Lake Wobegon is a fictional town in the U.S. state of Minnesota, said to have been the boyhood home of Garrison Keillor. Keillor reports the News from Lake Wobegon on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, broadcast live every Saturday afternoon over Minnesota Public Radio and public radio stations throughout the US and other stations around the world. (Keillor was actually born and raised in Anoka, Minnesota.)
Contents |
Name
On the show Keillor says the town's name comes from a fictional old Indian word meaning "the place where we waited all day in the rain [for you]." Keillor explains, "Wobegon" sounded Indian to me and Minnesota is full of Indian names. They mask the ethnic heritage of the town, which I wanted to do, since it was half Norwegian, half German."[1] The English word "woebegone" is defined as "affected with woe" and can also mean "shabby, derelict or run down."
Models
Although Keillor has revealed that his original model for Lake Wobegon was actually Freeport, Minnesota,[2] it also resembles many small farm towns in the upper Midwest, especially western Minnesota, North Dakota, and to some extent, eastern South Dakota and northeastern Montana. These are rural, sparsely populated areas that were settled only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely by homesteading immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia, especially Norway. One of these, Holdingford, Minnesota, which Keillor said is "most Wobegonic" and like Freeport is on Stearns County's Lake Wobegon Regional Trail, advertises itself as the "Gateway to Lake Wobegon" and even hosts a "Lake Wobegon Cafe."[3]
Keillor formed most of his ideas for Lake Wobegon while working for MPR at KSJR[4] on the campus of St. John's University in Collegeville, Avon where he lived, and local towns such as Albany, Freeport, Cold Spring, Rockville, St. Joseph, St. Stephen, St. Wendell and Holdingford. Stearns County was predominantly German and Roman Catholic in the 1970s, and the second most Catholic county in the USA (second only to New Orleans). In order to balance the religious and ethnic demographics of the physical location in Stearns County with the rest of Minnesota, Keillor 'imported' the Lutheran and Scandinavian elements into the mythical town, making it more identifiable and therefore more interesting to the rest of the state.
Location
According to Keillor, Lake Wobegon is the seat of Mist County, Minnesota,[5] a tiny county near the geographic center of Minnesota that supposedly does not appear on maps because of the "incompetence of surveyors who mapped out the state in the 19th century". The town's slogan is Gateway to Central Minnesota.[2]
Lake Wobegon is occasionally said to be near St. Olaf, Minnesota, another fictional town referenced in The Golden Girls television series. (There is actually a St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.) The town's school and amateur sports teams compete against the Uff-das of Upsala, a real town in southwest Morrison County, which is close to Holdingford. The town residents drink Wendy's Beer, brewed in St. Wendel, a real town in northeast Stearns County. The nearest good-sized town referenced in Keillor's monologues is St. Cloud.
Microsoft Virtual Earth now returns a location when Lake Wobegon, MN is entered into their search engine. The place is a little north and somewhat east of St. Cloud. The programs distributed at live performances of A Prairie Home Companion in 2005 have a map showing Lake Wobegon about two miles north of Holdingford, north and west of St. Cloud.
History and character
Keillor identifies the founders of Lake Wobegon as New England Unitarian missionaries who came to convert the Native American Ojibwe Indians through interpretive dance, although most of the current population is made up of members of the Catholic parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church.
The 800 residents (1950 Census: 728) are proud of the Statue of the Unknown Norwegian (so called because the model left before the sculptor could get his name). Lake Wobegon is in competition with its rival, St. Olaf, for having the most descendants of the same common ancestor (aka "Stearns County Syndrome"). Lake Wobegon became a secret dumping ground of nuclear waste during the 1950s.
The town is the home of the Whippets baseball team, tuna hotdish, snow, Norwegian bachelor farmers, ice fishing, tongues frozen to cold metal objects, and lutefisk, which is fish treated with lye which, after being reconstituted, is reminiscent of "the afterbirth of a dog or the world's largest chunk of phlegm."[6]
In popular culture
Despite its fictional status, fans have made trips "to" the town. A book of photos, co-authored by Keillor, documents images which could have come from Lake Wobegon.[7]
The Mall of America had a "Lake Wobegon, U.S.A." store which sold products connected with Keillor's program, and also with selected NPR and PBS programs. This store closed January 31, 2009.
In the episode "Don't Make Me Over" of Family Guy, in an attempt to calm a crowd of angry rioting prisoners, Peter begins to tell a "funny story about Lake Wobegon". The story is started "It was the day of the tuna hotdish jamboree..." when he is hit by a chair, and stopped.
The "News from Lake Wobegon" segment from its radio show is jokingly revealed to be an outsourced radio show from India in the animated PBS adult television series Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns. Garrison Keillor provides the voice of himself.
In April of 2009, satirical news source The Onion released an article detailing the discovery of several grisly murders in Lake Wobegon, possibly committed by Garrison Keillor himself.
The Lake Wobegon effect
The characterization of the fictional location, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average," has been used to describe a real and pervasive human tendency to overestimate one’s achievements and capabilities in relation to others. The Lake Wobegon effect, where all or nearly all of a group claim to be above average, has been observed among drivers, CEOs, stock market analysts, college students, parents, and state education officials, among others.
Businesses and organizations
- Jack's Auto Repair, including Jack's School of Thought (correspondence), Warm Car Service, Dry Goods Emporium, Jack's Fountain Lounge and Jack's Home, "a rest spa for people of all ages".
- Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery; "If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along (pretty good) without it"
- Bertha's Kitty Boutique
- The Sidetrack Tap, run by Wally and Evelyn; "The dim little place in the dark where the pinball machine never tilts, the clock is a half-hour slow, and where love never dies"
- Chatterbox Cafe; "The place to go that's just like home"
- Art's Baits & Night o' Rest Motel (Art got sick of people being around, so you can't rent rooms there these days)
- Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church; Father Emil
- Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church; Pastor Ingqvist
- Bunsen Motors (Ford dealer), run by Clint and Clarence Bunsen, local Lutherans
- Moonlight Bay Supper Club
- Buck's Rent-a-Tux
- Krebsbach Chevrolet, run by Donnie Krebsbach, local Catholic
- The Herald Star, town newspaper run by Harold Star
- Skoeglin's 5 and Dime
- LuAnne Magendanz's Bon Marché Beauty Parlor and Salon
- Co-op Hardware
- Clifford's (also known as "The Mercantile," which many residents still call it.)
- The Sons of Knute Temple, Norwegian fraternal organization
- The Whippets, town baseball team
- The Herdsmen, champion ushering team
- The Curl Up and Dye, Another local Salon
- Tentative Point
- Lake Wobegon Piles ("twin 18-foot-high islands in the center of Lake Wobegon" created in 1956)
- Mist County Historical Society Museum
- Wally "Old Hard Hands" Bunsen Memorial Field
- Lake Wobegon Leeches (baseball)
- Lake Wobegon Loons (five-man football)
- Powdermilk Biscuit Plant (on the road to Worthington)
- Lake Wobegon High School
- Municipal Sanitary Landfill
- Statue of the Unknown Norwegian
- Farmer's Union Grain Elevator
- Bob's Bank, in the green mobile home
- World's Largest Pile of Burlap Bags (created by Earl Dick-Meyer to fund his and his wife's move to Fort Myers, Florida, and the centerpiece for a mysterious cure to ailments, such as kidney stones.)
In literature
Keillor has written several semi-autobiographical books about life in Lake Wobegon, including:
- Lake Wobegon Days (1985)
- Leaving Home (1987)
- Wobegon Boy (1997)
- Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (2001)
- Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon (2007)
- Liberty (September, 2008)
See also
References
- ^ Post to the Host, A Prairie Home Companion website, October 23, 2008
- ^ a b Garrison Keillor. In Search of Lake Wobegon. National Geographic Magazine, December 2000
- ^ Official City of Holdingford web site
- ^ KSJR 90.2, Minnesota Public Radio
- ^ Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days. p. 8
- ^ Keillor, Garrison (2007-09-11). Pontoon. Viking Adult. pp. 185. ISBN 978-0670063567.
- ^ Garrison Keillor, In Search of Lake Wobegon, by Garrison Keillor and Richard Olsenius, 2001.
External links
- Lake Wobegon Trail in Stearns County, Minnesota
- In Search of Lake Wobegon from National Geographic, part of an article plus links to related sites
- Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy, Peter Norvig, Google Research Blog
- News From Lake Wobegon podcast, National Public Radio
- A Prairie Home Companion
- Lake Wobegon Monologues, American Public Media's Pretty Good Goods
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
