Lake Wobegon



Lake Wobegon is the county seat of Mist County, Minnesota, located near the geographic center of Minnesota, on a lake of the same name. Unfortunately, due to the incompetence of surveyors who mapped out the state in the 19th century, the town does not generally appear on published maps. The town's slogan is Gateway to Central Minnesota. It has been described by Garrison Keillor as a place "Where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." Its city motto is "Sumus Quot Sumus" ("We are what we are").

Lake Wobegon is located near St. Olaf, Minnesota (not to be confused with St. Olaf College, which is located in Northfield, Minnesota.) The town's school and amateur sports teams compete against the Uppsala Uff-das and the Millet Marauders. The town residents drink Wendy's Beer, brewed in St. Wendel, Minnesota. The nearest good-sized town is St. Cloud.

Most of the current population is made up descendants of German immigrants, who are mostly members of the Catholic parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, and descendants of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants, who comprise 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, Norwegian bachelor farmers, the Mist County Fair, as well as Lake Wobegon itself.

Businesses

 * Bertha's Kitty Boutique
 * Buck's Rent-a-Tux
 * Bunsen Motors
 * Café Boeuf, "Where the elite meet to greet and eat," with maitre d' Maurice.
 * Art's Baits & Night o' Rest Motel
 * Chatterbox Café, "The place to go that's just like home."
 * Clifford's (also known as "The Mercantile," which many residents still call it)
 * Co-op Hardware
 * The Curl Up and Dye
 * Farmer's Union Grain Elevator
 * The Herald Star
 * 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"
 * Krebsbach Chevrolet
 * Lake Wobegon High School
 * Lake Wobegon Piles
 * LuAnne Magendanz's Bon Marché Beauty Parlor and Salon
 * Mist County Historical Society Museum
 * Moonlight Bay Supper Club
 * Municipal Sanitary Landfill
 * Powdermilk Biscuit Plant
 * Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery
 * The Sidetrack Tap, run by Wally and Evelyn
 * Skoeglin's 5 and Dime
 * Tentative Point
 * 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)

Organizations

 * The Herdsmen, champion church ushering team
 * Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church
 * Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church
 * Catholic School
 * The Sons of Knute Temple

Points of interest

 * Adams Hill
 * Prairie Home Cemetery
 * Statue of the Unknown Norwegian

Sports teams and locations

 * Lake Wobegon Leeches (baseball)
 * Lake Wobegon Loons (five-man football)
 * The Whippets (baseball)
 * The Schroeders, a baseball team that played in the 1930s, comprised of the members of the Schroeder family
 * Wally "Old Hard Hands" Bunsen Memorial Field