bobr@tekgds.UUCP (Robert Reed) (10/25/83)
News from Lake Wobegon
The Pete Peterson Memorial Duck Blind
By Garrison Keillor
It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, that little town that
time forgot. There was a big celebration there, though. Two weeks ago,
the boosters club put on a big party at the Sons of Knute Temple, to cele-
brate the Lake Wobegon Whippets winning their last game of the season.
That was on Labor Day weekend. We didn't get a score in time to put it on
the show, but they beat the Avon Bards by a score of 8 to 4. And I guess
if there was a turning point in that game, it came in the top of the fifth
inning, when Ronny out in center field went deep for a long, long fly ball
one of the Bard's sluggers had hit out there.
Ronny really put on the steam for it. He went back, he went up
against the fence. He went through the fence. And he tore out, oh, I
think about a hundred feet of snow fence out there. The Bards came to tell
the umpire, Mr. Halverson. Old Mr. Halverson, he's retiring at the end of
this season--retired now. They said, "Uh, he broke down the fence, Mr.
Halverson!"
And Mr. Halverson says, "Well, of course they're not on the bench!
They're out in the field, can'cha see?"
So, it kind'a opened up the game, in a way. Bards really never
threatened after that, aside from, oh, I'd say about one 450 foot fly out,
and one, I think Ronny went way back in the soybeans for. Didn't have much
of an attack, after that, so they won.
Mr. Yalmar Incvist sort of raised some eyebrows in town here, on
Wednesday this last week, when he walked into the Side Track Tap and
ordered a whiskey. You don't often see that, in town. He doesn't hang out
there. Goes in there about as ah, well, you'd see him in there about as
often as you'd see him go down the street in his undershorts I would
guess--which he last did about two years ago, when his dog ran out the door
with his wallet in his mouth. Yalmar's wallet, that is.
Yalmar was down in the dumps because on Monday morning Virginia had
announced that she was going to redo the kitchen and, as long as she was
going to do that, she was going to redo the living room and the dining room
too. She said it's just so dark.
"It feels like the state penitentiary in here."
Yalmar said, "Well, ah, it's been cloudy lately, and the day's are
getting shorter. Why don't you wait until May? And see...see if you don't
like it better."
But, there was no point in arguing with it, because the rule in their
house has always been that she took care of the inside and he took care of
the outside. And they've lived this way for, now, these many years. Trou-
ble is, of course that you've got to live on the inside so what you do on
the outside, you don't always notice that much.
He painted the gutters and the rain spouts and the storm windows, here
a week ago, and she never noticed. I mean, he could'a painted them char-
treuse. In fact, maybe he should'a painted them chartreuse. Maybe she was
going to paint the dining room chartreuse! He didn't know. She just got
this American Lady Book of Interiors from American Lady Magazine, and Yal-
mar took one quick look at it and clapped it shut.
Well, sir, he came home on Monday night. She had already moved the
furniture and started in on the walls. See, this announcement of her's, "I
been thinking about redoing the kitchen," really wasn't a proposal at all.
It was kind of a declaration of war in his mind, which she had delayed
until the last moment so as to gain the advantage of surprise.
And by Wednesday, the house was in a complete uproar. She'd started
in to paint the living room peach and apricot. Then there'll be a big
thick white shag carpet on the floor and a coffee table, with GLASS on it.
A lot of chinese figurines, and she threw out his driftwood lamp, and she
took his favorite old green chair, and put it down in the basement, where
it'll rot in a couple of weeks. Hanging a bunch of organza and tule cur-
tains.
And it wasn't the money. He can afford it. So can she. I mean, she
was a Putnam, after all. It wasn't the money. It was the idea of it.
Because Yalmar is an older guy and the more he looks around him, the more
he sees things that he doesn't like. Bunch'a loudmouth smart off kids
downtown, kids with no discipline, kids that don't know anything about
money. Don't know anything about hard work. Schools aren't doing their
job. There's no discipline. Nobody works any more. Country's falling
apart. Run by lawyers.
It's just a mess, but at least you can go home and sit down in your
chair, put your feet up, light a cigar, read a magazine. Except now, he
couldn't do it anymore. She might as well hang a velvet rope across the
door. That living room was just like a showroom. And the kitchen. She
was hanging WALLPAPER in there! Wallpaper with tiger lilies and humming-
birds on it, that she showed him a swatch of on Tuesday, and it was like a
flashbulb. It made an impression on the back of his retina, so he saw it
whenever he closed his eyes.
He walked into the Side Track Tap. He sat down. He ordered a whis-
key, he threw it back. He asked for another one. He sat there a while.
He looked at Wally. And he said, "Wally, in a few hundred years, man will
be extinct. There'll be just women. You look around, you can see it hap-
pening. We'll be all gone then. Be no more like us."
Wally said, "No", he said. "They'll always need men, to lift heavy
things and replenish the species, things like that."
Yalmar, he says, "Nah, they got machines for the one and I'll be'cha
they're working on machines for the other. In a hundred years, every kid
in America will come out of one big plant. It'll be out in California,
someplace. They'll ship'em east. Won't be any men left. They'll have to
have interpretive centers, so school kids can go and see what guys were
like, what they talked about, what they looked like, what they did.
They'll dig up our bones and put them in glass cases. You wait. You'll
see."
Wally said, "It's getting late. It's 5:30, Yalmar."
Yalmar said, "Yes, supper time, huh? Gotta go. I'll see ya."
They didn't see him after that. I don't think they'll probably see
him for a while.
There were some men in Lake Wobegon who were having a high old time,
though, this last week. And I'm talking about the Sons of Knute up at the
Sons of Knute Temple. They were busy all week down in the basement, build-
ing duck decoys, for duck hunting season, which starts in just a little
bit, and which is such a big deal for all those old guys. They take off
for the weekend of the opener and every weekend thereafter, until they get
sick.
Go out to the Pete Peterson Memorial Duck Blind and Hunting Lodge, out
on the east end of the lake, away from town. Sit out there and whoop it up
and have a great old time. Every so often when they think of it, take a
few shots, ya know? They do love their duck hunting and they look forward
to it.
The memorial lodge is the lake home that Pete Peterson, the late Pete
Peterson built, for himself and his wife, Tina, after he retired from the
locker plant, ah, about twenty some years ago. He was a duck hunter and he
built that lake home right down on the shore, with the bedroom looking
right out on the slough, and a great big window that you could pull a rope
and it would drop down so you could take shots right out from there.
Because he loved to hunt ducks and he wanted to hunt ducks until the day he
died, and he intended to die in that bed, and he did, with his twelve gauge
on his shoulder.
They moved out there in the summer, and that fall on opening day about
sunrise, Tina awoke to a blast, that came from beside her on the bed. It
was Pete crouching on the bed, in his PJs.
She said, "What in the name of heavenly glory?"
He looked at her. He said, "Merganzers."
That was the day he started building the duck blind. It's down on the
shore, almost as nice as the lake home itself. He dug it deep and he laid
concrete in the bottom, built up concrete walls, put in carpeting down
there. He had a little bar, in there. He had room for a sofa. Sometimes,
during duck hunting season, he'd stay out there for days at a time, espe-
cially when Tina locked him out of the house, he'd stay out there. he
didn't like to eat duck. The only fowl he liked were turkeys and chickens.
She said, "Why don't you hunt chickens?" she said. "It'd be a lot
cheaper. We could get a hen house. We'd buy about 30-40 Leghorns. You
could go out there, bang away at them any time you wanted to."
He said, "That's silly... That's silly, chickens don't fly!"
So they'll all be out there, at the memorial lodge and memorial duck
blind on opening day, if they can get these decoys out of the basement.
The decoys they're building, the Sons of Knute are building, are out of
fiberglass. They're about 10 feet long and about 8 feet high, which they
built that size because ducks fly so high that they can't see your regular
decoys in the lake. At least, they haven't seen the Knute's decoys, for a
while. The few that did come down for a bit were frightened away by the
duck calls. So they got these big ones. And a duck will look down at that
altitude, and it will look like regular ducks, to that duck.
You'll have ducks flying overhead. Duck'll look down and say, "Look,
there's a duck down there. I can see it clearly. The lake looks a little
smaller than last year, in comparison to the duck, I mean, but let's go
down and have a look." That's the idea.
So they've been cutting the heads off these ducks so they could get
the decoys out of the basement. People kind'a been avoiding comment on it.
They're sweet old guys. They have a lot of fun doing this. It's a big
deal to them. Clarence Bunsen saw one duck they hauled out. He said it
looked more like a pigeon, but he didn't say anything about it.
Everybody's keeping a straight face about it, and so am I.
I'm not a hunter. I never have hunted. But I've done a lot of crazy
things in my day, too, that I hope to keep on doing. I hope to keep on
doing them. Tina thought it was ridiculous, because you could buy meat,
down at the locker plant. Why shoot it?
But the same thing applies to writing in a way. Lot of books in the
stores, lot of literature. Why try to create your own? And as for Pete
not eating duck, I don't know many writers that like to sit around and read
their own stuff. Not many of them. So I wish them well. Good luck to the
Knutes. Just remember, those are guns you got out there, not typewriters.
Keep on the safety. We count ya as you go out and we hope to see all of
you return, the same number.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all
the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
--
Robert Reed, Tektronix Logic Design Systems, tektronix!tekgds!bobr