A while since I've seen this file

For a period of time in our lives Deb and I had fun listening to Garrison Keillor. For those of you that have not been exposed to him he does a radio program called a Prairie Home Companion.  He is about 70 now and has written lots of stories. Many of them are about a fictional town by the name of Lake Wobegon in Minnesota.  On several occasion I have played  him and written a radio program and performed it with other people. I think the times I have done this have been for different church gatherings.  Last Sunday somebody asked if I could find one of these old writings.

Upstairs in a file I have poems, stories, plays and just about every other crazy thing you can think of that I have written and read or performed over all of these years.  I kind of retired from this about 10 years ago.  What happens is that when you do something like these you get kind of sick of them by the time you read them or perform them.  For this reason I got in to the bad habit of writing these on the way to the event and this started to cause some family arguments.  Deb would always have to drive and I would be furiously writing.  Another problem is that she would often worry that I would go a little over the line and that some church guy or lady would be offended.  Most of this stuff went pretty well, a couple of disasters, but I will tell you when you do anything like this you take this risk.  I did just get them out and read some of them  and I must confess found myself laughing a little at a few things I had forgotten.  Now that is really sick, laughing at your own junk.

I want to share one of these old things It was written in the year 2000.  At that time "rap" was popular.  The church was having some sort of social event around Valentines day. Some of the stuff may not be understood so let me frame it just a little.  There was a large concern that at the turning of the clock of the year 2000 that computers were going to shut down all systems. People were buying stuff to make sure they had supplies after the turn of the clock.  Paper, travel, food and everything else seemed to be part of the concern.  The writing is a dialog between myself and a volunteer from the audience.  I had Jackie DeGroot come up and help with the reading. Then Norm Donkersloot supply the rap beat with mouth sounds. (We had practiced this and he knew how to do this) There was a little kid by the name of Illian in Cuba that was getting some press. Jerry Falwell was complaining about a kids cartoon called the Telletubies saying they were gay. We were designing a new sanctuary for the church. Our pastors were Marlin Vis and Larry Terlouw.  The dialog is talking abut the possibility that the world will be OK but the church might get kind of messed up with Y-2-K problems.  I lost the first page of this thing so let pick it up here. The first page told about some of the preparations people were making to deal with the coming disaster.

It is I who think in a more optimistic tone
Some body will forget the bills I own
Y-2-K will make us politically serene
Let me tell you now exactly what I mean
Clinton is not telling no more lies
Russ's is still selling lots of apple pies
The Telletubbies even have all gone straight
Jerry Falwell  seems to feel just great
Monica has learned to hang on to here duds
Clinton and Starr have become great buds
Saddam will make a trip to the USA
All this will happen in Y2K
But do not believe everything you hear
Now we come out with our greatest fear
Beechwood Church is what make us nervous
Without our computer how we gonna run our service
The young at heart will forget how to bake        (our churches old people group)
They will want draft beer like Our Lady of the Lake  (local Catholic church with a beer tap)
The pastor sermons would all be deleted
The finances will all be depleted
The orchestra would find a part for another tuba  (we had three tubas at that time)
Missions would bring Illian back from Cuba
Marlin and Larry won't know who is preaching
Childrens worship won't know who is teaching
And what we gonna do we will surely fail
If we can't send everyone all that mail
We will all walk around like a bunch of clones
When our bell tower starts playing some rolling Stones
No more music we will need to plagiarize
We are all going to have it all memorized
Marlin will start preaching one hour sermons
Bonhoffer quotes will all be in German
Church will be dull just plain no fun
No more quotes from William Willomont
Our church nurse will announce her new plans
To give every man free prostate exams
You see this is really a terrible virus
The bulletins will all be printed on Papyrus
Our new Sanctuary designed on Nova-gate
Will end up looking like an apple crate

Nothing happened it was just a big dud
The whole thing went by without a thud
Lake Mac's a little low a huge water loss
Soon maybe the Israelites will be able to cross
Not much else to mention nothing left to say
Does anyone remember this thing called Y-2-K

Sorry to the readers out there who do not know much about Beechwood but I thought some of this stuff might bring back some memories about what was going on at that time.  How about next time some pretty crazy stuff........I will pack away the old stuff and tell you about some new........Thanks for reading.......

Stan the Man