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Comments from the weeks 07.11.22 and 07.18.22

Being of the South, I read only halfway through today’s column before losing count of your many grievances — mower accident, nine fingers remain. Your Manhattan gentry status notwithstanding, you beef far too much about trivial inconveniences. Getting crotchety with age? Regardless, I wish you success with your impending medical procedure.

Joe

When you’re a happy man, Joe, trivia is all there is to complain about. The world and its serious problems belong to the young and in my state of insignificance, I am enjoying a blissful summer with my true love, and so I’ve amused myself this morning by writing a long rant about not wanting to travel to Europe, which she wants to do. It’s fun to write because it’s all nonsense. Life is good. My impending “procedure” is at Mayo and I have no complaints about them at all. Looking forward to it.

GK

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Garrison,

Your report recently about becoming mega rich from selling a film company to Amazon unsettled me. However, I have been chided by a Texan I know who says that you were just joshing. Hope you were because I have to live with England losing the Euro soccer tournament on penalty shots after taking the lead in under two minutes — that’s enough to cope with for the time being.

Trevor Jones

Dorchester, England

It was indeed a joke, sir, and I don’t have megabucks, just megabytes. As for England’s loss in the Euro tournament, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I don’t read the sports pages of the newspaper anymore — whatever team loyalties I had have dissipated completely. This happens as a person matures, I think. My loyalties are invested in family and friends entirely, and the news there is mostly good. Life gets smaller as you age. Anyway, that’s my experience.

GK

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GK,

I umpire a lot of town team baseball out near Lake Wobegon. I was in Hamburg last week, and I’ll be in Green Isle next week. I am wondering, how are the Whippets doing this year?

Tony

They’re in first place in the Old Sod Shanty League, due to the arrival of workers from Latin America to tend the truck farms. Germans and Norwegians don’t make good infielders, which may seem racist or ethnic-insensitive, but with Orlando at 2nd and Luis at shortstop, our infield no longer leaks and we are seeing double plays like never before. In Lake Wobegon, we’re sort of confused by success and feel a little uneasy about whooping and yelling, afraid that it may hurt the feelings of the fans of the team that is getting humiliated by us. So we are trying to deal with victory. It’s not easy.

GK

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Dear Mr. K.,

When you say, “my generation,” what gen are you speaking of? Like Dylan, you’re too old to be a Boomer. Some of us still prefer piano BTW. And we’re sick of being blamed for mistakes of the WWII generation while they were still in charge.

Oh well, it’s all smoke and mirrors anyway.

Your fan,
RH

I’m from the pre-Boom, the war babies, and I was doted on by my aunts who went through the Depression and their unfailing love was a powerful force in my life, I now recognize, now that they’re all gone. My mom and dad each came from a large family, which gave me about seventeen diehard supporters. This was before everybody got so busy so my aunts were available for doting. And it was before universal electronics. And the tidal waves of entertainment available. We got on our bikes and rode around and shot baskets in somebody’s driveway and sat in the woods and pretended to be Indians and sat around and talked about stuff. I feel very very fortunate.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

Thank you for the wonderful piece “Flying through the clouds and coming home.” I guess you’ve seen clouds from both sides now.

My daughter is 15 and lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn (a kinder gentler part of Manhattan) and I loved reading your perspective on the LGBSTQN and demisexuals. 

The young people in my daughter’s circles are very open and understanding toward one’s sexual preferences and have no prejudices where that is concerned. Live and let live seems to be their motto. They are very sensitive to any kind of prejudice from anyone in any regard. I envy their sophistication. 

As for finding the right person your article made me think back on my great friend and mentor who was a WWII Vet and Broadway actor in over 50 productions including five with the Lunts. He told me some wise things about finding the right one. One was when I told him my brother was “coming out” and having heavy conversations with our parents.

My friend said, “Why? Nobody cares who you are sleeping with. It’s the last thing anyone wants to hear about unless they are the ones getting sex.” He also said concerning finding the right person, “It’s really not so terribly difficult. You’ll know who is the right one because when you’re with them you won’t want to be anywhere else.”

Thought I’d share those things with you. No questions for you. No criticism — just thought you’d like that generation’s perspective. They were way before their time.

Hopefully my 15-year-old will behave as those WWII vets did and be as interesting as they were. Everything in between is just fill.

Michael Patterson

Thanks for the note, sir. I agree about the younger generation having discarded so much of the burden of biases and I wish them well. I do worry about them, worry about the stress they go through, the dangers of drugs, the violence in the culture, and the great gap between them and my generation. But it’s their world and they’ll have to make their way in it.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I couldn’t help but notice that your reply instructions include a subliminal (yes?) reference to the DQ (disagree, question), which is prominently referenced in today’s post. Intentional?

I personally require anyone giving me directions to include a reference to the DQ … such as, “after you see the DQ, our road is half a mile down on the right just past the chicken farm.” This is selfish, as I never manage to overlook a cheery red DQ sign even when other traffic signs elude me.

Perhaps you should see how many DQ references you can work in going forward. And if they are super subliminal, or even supra subliminal, it can be our little secret.

Your respectful fan,

Patty

I’m not good at giving directions since I never was a teacher. The last time I was directorial was when I was a parking lot attendant my freshman year in college and had to make drivers park in an exact place on a gravel lot with no painted lines. It was a good learning experience. I was young and believed in the idea of freedom but couldn’t allow it in that lot or else there’d be chaos. I’ve avoided being in authority ever since.

GK

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Garrison,

In today’s column you wrote, “… we hear the happy cries of children at an old children’s camp.” This strikes me as oxymoronic. If they are children, how are they “old”? One presumes that, as children, they started out young. At what age do children become old?

Coleman Hood

Bishop, Georgia

Very funny, Mr. Hood. So funny I forgot to laugh, as we used to say. Anyway, it’s a wonderful camp that hasn’t changed much in the past century or so, same old bunk beds and dining hall and now I suppose you’re wondering how old those bunk beds are. I don’t know, sir, and I don’t care.

GK

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Love you. But, IF you dare, buy an extra Dairy Queen and let it melt in the cup. Better yet, let it sit on the counter and melt overnight. In the morning, when you look at what it really is, your desire will be GREATLY diminished.

I left mine out once …

Meg from Delaware

Do I really want to know this, my dear? I’m thinking, I’m thinking.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I am from Connecticut, but lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, for a while. In the mid-1990s my wife and I went to see you at the Book Festival in Charlotte Square. In a very hot tent. You were great, as always, and sang “Comin’ Through the Rye” and did the News from Lake Wobegon.

Afterward, you were signing books, and my wife (who is Scottish and at that time had never heard of you), bought your new book, Cat, You Better Come Home, for her niece, and while you were signing it and making conversation, she mentioned the fact that she had lived in America for a few years. You asked her where, and she said Connecticut, to which you replied that she should go out to Minnesota to see the “real” America, which she thought was really a rather parochial and prejudiced thing for an internationally known author to say, and which kind of put her off you and your writing for a long time.

Anyhow, I’m just wondering since you’ve obviously been spending some time in Connecticut recently, if you have found the state to be less fictitious than your comment at the Edinburgh Book Festival implied.

P.S. We recently saw you at The Bay Street Theater at Sag Harbor, and my wife thought you were great. Although she was a little disappointed you didn’t do “Comin Through The Rye” this time, and she did feel there was something of a bitter edge to your performance, which she didn’t think was there back in the 1990s.

Sincerely,
Guy Afferidge
Greenport, NY

My comment in Edinburgh about Minnesota was meant ironically and, alas for me, irony is a slippery slope and so I’ve tried to give it up. I had a wonderful time at Sag Harbor and wasn’t aware of bitter feelings but I never argue with a member of the audience: people hear what they hear. As for Connecticut, I spend my time in my wife’s family’s summer house, a small frame house on the river shore, in a beautiful wooded section of southeast CT, a great deal of wild reserves around and also some patches of sumptuous mansions. I like it there. When I first met your wife, I knew nothing about the state, thus my attempt at humor. Oh dear. Thanks for letting me know.

GK

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GK,

I am a Superintendent for the NYC Subway.

If you want to file a complaint, e-mail me with the date, approximate time, direction, details, and if you remember, the car number from when it happened, and we can look into it.

I’m sorry that this happened.

Charles Herbert
Superintendent, Q Line
New York City Transit

Mr. Herbert, it was my fault and mine alone that I hesitated to exit the car on the C train and then got my head caught by the closing doors. I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time with this. The young man who forced the door open deserves to get a thank-you note from me but I didn’t have time to get his address. Thanks for your concern. I’ve never yet ridden the Q line and one of these days I’ll have to try it.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I don’t know if we are related but you always seem like family talking.

My family was located in Kindred, North Dakota. Norwegian farmers smack dab on the Great Northern line that headed to Seattle Tacoma.

Your voice was like an elixir and all your stories were truly alive.

We met in Seattle one time at a book signing and I was dwarfed in your presence, being I am short.

My father was Owen H. Swenson, USN BIG MAMIE USS Massachusetts LT.

He adored your show and you gave him many a happy day and belly laughs. Very healing for him.

Thank you for making our family happy and laugh and helping us enjoy life.

Best regards,
Thomas Albert Swenson

I haven’t a drop of Norwegian blood in me, sir, unless my Scots or Yorkshire ancestors got involved with Viking marauders, but I was fortunate to fall in love with a Swede and so our daughter has the advantages I missed out on.

GK

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Good morning, Garrison,

Reading about good manners and trust struck home in several ways. Buying food in a fast-food restaurant from a person with ring in their nose or lip makes me uncomfortable. I too can remember about needing to know someone in an organization to get a job. Paperboy comes to mind. A very valuable job when you’re growing up. It taught a lot of lessons in life right from the start. Knowing someone in the paper’s circulation department to start, then came the route, being on time to meet truck dropping off bundle of papers you had to fold them pack them in your shoulder bag and then sometimes a route manager would stop to tell you clean up your receiving area, not leaving the wire holding the bundles on the ground. Then came the subscribers, satisfying their special needs. Then you got to really know people. On the route you had to collect the subscription money, punch their card. The best were the lower-income; they would pay. The higher-income were more difficult, not answering their door and telling you to come back later. On holidays or your birthdays lower-income people remembered you. Not so much for the higher-income people.

That’s another job lost to progress. So that’s just my slant on things. Keep on with the interesting reading. Our thoughts and prayers are with you on the upcoming valve replacement.

Dick
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

You’re so right, Dick, about the job of paperboy (or girl) being gone by the boards, and it’s a real problem for smaller newspapers. So newspapers have gone online like everything else and reading a paper online you tend to glance at headlines and you miss out on some small fascinating items you’d notice if you were holding the page in your hands. Glad you got the opportunity.

GK

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Sir,

I asked this before but I think I sent it to the wrong place. I thoroughly enjoyed Boom Town, especially the preacher who lost all authority when he would not own his farts. Been wondering how JP got his pants off in the woods when he had a bowl of Jell-O tied to his ankle.

Carry on,
Leslie Ritchie

Hastings, Minnesota

Details, details! JP put the bowl of Jell-O with Miracle Whip on the tree stump to attract deer and tied a string from the bowl to his ankle so he could be awakened if a deer disturbed the bowl and he was asleep, but my question is: how do you tie a string around a bowl? Anyway, a skunk ate the Jell-O and JP woke up and the skunk sprayed him and he had to take his clothes off. You’re the first reader to notice the problem here, for which you should receive a medal for careful reading. Let’s just say that the loop of string fell off the bowl when the skunk disturbed it. Okay?

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

You like your burger with onions. An Oklahoma Burger will blow you away and is easy to make. I’ve failed to find inventor Ross Davis’s date of birth and hope you could share it in your Writer’s Almanac. The story of why it he created it is the kind of story only you can tell in that compelling way you tell.

Thank you.
Frank

Googling the Oklahoma Burger, I find some differences of opinion as to what it is: some include a special sauce, others don’t. It seems to me that I’d need to go to Oklahoma to figure this out and these days Oklahoma isn’t on my list of destinations and I’m getting to the age when time is running out. This may be a permanent mystery.

GK

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