News from December 18, 1982

Garrison Keillor's Podcast

Prairie Home Productions

Society & Culture, Fiction, Comedy Fiction, Improv, Comedy

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here is a little gift to our GK and Friends subscribers. (In the Back Room, the paid subscribers receive a monologue from the 80’s weekly)12.18.82Calm falls over LW the week before Christmas, yet there still are no Christmas lights on Main St. GK went back after school was done and went to Christmas Eve service with the eldest Ingqvist daughter (they had been chatting through the fall). He was anything but calm at the service. As they sang “Silent Night” at the service, the congregation broke into tears. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t bring up a tear. After the service, the two of them were talking and he said something he thought was funny. She told him how terribly cold he was and she didn’t want to see him anymore. Now the tears came. GK also remembered the story of the Lundeen family, Mel and Clarice and their eight children. Mel had fallen off the barn and was in the hospital for four months. Christmas was going to be sparse during this time and James was particularly disappointed he wasn’t getting a Lionel train set. BUT when dad finally came home just before Christmas, they all learned this was the greatest present.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, it's been a quiet week.
0:02.0	In Lake Wobagon, my own hometown,
0:04.0	strange as that may seem to some of you,
0:07.0	it being only seven days before Christmas.
0:10.0	Lights still are not up on Main Street.
0:13.0	Nobody seems to be terribly excited about it,
0:15.0	which seems strange to some people in Lake Wobogon.
0:19.0	They say, well, it doesn't seem like it's one week before Christmas, doesn't.
0:25.6	Nope, it doesn't.
0:27.6	A person would expect they'd be running around like poisoned rats,
0:31.6	trying to get all everything together.
0:34.6	But they haven't yet.
0:35.6	May, maybe, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday morning.
0:42.8	But they haven't as yet. Of course, it is the little town that time forgot. And in a town like
0:49.1	that, there are a lot of people who forget what time it is. And they're not easily roused up into a white heat or a frenzy,
0:59.0	but maintain a sort of calm pretty much year-round, which back when I was young and lived there
1:07.0	was the most aggravating thing about that town to me. And now that I'm older and don't, it's one of the most aggravating thing about that town to me.
1:13.5	And now that I'm older and don't,
1:15.4	it's one of the most appealing.
1:21.0	Certain calm prevails in Lake Wobagon in the face of Christmas and other turbulent events
1:26.7	that promise to get us roiled up and Christmas is sure one of those.
1:33.4	I don't know of another time of year when the feelings of so many people lie so close to the
	...

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