hok382@houxa.UUCP (10/27/83)
This is the original uncut version of the winner of the WILL
Wobegon Write-Your-Own-Garrison Contest; it was submitted by Jim
Fossett of University of Ill.
Bill Larsson and the Power Lines
It's been an exciting week in LakeWobegon. Bill Larrson got
arrested for threatening to blow up the Minnesota Power and
Light pole in the middle of his bean field, and all because of
a few tomatoes that his wife wouldn't let him plant.
Bill is one of our small contingent of ex-Norwegian
bachelor farmers. He and Rhea Nyquist, the middle one of Matt
Nyquist's three daughters, were sweet on each other through high
school, and everybody expected that they'd get married after
they graduated. Bill started farming with his father, and they
were doing pretty well, but he wouldn't propose and he wouldn't
propose and finally Rhea just got tired of waiting and went off
and married somebody else. And eveybody figured that was about
it as far as Bill and girls were concerned.
It looked like they were right for a long time. Old Wally
Larsson, Bill's dad, died after four or five years, and Bill
took over the family place and went on raising beans and wheat
until, about a month shy of his fortieth birthday, following a
whirlwind courtship that lasted about two weeks, he up and
married Zelda Hendrickkson, who taught third grade over in the
elementary school and was about two year older than Bill and
about sixty pounds heavier. Zelda had been the third grade
teacher of everyone under a certain age in Lake Wobegon, and
when she came to the back of the room to break up the bubble gum
card poker games, she blotted out the sun. There were some
folks who said that the only reason Bill married her was because
she had forty acres of tiled land that her father had left her,
and if she hadn't had those forty acres, or if they hadn'tbeen
tiled, Bill wouldn't have given her a second look. Father Emil,
who had married them, and thought that for pretty much anybody,
it was better to marry than to burn, had to resort to a couple
of pretty sharp and pointed remarks in his Sunday homily about
the importance of Christian charity towards one's neighbor
(without mentiaoning Bill and Zelda, of course) to get those
rumors quieted down.
Bill and Zelda surprised everybody and got along pretty well
for a couple years, with the sole exception of the annual
dispute over what to put on those forty tiled acres. Every
year, Zelda always had strong views about what ought to be
planted out there that Bill usually thought were ill advised,
but things always got worked out, until a couple weeks ago, when
Bill decided that he'd like to try tomatoes on ten of those
forty acres. Zelda was strongly opposed, and there was heated
discussion over the supper table for a couple nights until Bill
thought that he had won her over with the cogency of his
arguments about the profitability of tomatoes. So last Monday
night, he decided to get out the planter and the water tank so
that he could get started on the tomato planting first thing
Tuesday morning. Zelda didn't say anything at supper, so Bill
thought, with more than a little relief, that the matter was
settled. But as they were getting into bed, Zelda asked Bill,
with an edge on her voice that Bill should've taken notice of,
"Did you get that water tank out to plant tomatoes?"
If Bill had been wider awake, or less convinced of the cogency
of his arguments concerning the profitability of tomatoes, we
would have paid more attention, but he was bout two-thirds
asleep and thought the matter was settled, so he just mumbled
something and turned over on his side to go to sleep. Then
Zelda, who definitely had not been as convinced of th cogency of
Bill's arguments as he had thought, planted her size 11EEE foot
in the middle of Bill's 9AA back and shoved him out of bed and
onto the floor. Then she announced, in a voice that soundd like
an Old Testament prophet pronouncing judgment, "You're not
getting back in here until you forget about those tomatoes," and
turned her back and closed her eyes.
This put Bill in an awkward position. While he thought he
had mch the better of things, what with the cogency of his
arguments about the profitability of tomatoes, this wasn't going
to do him much good when it came to getting back in bed. When
Zelda lay on her back, she pretty much covered the entire bed
and didn't leave much room even for somebody as slight as Bill,
and Bill didn't think he'd sleep real well anyway if he had to
keep worrying about winding up on the floor./ In addition, Bill
was pretty much angry that Zelda had resorted to force instread
of dealing with his cogen arguments about the profitability of
tomatoes, so he simply announce "The heck with it" or words to
that effect, stalked off, and stumbled downstairs to sleep on
the couch.
Things were pretty icy at the Larsson's for the next two days.
On Tuesday and Wedsneday night, right around bedtime, Zelda
raised an eyebrow and asked, with more than a little steel in
her voice, "You ready to forget about those tomatoes yet?" and
Bill, who wasn't willing to give an inch, even though he had
decided, for the best of reasons, to put off planting the
tomatoes until next week, announced "The heck with it" and
stalked off to the living room and laid down on the couch.
Things finally came to a head this past Thursday. Bill
decided to knock off work on the beans early, since he was
getting a crick in his back from sleeping for three nights on
the living room couch, and decided he'd go into town for a beer.
So he put the tractor away and got into the pickup and drove
down to the Side Track Tap. He said hello to Wally, got a beer
from Evelyn, and went over to sit down sith Per Mansonn and Mike
Helquist, who told him that the power company was going to be
stringing new cables on Friday.
This was the last straw as far as Bill was concerned. He had
a power pole on his land, right in the middle of those disputed
ten acres, so that all the bean rows and corn rows, every year,
had to be crooked to get around the tower, which made
cultivating hard and generally made things look bad. And now
the power company was going to drive this five ton tractor onto
those ten acres to pull up a couple miles of line, pack down
the dirt so you'd never get the clods out, and maybe
crush most of those tile that most everybody still thought were
the reason that he'd maried Zelda. On top of getting kicked out
of bed by his wife and getting a crick in his back from having
to sleep on the the couch for three nights in a row, it was just
too much. After Per and Wally left, he got another beer from
Evelyn, sat and thought for a while, getting madder all the
while at Zelda and at the power company and beginning to feel
that he had to do something to deal with one or the other of
these problems simply to be able to hold his head up and show
that he was indeed the master of his fate. He couldn't think of
any way to deal with Zelda, since he he couldn't figure out how
to get into bed without having to worry about winding up on the
floor, but he got an idea about how to deal with the power
company. So he went back to Wally and Evelyn's pay phone, there
in the back beside the men's room, put in a dime, and called the
power company and told the girl that answered that he was Bill
Larsson and if anyone drove a five ton tractor onto HIS land
without asking him first, well, he had some dynamite out in his
tool shed and he just might see how high he could blow up that
power pole and that they should think about it. Then he hung up
and got in the pickup to drive home, feeling much better about
everything, all things considered.
On the way back home, a state patrol car passed him withits
lights all flashing and he wondered what had happened that they
should be in such an all fired up hurry. When he got home, the
state patrol car was there, a Minnesota Power and Light company
car was there, and a county sherriff's car. The little guy from
Minnesota Power and Light was screaming at the deputy sheriff
about being the biggest taxpayer in the county, or just about,
and deserving to be protected from desparados and thugs and what
was the county sherriff going to do about it. The deputy
sheriff looked like he knew what he'd like to do with the little
guy from the power company, but he came up to Bill and told tim
that he was sorry, but he had to arrest him for conspiracy to
commit malicious destruction of property and he'd have to come
with them. So Bill got in into the police car and they started
over to the county seat.
Bill was crushed. He hadn't meant anything, but had only
wanted to show that he had some control over his destiny, so
when he got up in front of the judge, all he could do was blurt
out "I wouldn't have done nothing except for them blasted
tomatoes." The judge wanted to know what he meant by THAT, so
Bill told him the whole sad story. When he got done, the judge
was looking at him a little funny but the little guy from the
power company started in again about desparadoes and thugs so
the judge threw out the charges and fined Bill 25 bucks for
disorderly conduct and told him to go home and stay away from
telephones for a while.
When Bill got home, he was ready to abandon his cogent
arguments about the profitibility of tomaotes simply to get a
good night's sleep, but Zelda had spent about two hours calling
all over the county trying to find him and was about as frantic
as she could get, frantic to know what had happened to him. And
she wound up offering to sit on the tomato planter to help
plant--which is REALLY going to be a sight--and threatening him
with another week on the couch if he didn't put in those
tomatoes.
And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where.....
MY NOTE:Actually Bill hasn't planted tomatoes since this all
happened, Jim just got these details a little messed up...