Podcast 64 - "And then, on the phone the other night, it was 1959, I was 17, a sportswriter for the local paper, standing at the 20-yard line as Pete took a handoff from Gary the quarterback..."
"It started out as a wake and became a seance"...what a great line for what I try to do in writing after the death of my late wife Jeannette...I hope every daily article of mine can be that kind of conversation with my reader.
For today, though, my goal is to keep traveling down Hwy 66 with the goal of one day next July hitting 67...On this day also, I plan on watching my alma mater beat Fresno State. "Go blue" on the field and in politics...
I love the telephone. I speak, everyday, to my best friend of 40 years. She’s in Connecticut. I’m in Colorado. We’re sun/moon opposites. She’s a Scorpio with a moon in Virgo. I’m a Taurus with a moon in Pisces. I’ve written a story about our friendship. Our kids call us vague psychics. We keep each other out of the insane asylum by talking.
While listening to your voice, Garrison, and also reading the transcript, I thought of my only friend still from high school. I had a few, but none that I've kept in touch with over the last 50 years except him. Kelly was a bookish nerd who for some reason came up to me in our physics class and introduced himself to me as being new to our school from out of state, him standing there directly in front of my lab table and looking down at me, and me glancing up from my seated position, under my shoulder-length hair, and peering up at him quizzically through my accidentally rose-colored glasses that were supposed to be the new photochromic transition lenses but they had never transitioned from the rose color that the pretty optometrist had talked me into getting instead of the boring old gray lenses. "Who the hell is this nerd?" I thought to myself, "and why is he talking to ME?" After we'd become improbable friends, he later told me that I had seemed smart from the questions that he'd heard me ask in class despite my stoner appearance and he, needing a friend, had chosen me. I used to copy his calculus homework at lunch and eat half of the lunch his mother made him every day because I was too cool to bring a lunch myself. And later in life after he'd gone on to study electrical engineering at the college where I'd gotten arrested for possessing marijuana, dropped out, went away and got "saved," returned home to find the love of my life in a little evangelical church, returned to college, and then married my beloved, he, the life-long bachelor, was my best man. Kelly went on to travel the world that I had wanted to see but didn't as my bride and I started our home in the same town where we'd met and then raised our children. He went on from engineering in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and Taiwan in the 1990s to come back to study law and became a patent attorney who then lived in mainland China in the early 2000s and later Washington, D.C., from where he retired early. He was "Uncle Kel" to our kids and later grandkids. And we both loved Charles Dickens and had what we termed "LARKS!" for adventures whenever we saw one another. He attended my parents' funerals, and we attended his parents' funerals. And the last time we saw one another was for his birthday, when Karen and I took Kelly to an Irish restaurant because his lineage is Irish. And over the last decade, Kelly has been descending into early dementia, which runs in his family. And the last time we spoke, he was in his new assisted living facility, and I had promised to call again but didn't. And that was a month or so ago. And then I read this post. And now I'm going to call my old friend.
Oh beautiful, Majik... I hope you have called Kelly by now. Even if he slips away from your normal conversation, just follow where he is going and it will bring joy to you both. What a lovely friendship! And thank you, Garrison, for reminding us to keep in touch with those we have loved and maybe no longer see. I'm 83 and have been reaching out to old friends and it has brought such joy!
I did call Kelly right after writing this and got his voicemail each time. I called his big brother, Tim, who told me that Kelly often leaves his phone in his room or forgets to recharge it, but that he is doing fine, making lots of new friends in his new digs, and even HAS A GIRLFRIEND! Her name is Nancy. She lives there too and has memory issues like Kelly. Karen & I are going to go visit the two of them later this month.
Thank you everyone for your interest in me and my old friend Kelly who I never did talk to yesterday on the phone, but his big brother Tim told me that Kelly told him that "marrying Nancy was the best thing I ever did!"
Tim said that Kelly's marriage to Nancy is only in his brother's mind but that they do hold hands and kiss a lot and don't seem to care who sees them!
I wish I had done what you are doing with an old friend. Mine was actually my teacher, 7th grade whomI remembered and thought about for many years. Somehow several years ago I discovered he was on Facebook....80 some years old, a professor Emeritus from a prestigious college in Eastern Michigan. On FB at eighty years old because he never grew old. We corresponded for a couple years, he sent me a book he had written, we started to catch up. Sadly, he was injured in a car crash and soon died from complications. I was angry with myself for the years we didn't connect. I should mention he taught Jr. high in 1962 and taught all his life. Now I'm the 77 year old but also I have no intentions of growing old.
Thank you for having the audacity to assume that your private thoughts are worth sharing for they truly are. I find in them the reassurance of the importance of shared humanity, and they fill me with gratitude for my opportunity to share in this brief time of being!
My high school class of 1962 in a small town in northern Minnesota recently celebrated, not our reunion but our eightieth birthdays. There were about seventy of us, including our spouses, who attended at a local Eagles Club. We were a mix of jocks, brains, popular kids, and shlubs like me who hated school and most of what went into being in it. But our eightieth birthday party, like most our reunions after about thirty years, was a coming together. Guys and gals who were in a different group at school had come together like rivers that converge at their mouths. We talked about stuff that we had experienced in life and what we were now experiencing. We remembered fellow classmates who had left us far too soon and who had passed on only months or days before. We finally were one. The miracle of time had a way of bringing us together in most respects. Garrison said it beautifully in his monologue. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories ... listening to you reminds me of my father ... I miss him ... he was a story teller also. An Iowa boy who went to war, became an engineer, raised 5 kids, became a grandfather.
Marvelous as ever, Mr. Keillor. I hope you make it to 97 and I make it to 77. Let’s do it.
wonderful. thank you.
"It started out as a wake and became a seance"...what a great line for what I try to do in writing after the death of my late wife Jeannette...I hope every daily article of mine can be that kind of conversation with my reader.
For today, though, my goal is to keep traveling down Hwy 66 with the goal of one day next July hitting 67...On this day also, I plan on watching my alma mater beat Fresno State. "Go blue" on the field and in politics...
I love this. It is great to talk to old friends. I have several from the 70s and 80's I am still friends with.
I love the telephone. I speak, everyday, to my best friend of 40 years. She’s in Connecticut. I’m in Colorado. We’re sun/moon opposites. She’s a Scorpio with a moon in Virgo. I’m a Taurus with a moon in Pisces. I’ve written a story about our friendship. Our kids call us vague psychics. We keep each other out of the insane asylum by talking.
Thank you for reading this one aloud, Garrison. I’m pleased to hear your voice.
Me, too! Thank you, Garrison!
Utterly beautiful.
While listening to your voice, Garrison, and also reading the transcript, I thought of my only friend still from high school. I had a few, but none that I've kept in touch with over the last 50 years except him. Kelly was a bookish nerd who for some reason came up to me in our physics class and introduced himself to me as being new to our school from out of state, him standing there directly in front of my lab table and looking down at me, and me glancing up from my seated position, under my shoulder-length hair, and peering up at him quizzically through my accidentally rose-colored glasses that were supposed to be the new photochromic transition lenses but they had never transitioned from the rose color that the pretty optometrist had talked me into getting instead of the boring old gray lenses. "Who the hell is this nerd?" I thought to myself, "and why is he talking to ME?" After we'd become improbable friends, he later told me that I had seemed smart from the questions that he'd heard me ask in class despite my stoner appearance and he, needing a friend, had chosen me. I used to copy his calculus homework at lunch and eat half of the lunch his mother made him every day because I was too cool to bring a lunch myself. And later in life after he'd gone on to study electrical engineering at the college where I'd gotten arrested for possessing marijuana, dropped out, went away and got "saved," returned home to find the love of my life in a little evangelical church, returned to college, and then married my beloved, he, the life-long bachelor, was my best man. Kelly went on to travel the world that I had wanted to see but didn't as my bride and I started our home in the same town where we'd met and then raised our children. He went on from engineering in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and Taiwan in the 1990s to come back to study law and became a patent attorney who then lived in mainland China in the early 2000s and later Washington, D.C., from where he retired early. He was "Uncle Kel" to our kids and later grandkids. And we both loved Charles Dickens and had what we termed "LARKS!" for adventures whenever we saw one another. He attended my parents' funerals, and we attended his parents' funerals. And the last time we saw one another was for his birthday, when Karen and I took Kelly to an Irish restaurant because his lineage is Irish. And over the last decade, Kelly has been descending into early dementia, which runs in his family. And the last time we spoke, he was in his new assisted living facility, and I had promised to call again but didn't. And that was a month or so ago. And then I read this post. And now I'm going to call my old friend.
Oh beautiful, Majik... I hope you have called Kelly by now. Even if he slips away from your normal conversation, just follow where he is going and it will bring joy to you both. What a lovely friendship! And thank you, Garrison, for reminding us to keep in touch with those we have loved and maybe no longer see. I'm 83 and have been reaching out to old friends and it has brought such joy!
Thank you, Lucy.
I did call Kelly right after writing this and got his voicemail each time. I called his big brother, Tim, who told me that Kelly often leaves his phone in his room or forgets to recharge it, but that he is doing fine, making lots of new friends in his new digs, and even HAS A GIRLFRIEND! Her name is Nancy. She lives there too and has memory issues like Kelly. Karen & I are going to go visit the two of them later this month.
Bravo, Majik! I love your writing and your story! Enjoy your visit with Kelly and thanks for sharing! ❤️
I second that! Thanx, Majik!
Thank you everyone for your interest in me and my old friend Kelly who I never did talk to yesterday on the phone, but his big brother Tim told me that Kelly told him that "marrying Nancy was the best thing I ever did!"
Tim said that Kelly's marriage to Nancy is only in his brother's mind but that they do hold hands and kiss a lot and don't seem to care who sees them!
I attached Kelly's story to a post that I'd written about an old James Taylor song because it fit Taylor's song so perfectly. https://themjkxn.substack.com/p/long-ago-and-far-away
I wish I had done what you are doing with an old friend. Mine was actually my teacher, 7th grade whomI remembered and thought about for many years. Somehow several years ago I discovered he was on Facebook....80 some years old, a professor Emeritus from a prestigious college in Eastern Michigan. On FB at eighty years old because he never grew old. We corresponded for a couple years, he sent me a book he had written, we started to catch up. Sadly, he was injured in a car crash and soon died from complications. I was angry with myself for the years we didn't connect. I should mention he taught Jr. high in 1962 and taught all his life. Now I'm the 77 year old but also I have no intentions of growing old.
Hitting 80 was a wake-up call.
Mr. Keillor's voice tells me that everything in the world is tranquil.
Garrison, your voice and your keen translation of life are great treasures to me. Thank you and bless you! ❤️
Garrison,
Thank you for having the audacity to assume that your private thoughts are worth sharing for they truly are. I find in them the reassurance of the importance of shared humanity, and they fill me with gratitude for my opportunity to share in this brief time of being!
My high school class of 1962 in a small town in northern Minnesota recently celebrated, not our reunion but our eightieth birthdays. There were about seventy of us, including our spouses, who attended at a local Eagles Club. We were a mix of jocks, brains, popular kids, and shlubs like me who hated school and most of what went into being in it. But our eightieth birthday party, like most our reunions after about thirty years, was a coming together. Guys and gals who were in a different group at school had come together like rivers that converge at their mouths. We talked about stuff that we had experienced in life and what we were now experiencing. We remembered fellow classmates who had left us far too soon and who had passed on only months or days before. We finally were one. The miracle of time had a way of bringing us together in most respects. Garrison said it beautifully in his monologue. Thank you.
“Voice is ageless…”
yes.....phones to hear actual voices full of words and emotions as we talk...
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories ... listening to you reminds me of my father ... I miss him ... he was a story teller also. An Iowa boy who went to war, became an engineer, raised 5 kids, became a grandfather.