Good morning, Garrison: No comment on the mattress thing but the walking to the mic is very visual and rewarding to me. Sort of been there recently. Thanks, RR
I'm a retired trucker and I have seen the scenario you described so many times on the interstates over my 3.5 million logged miles. Not only mattresses, but, lumber, dressers, picnic tables, dog houses, etc. I'm glad you're safe and sound, but don't do that anymore please. It's a good thing the trucker was blowing his horn, better you heard that than the name he called you as he blew by. Take care and I'll catch ya on the flip-flop. 10/4
Yes, this is why we need more Boy and Girl Scouts who know their Bowline from a Sheets (sheep?) Bend, and who took my physics class…”No, You can not drive and hold a mattress (sheet of plywood, desk) on a car going much over ten miles per hour, guess and checked.
My father, who was in the Navy during WWII, taught me to tie knots. You are so right about the value of taking physics classes. I had 2 years in high school and 2 more in college and the knowledge I gained was both valuable and rewarding. It is sad that so few people take advantage of the opportunity to take even one physics class. Several of my former students who became chemistry teachers also teach physics because there is a shortage of teachers with the specific training for that subject. I wish that their students had the advantage of having “real” physics teachers like the wonderful ones I had, but I guess a retread chemistry teacher is better than nothing.
Those magic little screens on our kids' iphones are taking away "real" physics which is not horrendous equations but the simplicity hiding behind them. Teaching it in a laboratory, and seeing the beautiful physics around us and in the clouds above really helps. Google me.
So, are you a physics teacher? Back in the '50s, we had a good physics teacher and a brilliant chemistry teacher. I had good female friends (one I dated, the other I didn't) who took both (when most girls didn't) because they knew they'd need the courses for the careers they planned. One was an excellent OT nurse for 5 decades, the other dropped out of college chemistry because of poor teaching but went back, got her degree, got an MLS, and was an excellent chemistry librarian for years.
In Maine, the small town and rural schools can often only get one teacher to teach all of the sciences. We chemists have to know a lot of physics (chemistry is The Centra Science) and can do quite well teaching physics.
Nice to hear from Maine, where I often vacationed as a youth...Mt Desert, Bar Harbor..and worked with Canadians across the water for years exploring the cold oceans of the Arctic.
It's similar here in the Up And West (Port Townsend WA)...the local schools have some good teachers but they are overworked, understaffed. But my Cambridge Univ PhD in App. Math & Theoretical Physics provided the physics of fluids for my future teaching and research...taking physics out-of-doors.
Forwarded this to colleagues, family, friends, many retired long ago, many younger than I, some still working into these later years because I smiled as I read, grateful the mattress and you, Garrison Keillor, survived.
With it, I wrote, far less “smartly” than you:
>>I oughta make a list of my experiences. I “do” then move on. Yet recounting some as an expert witness the other day, I realized how extraordinary my life in my profession.
At 5 years short of 82, I work because other than reading, I have no hobbies. Hell, I can’t walk 5’ without holding on to walls & furniture let alone onto a stage or into a classroom anymore. Give me Zoom and I can astound! My brain craves learning and teaching. So tho I’ve never rescued a mattress, retirement seems a waste of a good brain for me. Others’ experiences may vary!<<
Thank you. I’m ready to buy and relish the book with the trumpian character.
You forgot to mention the cruises. I guess that was work for you. I went on all but one of them. They were wonderful and I wish there were more. Thanks for the memories of great travel and entertainment. You have spoiled me for other cruises!
It's a wonderful story, Mr. Keillor, but I have a hard time believing that when you were 56 and had lived in a mansion once owned by F. Scott Fitgerald that you were so poor that you tied a mattress to the top of your car like some Beverly Hillbilly and drove down the interstate. I also can't believe that your beautifully refined bride at the time would have ever gotten into a car with you under those conditions. No, there's gotta be something more going on here if there's even a grain of truth to this story. I wish that I knew the phone number for Guy Noir so that I could get to the bottom of this baloney sandwich.
Actually, Mr. Keillor, now I feel bad both for doubting your improbable story and for dragging your dear wife and late mother into all this. Please forgive me. I’m too am just glad that you didn’t get hit by that truck. ❤️
Us guys are reactive people and our seeing a flying-off of our mattress is definitely a call for action. Being careful too is important, but less so. Some Good Samaritan often stops by and helps me lash it back on my car roof and double-tie it this time, and no fatalities, which we don't focus on anyway. Right you are ma'am, Forrest Gump is right: "Stupid is as stupid does..."
This column is a thing of beauty, that's for sure, and it doesn't involve near death, except vicariously. I can't believe you mondegreened the Stones' lyrics . But...maybe you improved them.
Thanks for making me smile. Once again. A great way to start the day before slaying governmental bureaucratic dragons to get something done.
Just bought tickets to the Galveston show and I am on cloud nine in anticipation. I never sing, but I can't wait to sing the 5-6 Christmas carols that you will lead us on. I only hope I know the words to them all. I am dying for the feeling of unity, and I expect to be feeling this way during your show.
I was telling my Southern Louisiana friends about you and PHC, but they have never heard of either. Progressive types too. My kids and I listened to the PHC in the late nineties and early 2000's on NPR in the Adirondacks. But I guess PHC was not broadcast nation-wide? Seems strange. But if so, I feel for those that never had the opportunity to listen to PHC.
Stay healthy and happy and hopefully see you in Galveston!!
Thank you Garrison. I often think about the many strange things that I've done and survived. Thanks to my older brother who saved my life on a farm in Southern Minnesota when I was nine, I was able to go on and do many more stupid things, and here I am just one year younger than you still climbing trees and working in the gardens, counting my blessings every day.
Your mattress story reminded me of my similar traumatic event. In 1979 my wife and I were crossing the Mississippi southbound on 35W when the mattress I had inadequately fixed to my car roof with canoe ties blew off into rush hour traffic. I convinced my wife (in heels) to venture out to retrieve the mattress amid a cacophony of horns and yelling. When we got it out of harm’s way she refused to indulge any more of my foolishness. So we threw the mattress off the bridge. So cathartic….
Heaven is filled with people whose last words were, "Watch this!" or with the final words of, "What are you doing?!?!?" ringing in their ears. I hope Saint Peter has a sense of humor...
A beautiful, effective fire-up as I enter my 34th year of public school teaching. Felt pretty good anyway, but this makes me wanna kick some ass living-wise. fWIW, I I aim for a daily close call via bike commute or otherwise.
What a beautiful, beautiful column. Many people have told me so, beautiful people. Does the world need more anything? I think our welfare is more tied to less of quite a few things, generally speaking. What would you do if you decided to stop doing what you are doing? Who knows? Not even you! But you would do all sorts of enjoyable and interesting things, that is who you are. They would be 'different' things, and that would be beautiful, many people have told me so, different people, beautifully different people.
Good morning, Garrison: No comment on the mattress thing but the walking to the mic is very visual and rewarding to me. Sort of been there recently. Thanks, RR
Literature it is, this time.
I notice that many limericks are essentially epitaphs, but not the other way around. Maybe you'll trendset that.
I love reading new verbs.
I'm a retired trucker and I have seen the scenario you described so many times on the interstates over my 3.5 million logged miles. Not only mattresses, but, lumber, dressers, picnic tables, dog houses, etc. I'm glad you're safe and sound, but don't do that anymore please. It's a good thing the trucker was blowing his horn, better you heard that than the name he called you as he blew by. Take care and I'll catch ya on the flip-flop. 10/4
You are a funny man, Mr. Mike. Thanks for thelaugh.
Yes, this is why we need more Boy and Girl Scouts who know their Bowline from a Sheets (sheep?) Bend, and who took my physics class…”No, You can not drive and hold a mattress (sheet of plywood, desk) on a car going much over ten miles per hour, guess and checked.
My father, who was in the Navy during WWII, taught me to tie knots. You are so right about the value of taking physics classes. I had 2 years in high school and 2 more in college and the knowledge I gained was both valuable and rewarding. It is sad that so few people take advantage of the opportunity to take even one physics class. Several of my former students who became chemistry teachers also teach physics because there is a shortage of teachers with the specific training for that subject. I wish that their students had the advantage of having “real” physics teachers like the wonderful ones I had, but I guess a retread chemistry teacher is better than nothing.
Those magic little screens on our kids' iphones are taking away "real" physics which is not horrendous equations but the simplicity hiding behind them. Teaching it in a laboratory, and seeing the beautiful physics around us and in the clouds above really helps. Google me.
So, are you a physics teacher? Back in the '50s, we had a good physics teacher and a brilliant chemistry teacher. I had good female friends (one I dated, the other I didn't) who took both (when most girls didn't) because they knew they'd need the courses for the careers they planned. One was an excellent OT nurse for 5 decades, the other dropped out of college chemistry because of poor teaching but went back, got her degree, got an MLS, and was an excellent chemistry librarian for years.
In Maine, the small town and rural schools can often only get one teacher to teach all of the sciences. We chemists have to know a lot of physics (chemistry is The Centra Science) and can do quite well teaching physics.
Nice to hear from Maine, where I often vacationed as a youth...Mt Desert, Bar Harbor..and worked with Canadians across the water for years exploring the cold oceans of the Arctic.
It's similar here in the Up And West (Port Townsend WA)...the local schools have some good teachers but they are overworked, understaffed. But my Cambridge Univ PhD in App. Math & Theoretical Physics provided the physics of fluids for my future teaching and research...taking physics out-of-doors.
Glad you are still standing...and writing
Forwarded this to colleagues, family, friends, many retired long ago, many younger than I, some still working into these later years because I smiled as I read, grateful the mattress and you, Garrison Keillor, survived.
With it, I wrote, far less “smartly” than you:
>>I oughta make a list of my experiences. I “do” then move on. Yet recounting some as an expert witness the other day, I realized how extraordinary my life in my profession.
At 5 years short of 82, I work because other than reading, I have no hobbies. Hell, I can’t walk 5’ without holding on to walls & furniture let alone onto a stage or into a classroom anymore. Give me Zoom and I can astound! My brain craves learning and teaching. So tho I’ve never rescued a mattress, retirement seems a waste of a good brain for me. Others’ experiences may vary!<<
Thank you. I’m ready to buy and relish the book with the trumpian character.
You forgot to mention the cruises. I guess that was work for you. I went on all but one of them. They were wonderful and I wish there were more. Thanks for the memories of great travel and entertainment. You have spoiled me for other cruises!
It's a wonderful story, Mr. Keillor, but I have a hard time believing that when you were 56 and had lived in a mansion once owned by F. Scott Fitgerald that you were so poor that you tied a mattress to the top of your car like some Beverly Hillbilly and drove down the interstate. I also can't believe that your beautifully refined bride at the time would have ever gotten into a car with you under those conditions. No, there's gotta be something more going on here if there's even a grain of truth to this story. I wish that I knew the phone number for Guy Noir so that I could get to the bottom of this baloney sandwich.
🤣
You believe what you believe but the story is true.She was there.
LOL! You’ve said that you’ve told tall tales to your own mother. Can you get your bride to corroborate this one in a comment from her?
Actually, Mr. Keillor, now I feel bad both for doubting your improbable story and for dragging your dear wife and late mother into all this. Please forgive me. I’m too am just glad that you didn’t get hit by that truck. ❤️
Us guys are reactive people and our seeing a flying-off of our mattress is definitely a call for action. Being careful too is important, but less so. Some Good Samaritan often stops by and helps me lash it back on my car roof and double-tie it this time, and no fatalities, which we don't focus on anyway. Right you are ma'am, Forrest Gump is right: "Stupid is as stupid does..."
This column is a thing of beauty, that's for sure, and it doesn't involve near death, except vicariously. I can't believe you mondegreened the Stones' lyrics . But...maybe you improved them.
Thanks for making me smile. Once again. A great way to start the day before slaying governmental bureaucratic dragons to get something done.
Just bought tickets to the Galveston show and I am on cloud nine in anticipation. I never sing, but I can't wait to sing the 5-6 Christmas carols that you will lead us on. I only hope I know the words to them all. I am dying for the feeling of unity, and I expect to be feeling this way during your show.
I was telling my Southern Louisiana friends about you and PHC, but they have never heard of either. Progressive types too. My kids and I listened to the PHC in the late nineties and early 2000's on NPR in the Adirondacks. But I guess PHC was not broadcast nation-wide? Seems strange. But if so, I feel for those that never had the opportunity to listen to PHC.
Stay healthy and happy and hopefully see you in Galveston!!
Moby Trump: The Great Orange Blabbering Whale. Think that would sell? LOL
Thank you Garrison. I often think about the many strange things that I've done and survived. Thanks to my older brother who saved my life on a farm in Southern Minnesota when I was nine, I was able to go on and do many more stupid things, and here I am just one year younger than you still climbing trees and working in the gardens, counting my blessings every day.
Your mattress story reminded me of my similar traumatic event. In 1979 my wife and I were crossing the Mississippi southbound on 35W when the mattress I had inadequately fixed to my car roof with canoe ties blew off into rush hour traffic. I convinced my wife (in heels) to venture out to retrieve the mattress amid a cacophony of horns and yelling. When we got it out of harm’s way she refused to indulge any more of my foolishness. So we threw the mattress off the bridge. So cathartic….
Heaven is filled with people whose last words were, "Watch this!" or with the final words of, "What are you doing?!?!?" ringing in their ears. I hope Saint Peter has a sense of humor...
Here, hold my beer, it’ll work this time, close enough…
...or "hold my beer."
"Hold my beer" as we Michiganders say....
A beautiful, effective fire-up as I enter my 34th year of public school teaching. Felt pretty good anyway, but this makes me wanna kick some ass living-wise. fWIW, I I aim for a daily close call via bike commute or otherwise.
What a beautiful, beautiful column. Many people have told me so, beautiful people. Does the world need more anything? I think our welfare is more tied to less of quite a few things, generally speaking. What would you do if you decided to stop doing what you are doing? Who knows? Not even you! But you would do all sorts of enjoyable and interesting things, that is who you are. They would be 'different' things, and that would be beautiful, many people have told me so, different people, beautifully different people.