[undocumented]
Friday night (September 15, 2023), at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Lexington, I listened to a two-hour, nonstop, monolog from a person whom you might have heard about. His name is Garrison Keillor. He was, for many years, the host of a Sunday afternoon radio program that I listened to on National Public Radio (NPR). It was called “A Prairie Home Companion,” and it was broadcast from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Garrison was, and still is, very much in love with this country. The characters populating his show, his descriptions of Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average, and life is good, are a comfort for many of his loyal listeners.
For some of us, the man is an institution, like Mark Twain, Ernie Pyle, Abraham Lincoln, Jim Thorpe, FDR, Daniel Boone. When I think of Minnesota, or the Midwest, I think of wide flat spaces sometimes, gentle rolling hills at other times, islands of wheat, rows of corn, many lakes, really big mosquitoes, villages settled by Scandinavians, sometimes unusual accents, AND Garrison Keillor. They all kinda of go together for me — a member of a certain generation and with maternal roots in the upper Midwest, including Minnesota. Unfortunately, I have never met any of my maternal kin in that state, or in Iowa, and neither in North nor South Dakota. This remains a sad gap, like a personality half-completed, a life only partially lived, a joy never experienced, the absence of a sense of place, of belonging. Garrison helps to fill that void with those tales from that magical Lake Wobegon and the fascinating, quirky, all-too-human characters he tells us about. Again, constantly, for a full two hours of uninterrupted one-man conversation, and my desperate need to visit a bathroom.
Garrison is now so conscious of his mortality. He did not seem that way the two previous, and relatively recent, times I heard him. He just turned 81 years old. But he accepts the future, whereas I fight it. But Garrison is a reminder that, no different from him, I am mortal, and listening to his expressions of care for his fellow Americans, permits me to take my mind off sad stuff, troubling stuff, like current politics and a persistent sinus infection.
Thank you, Garrison. Thank you. You are valued. You are remembered.
-Paul Winther