This past spring, we got a call for Steve’s landscape business on the home phone. It was Tom Krebsbach who, with his brother, used to run Krebsbach Motors in downtown St. Joseph. I really can’t imagine a car dealership in the center of town, but I know it was so. According to the locals, Garrison Keillor and Bill Kling, the longtime president of Minnesota Public Radio, used to buy their cars there.
So it was that Garrison Keillor used the name Krebsbach for a couple of his characters, most notably Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach. Florian sells Chevrolets at Krebsbach Chevy, where all the Catholics in Lake Wobegone buy their cars, while the Lutherans shop at Bunsen Motors. In a famous story on the show, Florian left his henpecking wife Myrtle at a truck stop. Unlike Florian and Myrtle, our Krebsbachs are a loving and delightful couple. Another character in Keillor’s world, Carl Krebsbach, who is perhaps a nephew of Florian, is known for his all-around competence. He can fix any car and accomplish any household repair.
We have lots of guys like that around here. In fact, one came to our house last Saturday to install our digital antenna. We are beyond the area you should be able to pick up signals from the Twin Cities, but Ray Lohlein was here for three hours, endlessly patient and endlessly talking and making jokes, until we could get something like 20 channels, many in high def. He determined the steel wires in our patio railing were interfering with the signal. He attached a booster. He re-routed the wires inside directly to the television. My favorite moment was when he called his wife and she checked all the channels they get at their home. Remote to remote, she reeled them off and he repeated them back to her. Yup, we were getting all of ’em. As Steve and I said of the whole thing: “It’s a miracule.”
When Tom Krebsbach called to have some shrubs removed, it was another reminder that I live here, in Lake Wobegone. It is both a real and unreal place. A local monk who grew up in Northern Minnesota said to me that when he first heard Garrison Keillor’s schtick, he said, “Who thinks this is funny? These are just ordinary stories of stuff that happens all the time. Who wants to hear this?”
Tom and his wife, the lovely and kind Helen (Pfannenstein) Krebsbach, recently sold their house and were packing up to move into a smaller house being built by Collegeville Properties. I pass it nearly every day and have looked forward to having them as nearer neighbors. When Tom called, he’d say, “I know Steve is busy, don’t bother him– just tell him to call when he gets a chance.”
I learn people’s names and identities slowly. There are a few couples and individuals I know to wave to as they walk their dogs or admire their lawns and homes when I drive by. Usually they are attached to a landscaping story. I’m trying to build out my sense of community, even as it constantly changes and shifts.
Today in church we heard that Tom Krebsbach died yesterday. His funeral is on Tuesday morning. Although he was 80, it is sudden and very sad. Reading his obituary I learned that he graduated from Cathedral High School and after St. John’s University he signed with the New York Yankees. He played minor league ball with the Joplin Miners and served in the army in the 1950s, stationed in Germany.
Driving home, we were so sad for Helen, and admired the windows of the new house. Then Steve remarked that the same thing happened to Nelda, a woman in our neighborhood. Her husband died shortly before they were to move into their newly built house in the Graceview Estates subdivision. We love Nelda, who is all joy and goodness. She walks her little dogs, one of whom usually rides in a stroller, and her landscaping is quite nice, her gardens welcoming and bright.