The World’s Largest Pile of Burlap Bags
Garrison Keillor
1Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my hometown, out there on the edge of the prairie.
2Last Saturday night, people in Lake Woebegone ate supper on their porches and went outside after the sun went down, in their shirtsleeves, walked out under a full moon, a beautiful, beautiful warm fall night.
3And by Monday, they could feel the furnace going on in the basement down below their feet.
4And in the evening, they looked out at the yard-light and in the triangle of light cast by the yard-light, they could see snow was falling.
5A beautiful moment for some of us and for others a moment of almost sheer horror—to see snow fall.
6Some of us feel that living in Minnesota is like being married to a beautiful woman whom it would take more than one lifetime to know, two or three at least, and winter is just one of her most graceful attributes.
7And other people don’t take well to winter and they feel that living in Minnesota is like being stuck in a very bad marriage.
8And after a while, they divorce Minnesota and they look for some else who is prettier and warmer and more interesting.
9And they go off with that other one, with Miss Georgia or Miss Carolina or Miss Arizona.
10And they send us back Christmas letters that are full of lies about how happy they are and pictures of the beautiful children they’ve had by this new woman--that slut--and pictures of their home there with the beautiful ocean and the beautiful mountains.
11And we think to ourselves, “Just wait for that hurricane, just wait for that earthquake. We’ll see how they like it then.”
12Now Earl and Ruby Dickmeyer were going to down to Ft. Myers, Florida.
13They were thinking that maybe they would get to do it this fall and sell their farm, their turkey operation, and go down there and live with their daughter Debbie, who lives near Ft. Myers.
14But he has had quite a lot of work to do to get his house ready for sale after the mishap this last winter and spring.
15He insulated the house a year ago and mistakenly he put the plastic vapour barrier, nailed that to the studs first, and then put the blanket and insulation on top of that, so that the plastic barrier that holds in moisture was on the cold side of the insulation,
16which meant that over the winter, about six tons of ice accumulated there in his attic and with the spring thaw water melted and it ran down into the interior walls, which came to smell bad around June and July, and mildew. And all of the plaster had to be torn out.
17And Ruby thought that that would be about the time that she wanted to go to Ft. Myers.
18They are both in their late sixties. They would like to live in a warm place.
19The thing that has really been holding Earl back though is that thing that is out in his field. A lot of you have probably seen it, have driven by it. It is the world’s largest pile of burlap bags.
20It is about eighty feet high and it is about two hundred, two hundred and twenty feet long. It sits out there in what used to be his potato field,
21and, uh, the W.L.P.B.B. . . .
22His son-in-law down in Ft. Myers has established a website for the world’s largest pile of burlap bags: He did this as a joke—he is kind of a sarcastic guy, the son-in-law—but it is not a joke to the people who have written in to the website. A lot of them have come up to see the world’s largest pile.
23Earl has put in a special driveway for it and a parking area there and a sign that says “World’s Largest Pile of Burlap Bags” and a little steel collection box. And every weekend he gets like maybe eight, ten, sometimes fifteen or twenty dollars from people who come in to see it.
24Nobody from Lake Woebegone, of course, would ever stop and look at this thing, anymore than they would come to see the world’s largest pile of pig manure.
25People come from far away and they have written in to Earl’s website to talk about what this has meant to them.
26Sitting out there on this flat field, it looks like Ayer’s Rock in Australia.
27And sometimes the sun hits it in certain way when it goes down, and it is quite astonishing.
28A pile of burlap bags eighty feet high and two hundred and twenty feet long.
29And some people have been quite touched by this and their lives have been changed by it.
30There was a women who wrote into the website about a vacation trip that she took with her husband.
31They flew up from Memphis to Minneapolis and on the flight the husband did not turn off his portable electronic device when the flight attendant told him to.
32He was engrossed in playing solitaire on his laptop and he kept this thing on.
33And it did affect the plane’s navigational system so that suddenly the plane started to shake and to buck up and down and the left wing dipped and people cried out and oxygen masks came down out of the ceiling.
34The flight attendants just turned pale and white. You could hear alarms going off in the cockpit. And the pilots were struggling, trying to bring this navigational system under control.
35He did then, of course, turn off his portable electronic device.
36And his wife turned to him and said things she had never said before—as they came down through thick overcast—about being selfish and about not caring about other people and how, if God spared her life, she would like to have a new life and that he would not be in this one.
37So it was a very quiet couple who got their rental car. And they drove north up towards Brainerd and then she took a little detour off to look at the world’s largest pile of burlap bags at Earl Dickmeyer’s farm which she had read about on the website.
38And she drove up there and stood in astonishment looking at this. And she wrote in to the website later.
39She said she realized, standing there, that life is not just one thing that you can describe in a statement or that you can change somehow.
40Life is an accumulation. We add up our lives. Life is everything that has ever happened to us, and so you can’t start a new life, you can add new life to your old life, but this is life.
41And she decided to go on with her husband. The world’s largest pile saved their marriage.
42There are a lot of testimonials like this.
43Now Earl started the world’s largest pile of burlap bags because he is a cheap guy, he is very cheap, and Earl has never paid money for anything that he thought he might ever get for free; he is not easy to go shopping with.
44He used to raise potatoes out in that field and they piled the burlap bags there where the pickers could get them. And one day a friend said to him, “You know, that is the biggest pile of burlap bags I have ever seen in my life.
45And about that time, Earl started to feel that this was an accomplishment, and that he should continue with it.
46And he started to bring home bails of burlap bags by the truckload, and he built this thing up.
47Now the neighbours felt that it was something of an eyesore, and they came over and asked him not to continue with it. And then members of the county board came and said they didn’t think it was legal.
48But he kept adding on fresh bags to the top. And then they got a restraining order against him that said he couldn’t add any more burlap bags to his pile.
49And so he added them late at night. And he would climb up there and he would add some fresh ones to the top.
50One night he was doing this, and he was up on top of the pile, and he saw the headlights come out of his neighbour’s farm, and come up the county road there.
51And he lay down flat on top of the pile, and he heard the car pull into the parking area, and it was his neighbour, Shultz.
52And Shultz said, “I know you are up there, Earl,” he said, “I could call the sheriff right now, Earl, and you would go to prison. I think you ought to think about it. It is an eyesore and you know it.”
53Earl lay up there, pressed flat against the pile. And he could feel the heat coming up from the pile.
54The pressure of all of this weight creates a hot spot in the middle, towards the bottom of the world’s largest pile. It is a red-hot area of burlap.
55It does not ignite because it cannot get the oxygen, but it is red-hot from the pressure. And there is a little thin wisp of smoke that comes up out of the pile, winter and summer.
56Many of the people have written into the website to say that they believed that this heat in the burlap causes the creation of a new substance called “Flajiston,” which gives off a magnetic resonance which cures aliments in ways that medical science cannot understand.
57And people have written into the website who have been cured by this. A man who had kidney stones—he could hardly walk.
58He was carried up in a van, his relatives brought him, and they carried him over next to the world’s largest pile of burlap bags.
59And he stood there in utter pain and suddenly those kidney stones just dissolved.
60And he passed water without pain for the first time in months. His relatives stood and applauded for him.
61There have been many testimonials on the website.
62Mr. Shultz was yelling up at Earl that this was the last time, he was going to get the law on him. And then he got in his pick-up and he drove away.
63Earl lay up there. He thought to himself, “Isn’t that just like people in this part of the country? Little people try to make themselves bigger by attacking something that is big. These people around here, they don’t even know about computers and the worldwide web and going on-line.”
64Earl has got himself a computer in his home and he visits that website almost everyday. He hears from people all over the world—from Australia, from Africa, from Europe, everywhere.
65People would send in their questions, they would say, “Earl, are those all burlap bags there in that pile?”
66Well, actually, the fact is, Earl, back years ago, he had put in feed sacks in there, a lot of different things, including some nylon things.
67But, better to keep it simple, he thinks. “Yes, it is all burlap,” he says, “It’s a hundred percent burlap.”
68It has been amazing. Earl never travelled any place outside of central Minnesota. He is just too cheap to travel.
69But . . . this website . . . he has met all kinds of people from all over, who are curious about this amazing phenomenon of his.
70A young man wrote in and he said, “This is an inspiration. You know, we can’t all have the world’s tallest building, and we can’t all have the world’s longest bridge, but we can all have the world’s most something. You give us something to aim for, Earl. Congratulations!”
71His achievement. You raise turkeys and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. But here . . . amazing, just amazing.
72About two years ago, a man wrote him a letter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He said, “My name is Craig,” he said, “I’m a truck driver. I live in a doublewide mobile home just outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
73And it has been my pleasure for about the last twenty years, since I was twenty-five years old, to attend the all-you-can-eat fish fry at the VFW on Friday nights.
74And recently I have also been going to the all-you-can-eat roast beef dinner at the American Legion on Sunday afternoons, as a result of which I weigh four hundred and eighty-six pounds.
75And I have suffered a good deal of shame and self-hatred as a result of my size. But seeing the picture in your website of your world’s largest pile of burlap bags has given me a new lease on life.
76I realize that this is who I am and God wills it to be thus and life is too short for self-hatred.”
77Well, he was right about that. He died about a year and a half after that. And he left twenty thousand dollars in his will for the upkeep of the world’s largest pile of burlap bags. Earl put the money into the bank.
78And he talked to the mayor of Lake Woebegone, Eloise Crepsbach, this last week. He and Eloise walked down to the world’s largest pile.
79He said, “I want to donate this to the town. Fifteen acres I’ll donate with it, and twenty-thousand dollars for the upkeep.”
80“Well,” she said, “well, that is interesting.” It looked to her as if the thing were infested with mice, which made her feel a little funny about it.
81He said, “I think that this could a boon real to Lake Woebegone. I think that this could be a promotional thing; I think it could be an educational thing. I could see having a park ranger out here talking to people about this.
82And, you know, the upkeep is not that difficult. You put a little pesticide, a little herbicide on it in the spring, and that is about it. I think it could a great thing. You have a gift shop here, you sell postcards and T-shirts and so forth. And I think that, I think having the world’s biggest something is a good thing for this town.
83“Well,” she said, “We would have to get your neighbours’ permission, because, you know, twenty-thousand dollars wouldn’t go far to defend us in lawsuits.
84“Oh,” he said, “The neighbours. They are never gonna get their permission. They hate this thing.
85“Well,” she said, “then I think we may have to move this, Earl.”
86“You can’t move this,” he said, “that would destroy it,” he said, “you would open up oxygen to that hot spot in the centre. That thing would just go up and be an inferno.
87“Well,” she said, “that is going to be a problem.”
88He said, “Eloise, I get letters from people on my website everyday. People have been cured of kidney stones; they’ve been cured of brain tumours. This thing means so much to people, I just have an obligation to take care of this thing before I go down to Florida.”
89She said, “Earl, I’ll do what I can, that’s all I can do.” But she thought to herself, “you know, we are never ever going to get rid of this man unless we accept the world’s largest pile of burlap bags. And then once he goes away, it may not be that big a problem . . .
90So, it is going to the town council this next week. It is going to be a secret meeting. There’s something you don’t want to bring the public in on. Democracy is not the most efficient way of dealing with some of these things. And the town council is going to vote to …
zz