Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake WoB1Gon, my hometown, where the first cold front that makes a person stand up and take notice swept through town about mid-morning Tuesday while Frank Krebsbach was at the convenience store getting a cup of coffee. He hadn't really felt comfortable there ever since they put in one of those new coffee machines, a touch-screen affair that grinds the beans to order and then brews your cup. This is a great improvement to most people but not to eighty-five-year-old men like Frank who had spent a lifetime varnishing their livers with endless cups of a beverage that had been cooking itself on a too-hot burner for a few hours. Fresh coffee is almost an affront to such a man whose very identity is based on drinking the undrinkable, after all.
But this is just the way of the world now, and as Frank stared at the screen asking him which kind of coffee he wanted he noticed a new option, the "Floyd of Rosedale" blend. He asked Jenny behind the counter, "What's this Floyd of Rosedale stuff?"
"Oh, you know, the pig that Iowa and Minnesota play football for every year," she said. "It's just the regular Mahtomedi Blend, they only changed the name because the game's on Saturday. Come back Sunday morning, it'll be Mahtomedi Blend again."
Frank made his coffee, paid for it, and slowly drove his 2007 Chevy Impala back to Krebsbach Chevrolet, the Chevy garage his father Florian had founded, making a living selling cars to his fellow Catholics. But neither the church, nor the Chevrolet Impala, nor Lake WoB1Gon itself were what they had been back in the Sixties and Seventies; today, a guy needed more than just a common religion and a nice Gunmetal Grey four-door Celebrity Eurosport to make a sale. Business wasn't good and it was getting worse every year. The lot was full of SUVs that Frank couldn't sell, but it was a small matter when his mechanics didn't know how to fix them anyway.
Then it dawned on him that the perfect customer for Krebsbach Chev was one from the Cities, a family that would come here to buy a car but never, ever return to have it serviced, because it was just too far to drive for an oil change. Frank had known this for a long time but he had never quite been able to figure out how to let them know that Krebsbach Chevrolet was willing to deal.
But something different struck him this morning. He had a little vision of a pig trophy. A trophy called Floyd of Krebsbach Chevrolet. He wondered how much it would cost to get the name switched. Then he had an idea: he would just drive down to the Twin Cities, walk into Rosedale Center, and ask them how much they paid to get their name on the trophy. Then, he'd offer the trophy people a little more money -- maybe $50, $100 at the very most -- and Floyd of Krebsbach Chevrolet would become a reality. But he needed to hurry if the game was this week.
As soon as he got back to his office he told his daughter Debbie about his plan.
"Oh, you're not going to drive yourself, are you, Dad?" she asked. "You'd better get someone to take you. And you'd better be careful, I heard that on Facebook Antifa said they're going to loot Rosedale right after they get done looting the Walmart in Sauk Centre."
Debbie figured this would be enough to dissuade her father. He had the typical attitude of a WoB1Gonian man: Death, even a cold, ignoble, highly preventable death, was preferable to asking someone for help, and she knew that, like a disturbing number of WoB1Gonians, he was convinced that Antifa was a highly-organized, well-funded and elite paramilitary with global reach rather than the loose, barely coherent linguistic designation it actually was.
Unfortunately, her plan didn't work. Within fifteen minutes Frank had convinced Derek Larson, the young mechanic with the long Duck Dynasty beard that Frank was forever worried would get caught in the fan belt of a running engine, leading to a very expensive Worker's Compensation claim, to drive him to Rosedale Center in the parts truck, and to leave right now.
No. 23 Illinois at Washington (2:30 pm, BTN): The Krebsbach Chevrolet parts truck was a '93 model, the last new service vehicle his father Florian had approved before he retired, and Frank was loath to get rid of it. Change is not easy for rural Minnesotans, after all, and anyway the S10 only had 53,000 miles on it, all of them between Lake WoB1Gon and St. Cloud. But unlike the trucks of today, the sky-high, leather-lined crew cab luxury liners that could have paid a whole year's light bill at the dealership if only there were anyone in Lake WoB1Gon who could be talked into financing $80,000 over eight years to buy one, the parts truck was so small that if you wanted to change your mind, you had to open the window first.
Now, Frank is not a small man, and neither is Derek, and they barely fit, the two of them, side by side inside the truck. As they made their way towards Interstate 94 neither man was happy or even comfortable, but in typical Minnesota fashion neither wanted to be the first one to complain either. So onward they drove, eventually figuring out that as long as they sat perfectly still and took turns breathing, their hips would never touch. And as the miles passed by, they were both missing the old-shoe familiarity of Lake WoB1Gon, but also both embracing the slightly giddy feeling of being away from there and, for a change, completely unknown. That feeling lasted almost all the way to Monticello. Then the GPS on Derek's phone told them there was a crash on 94 ahead, and suggested they get off onto Highway 10 instead.
"No! Anoka is full of speed traps!" Frank said, but the GPS wasn't listening. That was the problem with technology, old men couldn't argue with it about speeding tickets from 2006.
Illinois 24, Washington 18.
Northwestern at Nebraska (11 am, FS1): Eventually they arrived at Rosedale Center, where it took Derek a while to find a parking spot close enough to the door for his elderly boss to waddle inside from. They wound up entering the mall via JC Penney, which prompted a blizzard of loud, inappropriate anecdotes from Frank about the lingerie section of the old Penney's catalog, stories which made Derek ever so glad he had grown up in the Internet Age.
"Let's find the office and get out of here before Antifa shows up," said Frank, a little too loudly.
So they wandered the corridors conspicuously, wondering why they couldn't find the mall office, which a person would think would be fairly easy to find, and it would have been, if either of them had bothered to consult the mall directory they had walked past three or four times, but that would have been dangerously close to asking for help. Frank was beginning to despair and honestly beginning to give up when he spotted something that took his breath away. Not the mall office, but a small group of young adults, in their very late teens or very early twenties. There were three girls and one boy -- they were three women and a man, but in the WoB1Gonian mind anyone under forty is still a kid, unless they've been charged with a crime -- and they all had brightly colored hair, no two of them the same shade.
"There they are!" said Frank, pointing right at them. "That's Antifa! I recognize them from TV!"
"Mr. Krebsbach ... I don't think they're actually Antifa, I think they're just, you know, people," said an exasperated Derek.
"Don't sass me! I saw them on the news, all the Antifas have colored hair! We've got to warn somebody before they start looting!"
Nebraska 31, Northwestern 13.
Wisconsin at No. 6 Oregon (6 pm, FS1): Suddenly Frank and Derek were confronted by a uniformed individual, a young woman whose ethnicity they could not quite place, except to say that she was definitely neither German like Frank nor Norwegian/Danish like Derek.
"Thank goodness!" Frank said when he realized she was a security guard. "I think Antifa is down that hallway, by Von Maur! You'd better shoot them before they start looting!"
The guard, who had seen the dyed-haired "mob" of four people and knew them to be perfectly harmless community college students, instantly knew she was dealing with someone from out in Greater Minnesota. "We're keeping an eye on them," she said. "If they start any trouble, the Roseville Police will be here right away."
There was an uncomfortable pause. "You should shoot them anyway," Frank said.
The guard made eye contact with Derek, who had a look on his face that clearly communicated Do not listen to this crazy old man. That way lies madness. "Is this your first time at Rosedale Center?" she asked. "Are you looking for a particular store?"
"No, no, I want to talk to the manager," Frank said.
"Sir, if Antifa causes any trouble, we will handle it," she said, thinking she had read him correctly, but not yet realizing that trying to read Frank Krebsbach was like trying to read a can of alphabet soup without opening it.
"It isn't that," Frank said. "My name is Frank Krebsbach, from Krebsbach Chevrolet in Lake WoB1Gon, and I want to talk about a business deal."
The guard heaved a sigh of relief, one of those sighs that was about ninety-three percent inward, but just outward enough to be audible. "I'd be glad to take you to the mall director's office," she said. "Would you like that?"
"Yes, very much," said Frank, and they walked down the long corridors together. Frank and Derek learned that her name was Marci, she lived in St. Paul, and she had never even heard of Lake WoB1Gon. "It's not on the map," Frank told her, and then proceeded to tell the story of why it was not on the map, which did not fascinate her.
They reached the mall office, which was in a side corridor, way down past the restrooms. Frank had expected a bustling, prosperous place with many people working in it, but it was just a sad, ignored-looking office with a dropped ceiling and buzzing fluorescent lights.
Marci led them to an office at the back, where a fortysomething woman was staring at a spreadsheet on her computer monitor. "This is Ms. Peterson, the director of Rosedale Center. Ms. Peterson, this is Frank, and this is Derek, and they have a business deal to discuss with you." Marci had opened her eyes very widely when she said the words "business deal," in hopes that she could warn Ms. Peterson that she was about to deal with the ravings of a crazy old man.
But that warning was unnecessary. Before Ms. Peterson could even get up from her desk to shake their hands, Frank blurted out "How much do you pay for the pig?"
"I'm sorry?" she asked, genuinely confused.
"The pig, the Rosedale pig, that they use for the football game."
Marci looked at Ms. Peterson again, a look that said "These guys don't really belong here."
Oregon 47, Wisconsin 0.
Minnesota at Iowa (2:30 pm, CBS/Paramount+): "The pig?" said Ms. Peterson. "That's not our ... pig. We don't really have anything to do with it."
"Oh," said Frank. "So how come it has your name? You see, I'm Frank Krebsbach, from Krebsbach Chevrolet, up in Lake WoB1Gon, and I thought maybe we could work out something where I'd pay you some money and the pig could be Floyd of Rosedale and Krebsbach Chevrolet. I mean, it's an even better deal for you if you're getting all that advertising for free."
In that moment the mall director realized something important about Frank Krebsbach. Sometimes when a person gets old we talk about how their brain has gone soft, but she realized Frank's brain had gone hard, like a cinnamon roll left uncovered on the counter overnight, and she also realized, in that moment, how impossible it was for Frank to consider that he was simply wrong. His delusion that the Rosedale from which Floyd came had to be the mall was merely a product of living in a world so small it didn't extend any further than the Twin Cities. There simply couldn't be another Rosedale. This was the one he knew. And she pitied him, though not nearly as much as she pitied Derek.
"Oh ... well, our marketing person is out of the office today," she said. "I can take your phone number and he can call you tomorrow, if you would like. But I'm afraid I can't get the name of the pig changed before the game this weekend. You see, we've ... we've already paid for this year, and we can't get our money back."
Now, if there is anything a small-town Minnesota man understands, it is that once you can't get your money back, there is nothing more to be done. Whatever it is, you're stuck with it.
"Oh. Okay, yes, that would be very nice," Frank said, and he gave her the number for Krebsbach Chevrolet, because his cell phone number was a secret guarded more carefully than the nuclear codes, since Frank lived in fear of an irate customer calling him during a Twins game.
"Is .. there anything else I can do for you?" she asked.
"No, no, I look forward to hearing from him. Thank you," he said, and he and Derek began the long, slow shuffle back to the parts truck.
The mall director waited until they were just out of sight before tossing Krebsbach Chevrolet's number into the wastepaper backet.
Frank and Derek oozed out onto Snelling Avenue, thence onto 694, and pointed themselves back towards Lake WoB1Gon, neither one speaking a word.
Somewhere just beyond Maple Grove, Frank ventured a thought.
"I bet the security guard was Antifa too," he said.
Iowa 31, Minnesota 27.
Well, that's the news from Lake WoB1Gon, where all the mascots are strong, all the bands are good-looking, and the teams are all above average.
Photo credits: “The news from Lake Wobegon” by Alan Kotok, CC BY 2.0; GM Publicity Photo via Consumer Guide; Wikimedia Commons; public domain.
Thanx and a Tip O' The Hat to Adam Jacobi for the Lake WoB1Gon idea!
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