page_title: Lake Wobegon
section_title: Businesses, organizations and landmarks
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Wobegon / Businesses, organizations and landmarks
caption_attribution_description: English: Mall of America
context_page_description: Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison Keillor as the setting of the "News from Lake Wobegon" segment of the radio program A Prairie Home Companion. Lake Wobegon is also the setting of many of Keillor's stories and novels. It is described as a small rural town in central Minnesota, and is peopled with fictional characters and places, many of which became familiar to listeners of the broadcast. The events and adventures of the townspeople provided Keillor with a wealth of humorous and often touching stories.
  Keillor has said that people often ask him if it is a real town, and when he replied that it was not, they seemed disappointed, because "people want stories to be true". So he began to say it was in "central Minnesota, near Stearns County, up around Holdingford, not far from St. Rosa and Albany and Freeport, northwest of St. Cloud", which he says is "sort of the truth, I guess."
context_section_description: Businesses, organizations and landmarks in Lake Wobegon include:
  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"
  Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery; "If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along (pretty good) without it."
  Bertha's Kitty Boutique ("for persons who care about cats")
  The Sidetrack Tap, run by Wally and Evelyn; "The dim little place in the dark where the pinball machine never tilts, the clock is a half-hour slow, and love never dies."
  The Chatterbox Café, "The place to go that's just like home."
  Café Boeuf, "Where the elite meet to greet and eat," with maitre d' Maurice.
  Art's Baits & Night o' Rest Motel (Art got sick of people being around, so you can't rent rooms there these days.)
  Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church; Father Emil (retired), Father Wilmer (current)
  Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church; Pastor Ingqvist (transferred), Pastor Barbara Ham (Interim Pastor), Pastor Liz (current)
  Bunsen Motors (Ford dealer), run by Clint and Clarence Bunsen, local Lutherans
  Krebsbach Chevrolet, run by Florian Krebsbach, local Catholic, and his son Carl.
  Moonlight Bay Supper Club
  Buck's Rent-a-Tux
  The Herald Star, town newspaper run by Harold Star
  Skoeglin's 5 and Dime
  LuAnne Magendanz's Bon Marché Beauty Parlor and Salon
  Co-op Hardware (formerly Bigger Hammer Hardware, from the joke: "If at first you don't succeed, try using a bigger hammer.")
  Clifford's (also known as "The Mercantile," which many residents still call it)
  The Sons of Knute Temple, Norwegian fraternal organization
  The Whippets, Town Team Baseball, "We'll Whip ya, whip ya good!"
  The Herdsmen, champion church ushering team
  The Curl Up and Dye, another local salon
  Tentative Point, (better known as Lover's Lane)
  Sons of Pitches, a men's chorus made up of the Original Main Street's finest in the Home of Sinclair Lewis
  Lake Wobegon Piles ("twin 18-foot-high islands in the center of Lake Wobegon" created in 1956)
  Mist County Historical Society Museum
  Wally "Old Hard Hands" Bunsen Memorial Field (where The Whippets whip 'em all)
  Lake Wobegon Loons (five-man football)
  Powdermilk Biscuit Plant (on the road to Worthington)
  Lake Wobegon High School
  Lake Wobegon Leonards high school sports teams
  Municipal Sanitary Landfill
  Statue of the Unknown Norwegian
  Farmer's Union Grain Elevator
  Bob's Bank, in the green mobile home
  World's Largest Pile of Burlap Bags (created by Earl Dickmeyer 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)
caption: A real Lake Wobegon, USA "Gateway to Central Minnesota" retail store at Mall of America in Minnesota, prior to 2009
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