thinking lustful thoughts, I had earned death three times over, and God was reminding me of this at the same time as He took the wheel for those few seconds, probably because He had a purpose for Brother Louie’s life.

  Perhaps God had a purpose for mine, too, but He must have wondered why I showed so little curiosity about what it might be. My own purpose was escape, first in my dad’s car (a Ford Fairlane station wagon) and then in the car he gave me (a 1956 Tud
or sedan). Both of these cars had verses bolted to the plates, so I carried pliers with me and pulled over just outside town and removed the evidence of our faith and put it in the trunk. Then I raced off and did what I could to debauch myself, and, on the way back, sometimes reeling from the effects of a couple Grain Belts and half a pack of Pall Malls, I bolted the verses back on.

  The Grace & Truth catalog offered many items with Scripture emblazoned on them, including birthday cards (“Ye must be born again”), a Gospel mailbox with handsome nameplate and “My Word shall not pass away. Matt. 24:35” painted on the lid, a telephone-book cover (“Let no corrupt communication pass out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying. Eph.4.29”), a doormat (“Now ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. Eph. 2:19”), a wastebasket (“Touch not the unclean thing. 2Cor. 6:17”), and even an umbrella (“Giving thanks always for all things. Eph.5:20”). There were paper napkins and placemats in the Bible Families, Familiar Parables, Our Lord’s Miracles, and Bible Prophecies series—once, my friend Lance came to supper and found Armageddon and the Seven-Headed Beast under his plate. Grace & Truth even offered matchbooks. If a smoker asked for a light, you could give him the book (“Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, therefore glorify God in your body, which is God’s”).

  Testimony was the aim of this merchandise. The Grace & Truth people believed that unregenerate man has hardened his heart against God and that the Spirit works to exercise and open the heart but that these openings of grace may be very brief, perhaps only a few seconds, during which the wicked may repent—especially if God’s Word is before them. Thus, the need to place Scripture in plain view. A fellow motorist’s heart might be opened on the road; our license-plate verse would be right there at the right moment to show the way.

  I felt that so much Scripture floating around might tend to harden some hearts, that Scripture should be treated with reverence and not pasted to any flat surface you could find—at least, that was what I said when Brethren asked why I didn’t carry a “The Peace of God Passeth All Understanding” bookbag to school. In fact, I was afraid I would be laughed off the face of the earth.

  My dad’s car sported a compass on the dashboard, with “I am the Way” inscribed in luminescent letters across its face, clearly visible in the dark to a girl who might be sitting beside me. “Why do you have that?” she might say. “It’s not mine, it’s my dad’s,” I’d say. “I don’t know why, I guess he likes it there.” I wanted her and me to be friends and our conversation to head in the direction of personal feelings, The Importance of Being Free and Sharing Love, and not toward the thorny subject of obedience, which tended to put a damper on things. The compass wasn’t easily removed; you’d have to get behind the instrument panel to remove the nuts. I thought of covering it with masking tape, but that might only draw attention to it. So I hung my cap on it.

  Brother Louie wasn’t so timid. His car (a Fairlane four-door) was a rolling display of Scripture truth, equipped not only with verses on the license plates but also across the dashboard, both sunvisors, the back of the front seat, all four armrests, the rubber floormats, the ashtray and glove compartment, and just in case you weren’t paying attention, he had painted a verse across the bottom of the passenger side of the windshield—“The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord”—for your edification as you gazed at the scenery. Brother Louie kept a plastic bucket by his left leg, where he kept Gospel tracts, rolled up and wrapped in bright cellophane, which he tossed out at mailboxes as he drove along. The cellophane was to protect the Word from rain and also to attract the eye. And finally, one year, he found a company in Indiana that advertised custom-made musical horns. Louie’s horn played the first eight notes of the Doxology. It sounded like a trumpet. He blew it at pedestrians, oncoming traffic, while passing, and sometimes just for his own pleasure. On occasion, vexed by a fellow driver, he gave in to wrath and leaned on the horn, only to hear “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow”. It calmed him down right away. The horn cost Louie more than a hundred dollars, and when he traded in the Fairlane on a Galaxie, he took the horn along.

  Brother Louie was assistant cashier at the First Ingqvist State Bank, which entitled him to a cubicle, three feet of oak paneling topped with two feet of frosted glass. He sat in there and received loan applicants, the small-time ones, and also some depositors. Many older people who remembered their elders’ memories of the failure of the New Albion Bank in the Panic of 1873 did not quite trust a bank per se and were uneasy about shoving their money under the grill to Mary Dahl, who was nineteen years old and chewed gum. They wanted Louie to accept it personally.

  It was touching to see Mrs. Fjelde and Mrs. Ruud and Mrs. Diener, old farm ladies in farm-lady dresses and their best black hats with the veils, their cotton stockings and old cloth coats, shuffling into Louie’s cubicle. Sitting by his desk, enjoying the little ritual conversation. “Good morning. You certainly look well.” “Thank you, Louie. Actually, my back has been bothering me.” “I’m sorry to hear that.” “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll feel better when it warms up.” Some weather talk. “How’s Lena doing? And Harold? What do you hear from Elsie?” Louie knew everybody by name. Some news, and then the grand moment: reaching in her purse for the coin purse, emptying the egg money out on the desk. A few crumpled ones, a lot of quarters and dimes. Louie, impressed: “Well, look at that! Doing pretty well, I’d say.” The careful count of the treasure. Filling out the deposit slip. The customer inquiring about Louie’s wife, Gladys, and his four daughters. Some customers could make a fifteen-minute transaction out of less than five bucks. At the end, Louie stood up and held out his hand. “Thanks,” he said. “Appreciate your coming in.” And out they went.

  Brother Louie, a heavy-set young man with a full head of black hair and elegant mustache who had a weakness for two-toned summer shoes and red bow ties, grew old and fat and bald at the bank, where he stayed assistant cashier for thirty years until he retired in 1961, after forty-five years of employment there. It never occurred to me until he retired that once Louie had wanted to make something of himself in the banking business.

  In the flush of pride that accompanied retirement—his picture appeared on the front page of the Herald Star along with an extensive article, “Town Lauds Louie For Years of Service,” and a photo of a Certificate of Distinguished Citizenship that Hjalmar, using his considerable influence, had wangled for Louie from Governor Elmer L. Andersen himself, signed by him and by Minnesota’s Secretary of State Joseph L. Donovan, and presented to Louie at a banquet at the Sons of Knute temple, attended by everyone, even Fr. Emil—Louie went so far as to show me his scrapbook and talk about his salad days, which was utterly unlike him: on Louie’s Grace & Truth shaving mirror was, “Not me, but Christ in me, be magnified,” and he lived by that precept. I never knew a man who tried so hard to avoid the personal pronoun.

  In the scrapbook, along with photos of his parents (who glared at the photographer as if this moment was a terrible insult, even though they had paid for it) and of him and Gladys in the front seat of a Buick roadster (his only non-Ford car) and souvenirs of a honeymoon in the Black Hills, was a certificate from the St. Paul College of Commerce proclaiming in fancy script bedecked with patriotic bunting that Louie had successfully completed a course in finance and banking and earned the degree of Associate of Commerce. It was dated 1931.

  He earned the degree studying at night, and when it came in the mail, he said, “I told Gladys we were moving to the Cities. It was our chance.”

  “We packed everything we owned in the back of the Buick and took off a week later. Sandy and Marylee stayed with their grandma. They cried to see us go, they thought Minneapolis was on the other side of the world, where there were missionaries. We had a flat this side of St. Cloud and another near Anoka and then one in Osseo. Gladys thought I could’ve checked those tires before we left, which I had, but I was too mad to talk about it,
so we hauled in around midnight at the Cran Hotel on Hennepin Avenue, which looked to have reasonable rates in the tourist guide, and got a room. The lobby was dirty, and there were old men sitting around the lobby in their undershirts, and the desk clerk was rude. He said, ‘Whaddaya want?’ Gladys wouldn’t let me pick up the change. She said, ‘You don’t know where that money has been.’ The room was small and it smelled of disinfectant. I opened the closet and almost fell to my death—no floor, it was a shaft of some sort, it went down to the basement; I dropped my shirt in it. We got undressed for bed, and now we were wide awake. Gladys said, ‘Someone died in here, that’s why the Pine-Sol. I’m not about to get into a deathbed.’ She said she would prefer to sleep on a park bench. So we got dressed and snuck down the backstairs to avoid notice. We drove to the Hotel Nicollet. It was a swank place with walnut paneling and potted palms and a carpet like walking in mud. Well, we must’ve looked like orphans in the storm because the clerk asked if we had reservations and then he got snooty with us, he said, ‘Ordinarily we’re full weeks in advance. You really should have written on ahead a long time ago. But you’re lucky, I do have a room for $15.’ Gladys thought it was the weekly rate. She said, ‘No, we’re only staying the one night.’ But I knew. I looked him straight in the eye and I said, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have something better, would you?’ I didn’t want him to think we were green. No, he said, so I said we’d take it and I peeled off a twenty, my only one. Gladys was in shock, and so was I. We got to the room which was like a royal suite, and we couldn’t sleep for thinking about all that money. Fifteen dollars! Gladys said, ‘What made you say that?’ Well, it was pride talking, worldly pride. I was so ashamed. I thought of the girls, the things I could’ve done for them with that money. I sat up all night thinking. I decided that if Minneapolis had that effect on me, that I’d rather spend what I didn’t have than admit to not having it, then I’d better go back where I belonged, and the next day we did. And then I told a lie: I said I’d looked for a job and didn’t find one good enough. It took me a long time to get Minneapolis off my conscience.”