Post to the Host

Comments from the weeks of June 20th and June 27th

Garrison,

I recently saw you on the news somewhere, and it reminded me to write this note saying that I never did believe what MPR alleged about you. Shame on them. I sure miss you on Saturdays!

A fellow English major,

Michele

I’d like to make peace with them, Michele. I went to work at MPR in 1969 when I was 27. I quit a comfortable job at a station in Minneapolis and it was the best move I ever made. PHC started at MPR in 1974. I walked up the stairs to Bill Kling’s office to ask to do the show and the meeting lasted about ten minutes. That show was great fun and thanks to the marketing minds at MPR, it earned them a lot of money. I think the world needs some peacemakers to bring about reconciliation. Wish me luck.

GK

Hi Garrison,

Saw your article on Amelia Earhart. The highlight of my dad’s life was getting her autograph on a life size portrait drawing he did of her in 1935. He heard she was coming to his hometown Lakeside, Ohio, and he borrowed a friends bellhop uniform, met her car outside the Lakeside hotel picked up her bags and took her to her room. As she went to give him a tip, he pulled his rolled-up portrait of her from his uniform and got her to autograph the portrait for him which she did. He considered this the artistic achievement of his life. I have that portrait hanging on our wall and consider that his greatest gift to me. Just thought you would like to know.

Thanks,

JP

That’s a fine story, JP. Did your dad have to pay the Lakeside bellhop to get out of the way?

GK

Hi, Garrison,

Just want to say (early) Happy 80th Bday, and prayers will be said for your upcoming surgery. May your mitral valve tune-up be as stellar as your wife’s car engine’s!

Sincerely,
Pat McCormack

I’m looking forward to the procedure, Pat. When your heart valve leaks and the rhythm goes bad, you feel fatigue and it gets in the way of all I want to do, writing projects and so on and my wife wants to go to Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Prague, and Switzerland, and I want to be able to keep up with her.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I would be happy if you were to form a new production company or sign up with an existing one, and relaunch APHC travelling road show with live radio broadcast.

You may have no idea of the enjoyment your show brought to us on evenings in autumn, nights in winter, and again evenings in spring and early summer, whereon our emotions ranged from somber, to depressed, to expectant, in a long chain of transformation from death to rebirth, repeated annually such that we actually looked forward to the end of summer!

Some highlights were the Minnesota Fair broadcasts and the one time you came on in mid-summer from the Kansas Fair.

I hope you can find a way to come back on the air!

NPR Norwegian Public Radio maybe?

Thank you,
Tim

Very kind of you, Tim, but this is a project for a younger person. I was in my thirties when the show went national in 1980 and that’s a good age for launching a bold new venture. Find a woman to host it, hire a team of comedy writers, a band of actors, and a house band and you’ve got something. I think PHC was too moody and needed to be funnier and I never worked well with other writers so the writing was too monochrome. Someone younger could do much better.

GK

GK,

This is my third time (maybe fourth time) seeing the show in person. I am so very excited. Thanks for holding up and continuing to share your wisdom. At 62, I am listening to every word you say, GK. I'm reading every word you've written. You are gift, sir, that keeps on giving. Thanks. I'll see you at the Mother Church (incidentally where my son and band just held court for two sold out shows) and I'll be ready to enjoy!  Travel mercies.  

Heidi Dugger

Wow. Two sold-out shows. He’s doing well and good for him. We’ve almost achieved one semi-sold-out show but that’s okay. In honor of the Rev. Sam Jones who preached at the Ryman when it was a gospel tabernacle, I’m going to get the audience to sing “How Great Thou Art” and “Nearer My God To Thee” and “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.” Hope there are enough sopranos in the audience who know the words.

GK

Garrison,

My wife and I are faithful readers, but I were taken aback by your slant on The House of The Rising Sun.

Having practiced Architecture for some 40 years, I’m obviously sensitive to demeaning comments about architects, not that we don’t deserve a few.

It’s amazing how easy it is to look to the architect when things go awry. Honestly though, it is not always the architect’s fault. I speak from experience!

Keep up the good work!
Donald Singer

Donald, glad to let an architect defend his profession. My parody of the old song was intended to be humorous and clearly it missed the mark. I’ll have another look.

GK

GK,

Like many others, I read your columns primarily out of appreciation for your heuristic approach to life which is often tinged with self-defacing humor. Every now and then you offer an insight or sliver of wisdom that reverberates with a truism that is fit for a sermon. The story you told at the conclusion of your last column about your 7-year-old son's question to you about divorcing his mother was one of those moments for me that I plan to use the next time I am asked to fill a pulpit. The wisdom behind his question seems especially apropos for today's strident culture warriors —"Can't we take turns being right?”  Thanks for sharing that sobering yet poignant story. 

Rev. Larry Fosdick

Riverside, Texas 

Glad the line appeals to you, Reverend, and you’re welcome to it but the marriage didn’t end because of disagreements, it ended in silence due to a very bad mismatch of personalities. Some problems have no solution. I felt no remorse for that divorce.

GK

Hi Mr. Keillor,

The missing holiday you speak of in America is one we celebrate here in the province of Quebec. The 24th of June is a national holiday for French Canadians only where we celebrate our unique culture with bonfires. Perhaps petitioning your governor for this holiday to be added to the American calendar would be justified. One can never have too many days off, you know.

Be well and continue the terrific work.

Claude Bussieres
Les Cèdres, Quebec – Canada

My proposal for a new holiday celebrating the luxury of sunlight did not win much approval, Claude, and I’m not going to lead a campaign. I certainly am not the man to petition for a French holiday. My people came over from Yorkshire to Nova Scotia to take over land that the British had driven French settlers from and they found it was even worse land than what they had left in Yorkshire. The French got to go to Louisiana and a warm climate and my people tried to raise corn on rocky saltwater meadows. We got the worst of the deal.

GK

Hey! When are you coming to Southern California?  Specifically Orange County? You have lots of people here that would like to spend a nice evening with you.

Walter O.

I only go where I’m invited to go and these days I seem to be more popular in red states. I had a fantastic crowd in southern Indiana recently, in a county that went for Trump two-to-one. Go figure. And during the intermission sing-along, they all knew the words to the songs I know. My people, evidently. Amazing.

GK

I was raised Episcopalian. Here's one that was prevalent in the day: "Anywhere you find four Episcopalians, you'll always find a fifth."

George Patterson

That’s a Baptist joke, George.

GK

Hello Garrison,

I subscribed to your Substack hoping to enjoy some good writing, but you're delivering much more to my Inbox. I may be of a slightly younger generation, but like you, I'm trying to square an awkward triangle, where the three sides are a strict religious upbringing, a world hugely at odds with that conditioning, and a Jesus I still love and want to follow.

Please allow me to share an example. These last few months I've been caring for my dying father. I love him, but the righteous indignation of which you speak today will prevent me, in our final days together, from telling him that his grandson is gay. My father is a kind man, but in these circumstances, his theology would forbid him from showing that kindness and mercy.

That makes me sad, but I thank you for your emails — a haven of hope and signpost to a God I'm choosing to believe will be forgiving... and kind... and merciful... to us all, in the end.

Ian

Ian, you’re a good son and the work of caregiving is beyond words. God sees what you’re doing and where your heart is and the righteous indignation is just steam. Your son is coming along in a much more tolerant and forgiving world than the one your father grew up in. Be grateful for goodness wherever it prevails and enjoy the day.

GK

GK,

Attached are 2 photos of our 2nd batch of rhubarb juice this year. The reason for 2 photos is that I'm trying to show you the one-of-a-kind colour of this excellent juice, which i sent you the recipe for many months ago. Now rhubarb season is finally here!

In the first photo the containers are on the kitchen counter and in the second photo they are in the refrigerator where the backlighting is better. The foam residue on the insides of the half-empty pitcher is there only because in this case, I put the juice in first, then added the ginger ale. If you pour the ginger ale into your glass/mug/pitcher first, then add some juice and some ice, there is very little foam to mess up your glass. This would probably work okay with soda water, but I prefer diet ginger ale.

I hope you will try this tart, low-cal drink when you and your wife are up in Connecticut where fresh rhubarb is available from the garden.

J. McEwen

Wheatland County, Alberta, Canada

It’s hard to imagine rhubarb juice but I shall try it, cautiously, in tiny sips when I’m able to find it. Here, we sweeten it with strawberries when we make it into a pie, but I’ll be brave and take mine straight.

GK

Okay, Mr. Keillor,

Enough is enough — the one-liners, the alliteration, the fart jokes (we do those in Cumbria too you know) — I just bought a copy of Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny from World of Books. I read a few lines & start snorting with laughter, so I'm obliged to go and pull a few weeds, comb my hair, or wash my smalls to compose myself. I read Pontoon more than once and loved it. It’s the same thing over again. You have brought a little sunshine and that's a big thing in the Lake District) into my life. Thank you, Garrison.

Best wishes,

Jenny Wild

I’m pleased, of course, and amazed to hear this, having written those books and I don’t remember laughing at all. But my wife (whose name is Jenny) often does when I read stuff aloud to her. I’d feel bad if she didn’t. I make my daughter laugh by scratching her bare feet, the inner arch and also the balls of the foot and up into the toes. She can be feeling low but when she puts her bare foot in my lap, I can change night to day. I come from somber people. Sometimes I go hear a comic who I can hear is very funny but I don’t laugh. I said to an audience in Indiana in June, “I can’t please everybody, I’m not guacamole” and they went to pieces. But it’s funnier if the funny guy doesn’t laugh. Jack Benny, Buster Keaton, and so forth. Thanks for the note. You made my day.

GK

Sir,

You wrote that at age 20, you rode around Minneapolis with "Maggie" in a red Mustang. You would have been 20 in 1962. The Mustang was not produced until March 1964. More likely it was a used, '54 Ford. I had a '54 Chevy at the time.

Harry Summerfield

You’re right, it was not a Mustang, it was a ’56 Ford. I always wanted a Mustang and never got one and I put her and me in it as fulfillment of a wish. You caught me. If I’m ever indicted for fraud, I hope you’re not on my jury.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I have just read Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why You Should Keep On Getting Older and, as I approach 70, waiting for a prostate operation and wondering what life will hold, it cheered me up enormously. It’s always gratifying when someone puts into words, so graphically, experiences which touch on your own. Just as the Covid lockdown began, I retired from a busy life helping to run the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. The last six weeks of twenty years in the job were spent cancelling everything I’d put in place over the previous two years. My boss retired the same summer. Unlike our esteemed leaders in Downing Street, no leaving parties were held, we just closed the door and left. But, having retreated to our Yorkshire home and been confined, like everyone else, I have learned to adapt to narrower horizons and take each day as it comes. Your book describes all of this wonderfully well.

But I decided to write having read your account of meeting a lady called Angie in a New York street, and how her memory of your story from long ago touched you. I first came across your writing in 1989, when my elder brother, John, was in an oncology ward at Guy’s Hospital in London for a long stay. The prospects weren’t good, but he was reading Leaving Home and wanted me to hear some of it.  He read the opening of “Chicken,” where Harold tells a joke in the Chatterbox Cafe. As he went on, the ward grew quiet. When he got to the part where Harold “motioned to be let out” he could hardly continue himself. It’s a marvelous memory.

When John died a few weeks later, he left instructions that his friends and young family should eventually meet for a party in an upper room in the Adelphi (his favourite Victorian pub in our native Leeds) and, if possible, invite you to read to them!  We never had the courage, but I imagined, on reflection, that you might appreciate the thought, nevertheless.

Very best wishes,
Geoffrey Owen

It’s so good to hear from you, sir, and congratulations on your successful retreat from high management to a peaceful and pleasant retirement. I’m trying to do the same and finding it difficult. I seem to cherish chaos and spending my days flitting through a forest of projects and maintaining a steady level of dissatisfaction. But I married a good woman who maintains our life and I do like my work. And it’s amazing to think that without my knowledge I got involved in your brother’s life and yours and so have connections to Yorkshire, from which my ancestor Thomas sailed to Nova Scotia in 1774. We come from a town near you called Skelton and I mean to visit before I die and look at the stones in the cemetery. So perhaps we shall meet eventually. Hope your summer is peaceful and thanks so much for being in touch.

GK

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