Welcome to Midweek Monkery, Lutheran edition. I hope you will enjoy a few of the things that have made me laugh as I have started to learn more about the Lutheran community, especially the immigrant Lutheran community in the U.S.
If you are a laughing Lutheran, I’d love to have you chime in today with a few knee-slappers of your own.
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Top Ten Ole and Lena Jokes
from Trinity Lutheran Church, Frankfort, MI
Ole and Lena are stock characters in folklore of the upper Midwest of the U.S., the outgrowth of the Scandinavian immigrant experience. You can find Ole and Lena jokes all over the internet. Here’s a good list I found on the website of a Lutheran church in Michigan.
1. Ole: Lars, I heard that you saved a man’s life in a restaurant last week.
Lars: Ya, I sure did. I advised him not to eat the Lutefisk.
2. Ole was on an airplane trip. His seat partner was a gorgeous young woman who made Ole’s heart skip a beat. “Where are you going,” asked the young woman. “Minneapolis,” answered Ole. “Same here,” said the gal. I’m going to Minneaplois to meet the man of my dreams… because I read in a magazine that the sexiest, most romantic men in the world are NORWEIGIANS and AMERICAN INDIANS. By the way, what is your name?” Said Ole shyly, “Ole Red Feather.”
3. Ole said that the way to identify a funeral procession in North Dakota is to notice if the combines have their lights on.
4. Ole says Americans are funny: First they put sugar in a glass to make it sveet, a tvist of lemon to make it sour, gin to make it varm dem up, and ice to cool it off. Den dey say, “Here’s to you,” and den dey drink it demselves.”
5. Ole and Lars were visiting France. They went to an Oyster bar where the waitresses were topless. Said Lars to the waitress, “Ve vould like a dozen oysters… and can you bring dem vun at a time?”
6. When Ole and Lena got married and went on their honeymoon. Lena was a bit bashful. As they walked up to the hotel, Lena said, Vhat can ve do so dey von’t know ve’re newlyveds? Answered Ole: YOU carry the luggage.”
7. Lena was visiting with her friend Freda Tofteskov, who explained how her husband Hjalmar had courted her with a rather unusual marriage proposal. Hjalmar told Freda that if she married him, he would either churn 10 pounds of butter, or write her a poem. “I see,” said Lena, “So it looks like you married him for butter or verse.”
8. When Lena tried to give the phone operator her phone number on a long distance call, the operator inquired, “Do you have an area code?” – “”No,” said Lena. “Yust a little sinus trouble.”
9. Ole was filling out a questionnaire. To the question regarding church preference, Ole put down: “Red brick with white trim.”
10. Ole calls up his doctor and says: “Every morning at 5 I have a BM. Fine says the doctor, that’s very healthy… so what seems to be your problem? – “Vell,” said Ole. “I don’t vake up until six.”
“The Herdsmen”
from Life among the Lutherans
Many of us were introduced to upper Midwest and Lutheran culture through the radio show Prairie Home Companion and the writings of its gifted host, Garrison Keillor. Here is a hilarious excerpt from his book about them.
The Herdsmen were winners in the Church Ushers Competition Thursday night in Houston, Texas. They beat out a Baptist usher team, a Methodist, and were first runners-up to a Jewish team called Parkyercarcass. The Herdsmen came home Friday with the first-runner-up trophy, and it was nothing to people. Nothing. A national award. That’s how Lake Wobegon can be in February. Dark and discouraging. The Herdsmen used to have that great front four of Don, John, Louie, and Boomer back in the seventies. And Boomer, he was an usher’s usher. The man worked a sanctuary on Sunday morning like you wouldn’t believe. With Boomer you didn’t have people filling up the back rows first — he moved ‘em right down front. Boomer was a big man, and he got his nickname from his voice, which would strip wallpaper. He’d been a basketball coach and did some auctioneering and raised six kids, and no matter where they were, they could hear Boomer when he called them for supper.
…[Boomer] was founder of the Herdsmen, and they still work from that 4-3-2 formation, even as other ushers have gone to a zone, and their secret still is quickness and anticipation. You can’t push when you usher — that’s called interference — and you can’t close your hand over someone’s arm — that’s called holding — but those guys could move people. The National Church Acolytes & Assistants Association, the NC-Triple A, sponsored the National Ushers Competition, which was held at the Grand Opera House, which is a tough room to work — big balcony, three aisles, boxes, but that’s where the Herdsmen went for the competition.
They raised money for the trip with a series of fish fries, and when you put on fish fries, you’re going to gain weight, so they had to have their pants let out. They wear blue polyester suits with an H and a sheep embroidered on the pocket. They sat in nine adjoining seats in rows twenty-five, twenty-six, and twenty-seven, wedged in like marshmallows, and it was a turbulent flight down to Houston, especially on the descent; the plane was shaking hard, and steam or something was coming out of the vents, the wings were flapping, and they could hear the flight attendants in back singing, “I Walk in the Garden Alone,” which was not reassuring. But they landed in Houston, and then they got on a little bus, one of those buses that is a box set on a truck chassis, so the ride is much the same as what animals get en route to the stockyards, and the bus driver rode around lost, and when the Herdsmen arrived they were nauseated and dizzy. It was 1:30 and they were up to compete at two o’clock, so they barely had time to throw on their clothes, and it was a motley crowd. A thousand people and there were a lot of Episcopalians in there, and they always take more time, and a group of blind nuns, the Sisters of Helen Keller, and that slowed things up — old ladies waving white canes and whacking people with them, and some guide dogs growling and barking — and there were 140 members of Lutheran Weightwatchers, and the kids from St. Vitus’s School for children with ADD, kids who come with a fast-forward button — it was like herding fruit bats and water buffalo. And there were only twenty stalls at the Communion rail and six servers, two of them elderly, but the Herdsmen go the job done by dividing people up and putting the elderly into another line, the sippers (who insist on drinking from the cup) in one line, and then three express lanes for dippers — and they set a new national record, one thousand people taking Communion in fifteen minutes, about 1.1 second per communicant. They might’ve won first place, but two judges marked them low on style, which may have been due to indigestion from that bus ride. Both Elmer and Danny cut some cheese during the competition, loud ones, and the smell hung around, and you lose points for that.
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The Herdsmen Should Have Booked with This Airline
“All fares are by free-will offering, and the plane will not land until the budget is met.”
We are a modest people
And we never make a fuss
And it sure would be a better world
If they were all as modest as us.
We do not go for whooping it up
Or a lot of yikkety-yak
When we say hello, we avert our eyes
And we always sit in the back.
We sit in the pew where we always sit,
And we do not shout “Amen!”
And if anyone yells or waves their hands,
They’re not invited back again.
I’m a Lutheran, a Lutheran — it is my belief;
I am a Lutheran guy.
We may have merged with another church
But I’m a Lutheran till I die.
- Garrison Keillor, “Lutheran Song”