My life story (short version)

The Column: 10.21.24

I once owned a house on Goodrich Avenue in St. Paul, across the street from a house Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald rented in 1921 when Zelda gave birth to their daughter, Scottie, and this slight proximity let me imagine that someday college kids would write dull term papers about me as they do about The Great Gatsby and The American Dream. I tossed that idea aside long ago. Now I’m 38 years older than he when he died, and clearly I got a better life and what’s the purpose of longevity if not to enjoy it?

I had my adventures with gin and whiskey, as he did, and sat in a bar with vets going to the U on the G.I. Bill who thought the Army was ridiculous but then they hadn’t been shot at. I once tasted a Bordeaux from the year of my birth (1942), which was pretty magnificent, war wine from the grapes of wrath. I once was given a sedative for a wisdom tooth extraction that made me ecstatic for a day and a half. I was baptized in waist-deep water by a preacher in a suit and tie. I entered many churches and heard the Gospel and confessed my sins and was forgiven. I wrote for a great editor, Roger Angell, who sent me delicate rejections — passages of wonderful writing but somehow it wasn’t you at your best — and crisp acceptances — and pleading letters — Everyone around here keeps asking when will we see another piece by Keillor. Write, I beg of you. — and I felt privileged for twenty years.

Once, playing third base in a softball game, I cleanly fielded a stinging grounder, backhanded it, planted my right foot, and threw the runner out by a stride, a perfect play, still vivid in my memory sixty years later. So is Uncle Jim’s hayrack pulled by two black horses, me holding the reins as Jim opened the gate and out to the field we clip-clopped to rake up the hay.

I performed at Goshen College and got the audience to sing “It Is Well with My Soul” and suddenly it was better with my soul than it had been in a long time. I have canoed in the Boundary Waters wilderness and slept on a beach and listened to the loons. I sat with my grandma Dora as she lay dying and sang to my mother in her last hours. I have embraced women in the dark while stunned with desire and I accepted my daughter from the obstetrical nurse a minute after she was born on December 29, which changed Christmas for me forever. I have made fifty or sixty ritual visits to the Minnesota State Fair for corn dogs and Ferris wheel and poultry barn. My brother Philip and I went canoeing around the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior and paddled into a deep cavern under one of the islands, and explored it for a while, ducking our heads under the low rocky ceiling, and then paddled out to open water a minute or two before the wake of a distant ore boat came crashing into the cave, four-foot waves that would’ve smashed us to a pulp, no need for EMTs, the turtles would’ve feasted that night.

I stood shoulder to shoulder with women who were real singers and sang duets with them, Renée Fleming, Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris, Heather Masse, and I knew the Lord was bestowing a privilege He wasn’t handing out like Tootsie Rolls. I stand next to Heather and we harmonize on the Dead’s “Brokedown Palace” and my heart is full. For an old writer, this is the gift of tongues.

I was brought up to be fearful but when we escaped from the cavern, which was back when I was Fitzgerald’s neighbor in St. Paul, I loosened up some. There’s nothing like almost but not dying to turn on the lights. Years later I got to know the director Robert Altman who was dying but still took joy in his work and I hope to wind up like that. He’d piloted B-17s and faced Japanese kamikaze, and not dying turned out to be awfully good for him. Nuts to the American Dream. I wake up eager in the morning and reluctantly turn in for the night. Thank you, Lord, for this life and guard our people from disaster and grant them wisdom if not abundance. For the sake of the children, keep the elderly incoherent crackpot out of the White House.

Join us in celebrating 50 years of A Prairie Home Companion, where writer and radio host Garrison Keillor invites listeners on a journey through music, storytelling and community. Reconnect with the voices and memories that made Saturday evenings special.

CLICK HERE to pre-order today!