It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. It snowed eight inches on Tuesday and if you’d been there and come for a walk with us you’d know why people in my town love stories so much. There was a fine dim light in the air: the town was full of moonlight, the old street-lamps glowed, the houses were lit, light shone up from the snow, the snow on the trees—it was so absolutely wonderfully shining beautiful, it made you feel that anything could happen now, just as I felt when my uncle Lew sat on the couch and cleared his throat and said in his quavery voice, “Well, I believe this was back in 1906, when I was in high school….”
Anything could happen. George Washington could ride down this snowy street followed by a thousand ragged troops on their way to the battle of Trenton. Angels could descend, saying “Fear not” and scaring the wits out of us. Noah could ride along on an elephant, leading another elephant, and all the other animals strung out behind. Maybe it wasn’t a flood God sent, maybe it was winter and they were snowbound, and it wasn’t an ark, it was a barn. Forty days and forty nights would be a short winter but…In Uncle Lew’s story, a house burned down on a cold winter night and the little children inside ran barefoot into the snow of 1906—some were pitched out the bedroom window by their father—and all were safe. But although I heard the story dozens of times, whenever he told it again I was never sure they’d all get out. And since these children grew up to be my ancestors, I had an interest in their survival.
Just so, walking in the mysterious light of a warm snowy winter night in Lake Wobegon, it’s not quite certain what year this is but it is certain that in this world that we think we know so well, and in our life that we’re always talking about, there is a great mystery and powerful music playing that we don’t hear and stories full of magic, so many stories that life isn’t long enough to tell them all. This seems clear from the light in the air on a winter night. A car goes by so quietly on the snowy street; a little cloud of snow falls when we brush by a tree; our feet crunch on the snow. In this big white house are the Kruegers, in their dark living room, watching television, poor things. They sit in the bluish light and from their faces it’s hard to tell if they’re alive or in a persistent vegetative state—maybe it’s time to pull the plug. The Obergs’ house is dark in front, a light is on in the kitchen. You can just about make out her plate collection in the dining room, dozens of plates on display on shelves he built for her, and such beautiful china and majestic black-walnut furniture, but the four Obergs always eat in the kitchen. Why have good things you don’t use? The next house is Wally and Evelyn’s, who own the Sidetrack Tap, and next is this little beaten-up blue house with plastic tacked on the windows.
In the front window, you see Kenny fooling around with his kids in the living room. The room is all torn up, cushions and clothes scattered around, one kid bouncing on the sofa, three kids hanging on to him, and Kenny chasing the littlest boy, who toddles around the dining-room table, his diaper half coming off. He doesn’t see that his dad has reversed directions. The little boy walks along laughing and then—looks up—in shock and delight (there is no joy like that again in life until you have a baby of your own)—he trembles and squeals and Kenny picks him up. They dance around and then Kenny lies down on the floor and they crawl on him; the boy jumping on the sofa climbs up on the end table and the lamp almost falls.
The dining-room table is strewn with dirty plates and the dog stands, paws on the table, reaching for the meat loaf. Joanne’s at choir practice.
Kenny is a chubby guy with a mustache and the start of a bald spot. You can see he loves them and loves it when they hang on him, and now, just as they’re getting a little too wild and tired and about to break into tears, he collects them in his arms and they all lie back in a heap in the messy messy living room, and he will now tell them a story. The dog is licking the meat loaf, but they don’t see. The kids curl up close to their dad lying on his back, and before he can start the story, everyone has to get very quiet. Very very quiet—you see how stories have been useful to parents over the years: the children get quiet.
It’s the story of Hansel and Gretel, the little boy and his sister in the house in the dark forest; their mother is so sick and she dies and their father is so sad and after a while he comes home with a new mother.…That’s how the story begins.
Kenny lies there with his kids and tells the story, which is familiar, and yet it’s not easy to tell about the dad who lets his wife talk him into leaving the kids in the woods to be eaten by animals. Kenny sometimes forgets a detail but his kids remember each one, and if the bread crumbs on the path sparkle like diamonds in the moonlight in one version of the story, then the next time you can’t say they glisten like pearls, you’ve got to tell it the same way. You can’t disappoint them but you also have to surprise them, so each time he’ll toss in something new and crazy—maybe the gingerbread house will have a garage this time, made of pepperoni pizzas, and the wicked witch will sit drinking coffee and watching TV—but Kenny has to be careful: next time he can’t say the pizzas were sausage and onion. Stories are permanent.
As they lie in a heap, and Hansel and Gretel sit in the clearing and Gretel says, “Don’t cry, Hansel, I’ll take care of you,” and the dog’s big black snout reaches for the gravy bowl, and Joanne is putting on her coat in the vestibule of the church after choir practice, on the end table where the lamp almost fell lies a letter in an envelope addressed to Kenny that tells him that his dad has died. The letter is from his stepmother, written in ink now smeared from orange pop; it says, “Just in case Larry doesn’t get hold of you, I know that you will be glad to hear that Doc finally passed away at Good Shepherd early this morning, it was very peaceful, he just seemed to let go and take a breath and let that be the last one. I’m too tired to write much, but I am grateful for 31 years with him and know it’ll be lonely without him but that is what comes from loving someone, you miss them when they’re not here, and we accept that when we love another, that sadness and loneliness will be part of it. What a lovely man. I will write more tomorrow. Love, Ora.”
Doc was born in Lake Wobegon in 1910. He helped his dad farm and when they lost the farm in 1927 Doc didn’t know how to quit. He couldn’t give up his horses, so he hired out as a farmhand. He got the nickname Doc because he liked books. He loved the independence of farming. In pictures of him as a young man, he looks dignified, tall, shy, poor (you can see that from the clothes), but look in his eyes, he looks like a young prince. He worked as a farmhand in North Dakota and led a pretty wild life. He drank a lot and read a lot, played baseball, stayed out all night, worked all day, and knew some women whom he made a big impression on, either because of baseball or by quoting to them from books and pretending it was his own (“I wrote you a poem, La Verne, I don’t know if it’s good or not. ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit predicaments’”), and one winter, back in Lake Wobegon, he met Dorothy and fell in love. They courted between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and were married the first of February 1944. She was a schoolteacher, so he couldn’t pretend he wrote that sonnet for her. She saw through his bragging and wildness that other women had loved him for, and loved him for something he didn’t know was lovable, that he was gentle and good and when he told the truth he told even better stories. But it wasn’t often enough, and after Kenny was born, the third child, in 1950, she told Doc not to come home anymore. He was forty. He drank too much and did other things that weren’t good for him, but mostly he just plain worked too hard. He still hired out as a farmhand, being a good farmer, but the work was backbreaking. He hurt, his body was so stiff he could hardly move. He kept going because it was all he knew how to do. Then he was too old and sick, at forty-two. He came to Saint Paul and hung around downtown, walking the streets. He looked like an old wino but he was simply worked out. He met Ora, who was a waitress at an all-night diner, and they married and he got a job as a caretaker in an apartment building. They got a tiny basement apartment, where, in 1969, Kenny, who was nineteen, came to see his dad for the first time in twelve years. It was for Thanksgiving.
Ora was very sweet to him. She made him Swiss steak and french fries and asked him fifty questions about himself, but it wasn’t any use, it was terrible sleeping on a couch in the basement in a strange city with a dad you don’t know at all. Kenny felt seven years old, lost, scared. He couldn’t bear to be around his dad, who had left him. He went for walks around Saint Paul, and one snowy night like this he glimpsed the tower of Montgomery Ward’s on University Avenue, a Spanish castle above the used-car lots, and he imagined that a great man lived there who would come and rescue him, a sweet, generous, handsome, strong, and wise man named Montgomery Ward. The next day Kenny ran away from Doc and Ora’s little apartment and went home to Lake Wobegon for Thanksgiving. He saw them the next summer, but only for supper, and the next winter Kenny married Joanne. He loved her so much and was so afraid he’d be like Doc, unfaithful, he didn’t tell her about Doc or invite Doc to the wedding, but by then Doc was too sick to come. He had emphysema and a liver problem. The great lover of 1944 was beginning to die, just as his grandchildren were being born. And now he is dead, finally. Kenny is lying on the floor, five kids on top of him. Hansel and Gretel have escaped from the witch. Gretel didn’t push her in the oven but just turned up the volume on the TV set. She and Hansel tiptoed quietly away.
Their father was overjoyed to see them! They brought home diamonds and emeralds and pepperoni pizzas. And suddenly there was a tremendous crash and the dog ran down to the basement.
The gravy boat is broken. Gravy all over the carpet. The table not cleared, the kitchen a mess. And the living room—cushions on the floor, papers, dog hair, clothes, pop spilled. And little children half asleep, their teeth unbrushed, lying in a heap. Kenny thinks, “Joanne! She’ll be home any minute.” And he’s right. In fact, here she comes down the street from choir practice, humming “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing.” In a moment she’ll come in the front door and look at this scene of incredible chaos, but she would get too angry if she went in now, so the writer is going to send her around the block. She thinks, “Gosh what a beautiful evening, I’ll walk around the block,” and walks past just as Kenny gets up off the floor and sees her. Go, Kenny, go. C’mon, kids, wake up, brush your teeth. Pick up the cushions, papers, scoop up dirty plates, lay paper over the gravy, zoom zoom zoom. Minutes later she walks in. “Honey! What in the world has been going on in here! I can’t believe this mess!” But if she can’t believe it now, she should’ve seen it two minutes ago.
They are in love, though, and later, when the kids are asleep and they go to bed, she says something to him that she said fifteen years ago when they first knew each other. She says: “Kenny, you only think about one thing all the time.” And he says, as he said then: “Yeah, well—that’s so whenever you think about it, then you’ll know there are two of us.”
And after they make love, they lie in their warm winter bed, their arms around each other, the room full of mysterious light. Anything can happen.