|
by
Doug Ward |
MARCH 2009-In the fall of 1979 a full-page ad in The Tartan,
the student newspaper at Carnegie-Mellon University, announced that a new program
was being added to the schedule of public radio station WQED. I read the ad
with interest. I was a graduate student in mathematics at the time, and the
radio was my main form of entertainment as I struggled with the challenging
problem sets assigned in my classes. It was the first I had heard of this
program, which had the unusual title A Prairie Home Companion. Curious,
I tuned in one Saturday night and checked it out.
I
quickly became a fan of this two-hour radio program, which aired on WQED at 10
PM. There was an eclectic mix of music, including Celtic, bluegrass, and jazz.
Interspersed with the music was humor in the form of pretend commercials for
various "sponsors" of the show. The first half hour was always
sponsored by Powdermilk Biscuits, a
product that host Garrison Keillor claimed
would "give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be
done." Being a shy person myself, this struck me as an impressive selling
point. (One of the major ongoing struggles of my life involves forcing myself to do what needs to be done.) I thought of Powdermilk Biscuits as a sort of metaphor for the Holy
Spirit, our real Source of strength to make right choices, and have often
wondered if Keillor had something similar in mind.
Garrison
Keillor's monologues, about life in the fictitious
Midwestern town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, were the
highlight of the show. They reminded me just a little bit of the humorous
stories I had heard Jean Shepherd tell on radio station WOR years before. I was
glad to have found a new radio storyteller. The stories and songs on A
Prairie Home Companion provided a pleasant way to relax on a Saturday night
and prepare to begin a new week.
In
June 1982 I moved to Canada, where I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During two years in Halifax, I enjoyed
learning about Canadian culture via the radio. But as much as I loved the
music, news, and comedy on Canadian radio, I was glad to finish my stint as an
"international student" and return to my native country. In August
1984 I moved to Oxford, Ohio, for a teaching job at Miami University.
In
Oxford I was reunited with A Prairie Home Companion. Like many American
college towns, Oxford had a public radio station whose schedule featured
Garrison Keillor's program. After airing the show
live on Saturday evening, radio station WMUB reran it on Sunday morning. On
Saturday night I often set the radio to come on at 10 AM the next morning, when
the rebroadcast began. I liked waking up to the soothing sound of Keillor's voice.
I
admired Keillor's keen insight into life in the
American Midwest, and my admiration grew further when his novel Lake Wobegon Days was published in 1985. There it was
revealed that Keillor had been raised in a
conservative Protestant group called the Sanctified Brethren. His descriptions
of life among the Brethren were in many ways reminiscent of things my wife
Sherry and I had experienced in the Worldwide Church of God. Keillor's stories, both perceptive and sympathetic, often
resonated with me.
I
felt an additional connection to Garrison Keillor
several years later when a country singer named Iris DeMent
began to appear occasionally on the radio show. DeMent
is the half-sister of Fred DeMent, who was an elder
in a congregation that Sherry and I attended for thirteen years. So when she
sang about her family on the radio, she was singing about the relatives of
people we knew.
In
its travels over the years, A Prairie Home Companion has visited
Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, but I have never had the opportunity to attend a
live performance. So in May 2008, it was exciting to hear that Garrison Keillor would be coming to Miami University for a one-man
show on March 18, 2009. As that date approached, several questions occurred to
me:
· What
would Keillor say about Oxford? Whenever his radio
show visits a city, Keillor always seems to do his
homework and is able to demonstrate impressive understanding of that city's
history and culture.
· What
familiar song(s) would Keillor ask his audience to
sing together?
· Would
I actually pay the $40 price of admission to attend the performance?
In order to find out the answers to the first two questions, I would have to
give an affirmative response to the third. I hesitated for awhile. I could
think of a number of ways to make good use of $40. But with Keillor
approaching age 67, I knew it would probably be my last chance to see him
perform in person. Everyone who knows me well assumed that I would attend.
Finally, about six hours before the performance, I broke down and purchased a
ticket.
The
performance was held at Millett Hall, the university basketball arena. On a
stage equipped simply with a tall stool and a microphone, Keillor
appeared at 7:30 PM wearing a tan suit with a bright red tie and matching
sneakers. Getting right down to business, he immediately answered my second
question by leading the audience in singing "The Star-Spangled
Banner." (This seemed like an appropriate beginning for an event staged at
a basketball arena.) He then proceeded quickly to my first question with
remarks that were brief but insightful. He observed that Miami University had
given up trying to explain its name and location to the outside world, but that
students who came looking for "fun on the beach" were probably not
ready for college anyway.
Keillor mentioned that he had had the opportunity to be a
university writing instructor, but he had not been cut out for the job. He was
too easy on his students. He mentioned that one of his best writing teachers,
an ex-Marine, had assigned a failing grade to any paper containing even one
misspelled word. From this teacher, Keillor said, he
had learned the valuable skill of being able to correct his own writing.
Keillor commented that he had long since forgotten the content of
many of his university courses, but he still remembered a sonnet that he had
been asked to memorize for a Shakespeare course. He then delighted the audience
by singing from memory several humorous sonnets of his own composition.
He
characterized today's young people as unfailingly polite, with lives carefully
managed by hovering parents. He said that in contrast, children in his
generation had largely raised themselves, and asserted that there was value in
giving young people the opportunity to learn through their own mistakes. He
then related some of his own alleged teenage misadventures, tales he has
told-with a number of variations-many times over the years. It is understood
that these stories, set in Lake Wobegon, are some indeterminate
mixture of fact and fiction.
He
included a story about his pelting his older sister with a rotten tomato. With
his sister in hot pursuit he flees across town, ducking into a local bar to
escape. There he observes a side of life in Lake Wobegon
previously unknown to him.
Another
story, taken from his novel Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, involves his rebellious cousin
Kate. After giving a risqué performance
at a high school talent show, Kate is sought by the principal. She eludes school authorities by grabbing her
cousin Garrison and slipping into the boys' restroom. When the school authorities check the
restroom in their search for Kate, they see only Garrison's feet in one of the
stalls. Little do they know that Kate is
sitting in Garrison's lap.
He
also gave an account of his driving a motor home built by his father onto the
ice of Lake Wobegon one night for a party with some
friends. It is March, and when the ice starts to give way, he steps hard on the
accelerator to bring the motor home to shore, wrecking the vehicle in the
process.
Keillor then went on to his university experience, observing that
although the Brethren took a dim view of fiction, he had still been well
prepared to major in English. Through extensive exposure to the King James
Bible and traditional hymns, he had developed an ear for the cadences of the
English language and the beauty of poetry. He compared traditional hymns
favorably to today's megachurch praise choruses,
which he characterized as "seven eleven songs"-seven words repeated
eleven times. At this point the audience gave a round of applause. Keillor is an astute observer of the contemporary religious
scene, and these remarks apparently struck a chord with many people there.
Keillor also contrasted the attitudes of the Brethren with those
exhibited in the Elizabethan poetry he read in his classes. While the Brethren
saw this world as an illusion not to be counted on and staked their identity on
the world to come, he saw in Elizabethan poetry the attitude that life is short
and should be lived to the fullest. He commented that people in Lake Wobegon were distrustful of romance, and he recounted some
comic examples of the risks of romance and the price the townspeople paid when
they allowed themselves to be overpowered by it.
Later
in the monologue Keillor paid tribute to his Uncle
Jack, who he said "was not a good man but had been good to him."
After telling about a time when Jack had saved his life, he noted that being
saved by a sinner had given him much to think about.
From
stories about his Uncle Jack he went on to tell about the death of his Aunt
Evelyn, the starting point of his 2007 novel Pontoon. He gave a
delightful presentation of the plot of that novel, leading up to the hilarious
final scene where an offbeat funeral, the vestiges of a cancelled wedding, and
an afternoon luncheon for a group of skeptical Lutheran clergymen collide on
Lake Wobegon with disastrous results. I loved reading
Pontoon, and it was a real treat to hear the author's personal summary
of its highlights.
One
marvelous and beautifully-delivered story led into the next, and soon almost
two hours had flown by. Keillor closed by leading the
audience in a chorus of "Amens". For me and
many others in attendance, it had been a night to remember.
File
translated from TEX by TTH,
version 3.66.
On 25 Mar 2009, 15:41.
