GK: I grew up just north of here in Anoka, Minnesota, where the Rum River flows into the Mississippi and where my grandma lived on the farm that Uncle Jim farmed with horses and my cousins Susie, Rachel and Janice and I sat in the backseat of a Model T and we sang sad songs.
GO TELL GRANDMA
Grandma had a goose that ran free in the yard and tormented us and one day I saw Grandma following the goose and the goose walked a little faster and Grandma walked faster and the goose tried to run and Grandma lunged at him and got hold of him and he was honking and squawking and then she just cranked his neck and suddenly he hung limp under her arm. It was memorable, seeing your Grandma do that. It gave you a new perspective on grandmothers.
We loved sad songs. We sang the one about the children who died in the blizzard.
POOR BABES IN THE WOODS
It was sung to me as a lullaby. You remember these things.
I loved Anoka. I graduated from Anoka High School where we stood in the gymnasium bleachers as our team came out on the floor and we sang with real feeling:
ANOKA FIGHT SONG
GK: Fight, fight to Victory, team team it's your game ---- you get older and you no longer know what victory is or who is on your team or even what exactly the game is, and yet you're still loyal to something. You're proud of Minnesota, the land of sky blue waters.
HAMM'S BEER
And wherever you go in the world, you look for Minnesota products, Land O'Lakes butter and 3M Scotch Tape and a Radisson Hotel and Cargill fertilizer and Green Giant frozen corn in butter sauce....
JOLLY GREEN GIANT
And when I lived in New York years ago, I went to a Lutheran church, Holy Trinity, because it was full of Minnesotans and they sang the hymns in lovely four-part harmony as all Lutherans do.
CHILDREN OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER
GK: And wherever I go, I carry a coffee cup that my mother gave me, with Minnesota written on it and a picture of a loon. And sometimes in strange airports, I quietly make the call of a loon (SFX) and if I hear other people call back (SFX), then I know I have friends. As it says in our state song, Thy sons and daughters true will proclaim thee near and far. They will guard thy fame and adore thy name, thou shall be their Northern Star. We had a wonderful basketball team, the Minneapolis Lakers, they moved to L.A. where there are no natural lakes. We never forgave them. A hockey team, the North Stars, moved to Texas. Texas is not the North. The idea of hockey in a state with no ice is ridiculous.
When I need to test my brain to see if its still working, I simply recite the 87 counties of Minnesota.....
And when I feel down, I can bring myself back up by singing, Minnesota Hats off to thee, to our colors true we shall ever be. And that's how I feel.
MINNESOTA ROUSER
Minnesota Rouser
Hamm's beer theme
Jolly Green Giant theme
Halsa dem Darhjemma
Children of the Heavenly Father
Anoka Fight Song
Go Tell Grandma the Old Grey Goose Is Dead
Poor Babes in the Woods