Walking in Scotland, crazy happy
The Column: 11.01.24
I took the fast train from London to Edinburgh a few weeks ago to do my solo show at Queen’s Hall and sitting in the café car watching the countryside pass at a hundred miles per hour, I felt utterly happy. It was the fourth day of my tour and finally I was emerging from the prison grip of jet lag, which I’d tried to sleep off, which only makes it worse. The cure is daylight, movement. Now I was feeling resurrected.
When I visit Scotland, I think of my grandpa William Denham who emigrated from Glasgow to Minneapolis in 1905. I only knew him as a querulous old guy with high-top leather shoes who pronounced “girls” “gettles” but cousin Joyce told me he left to escape the Calvinist cruelty of his stepmother. William and his wife had 13 children, my mother Grace the 10th, but the first kid was born only four months after the wedding. He was never forgiven. When he returned years later to visit his dying father, he kept a detailed journal of the voyage and it goes blank once he reaches Scotland. My guess is that guilt and shame shut the door. The story couldn’t be told.
I got to the hotel in Edinburgh and hiked from Grassmarket up to the castle through throngs of lively youth, a parade of languages and dialects, including some like his. A guy played electric guitar to a blues rhythm track and sang, I assumed, about a woman who’d left him but it might’ve been about a stepmother, I couldn’t tell. Three little kids sat on the curb admiring a hairy terrier, patting him in wonderment, and he tolerated their admiration well. I saw three stunning beauties nearby, their hair pale red, their very own hereditary hair, and immediately wanted to get to know them better, but I pulled myself away and kept walking. But I am still stunned a week later.
A café advertised “Breakfast and A Pint” where some folks were chasing their scrambled eggs and bacon with beer and around the corner a fine baritone played mandolin and sang about the bonny banks and braes of Loch Lomond. I was his lone audience. I saw only some coinage in his mandolin case — and yes, I know it’s a smart street singer’s strategy to keep an empty case — but I dropped in a twenty-pound note anyway. The twenty shocked him and he stumbled on the verse about the wee birdies singing. But I sang the song in my show that night and the audience sang it with me and it was very sweet.
A sunny day, cool, 50ish, and I sat in a sidewalk café and had lentil soup and coffee and watched the river of youth flowing by and felt happy and content. The secret of happiness, I guess, is to get jet-lagged and then emerge from it and also to be ignorant of the American election news, to not be a radical left-wing Marxist enemy within but simply a very happy old man in a square in Edinburgh.
My grandpa fathered 13 children, a man of enthusiasm, and died at 73, deep in dementia. I am 82 and still trying to make sense and that night at my show, I recited love poems by Burns and Blake and Shakespeare and my poem about sperm,
Beneath its shiny dome, it contains your chromosomes, and the tail can kick just like a leg. Nothing could be fina than to swim up a vagina in search of a rendezvous with an egg,
and I talked about the beauty of being old, assuming one has a little luck, which I do, having never been a criminal defendant, never fallen off a roof, never taught third grade, and at my recent checkup the doctor skipped the digital prostate exam. It felt good to be away from America and walk in the streams of youth up the hill toward the castle and buy marmalade and whisky fudge for my true love and enjoy a sunny October day.
Grandpa, I don’t understand my country anymore, but it’s okay. Life gets small at this age, and somehow a sunny day and coffee, the parade of youth, the bonnie banks, the gettles with pale red hair are enough. Coffee comes in at the mouth and love comes at the eye. That is all we know of truth ere we grow old and die. I think of her and sigh and I’m crazy happy.
Pre-order this 2-CD set of A Prairie Home Companion’s 50th anniversary show at the Fitzgerald Theater. Get a $5 discount on your purchase if you buy before Nov. 15!
CLICK HERE to buy today!
Your story stirred me. In my mind, I was able to follow your footsteps and enjoy the city that was my home for 30 years. I still have a son and three grandchildren there. Our paths once crossed there. Years ago, you spoke at the Book Festival. Afterwards, I waited in a long line of people wanting to thank you and get their books signed. I don’t normally wait in lines late at night but for you, I made an exception. As I waited with my copy of Wobegon Days in hand, I silently rehearsed the questions I wanted to ask. I was the last person to step forward and hold out my book for your autograph. You quickly scrawled it across the title page and before I could speak, you asked me to forgive you for not chatting for you were exhausted. I was disappointed, but I could see the truth in your eyes. But today, your words returned me to the city we both love. To imaginatively walk up from the Grassmarket with you, to sit in the balcony of Queens Hall and imagine you reading those poems, and to imagine those red haired beauties more than makes up for that disappointment. And for that, I’m grateful. Blessings on your travels Mr. Keillor.
Loved your Edinburgh show. Haste ye back!