Why I have a bright red wallet

The Column: 03.28.25

It is highly informative to watch another marriage in a moment of stress and see how calmly they handle it compared to the hysterics that I’d go through in similar circumstances: 6:20 a.m., a nephew and his wife are assembling their bags to catch a cab to the airport for a 9 a.m. flight and the guy suddenly can’t find his wallet and so the search begins, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, as I stand watching in my pajamas — the two are guests in our apartment — and it amazes me how calm and cheerful they are. “Are you sure you saw it this morning?” she asks, matter-of-factly. “Yes, I’m sure,” he says and because he is a tech wizard, not a fiction writer, she takes him at his word.

I’ve been in his situation numerous times when I proceeded rapidly from mounting despair to self-loathing and having to be institutionalized in a locked ward and tranquilized, but this young couple doesn’t go there. The search proceeds. The wife makes a few helpful suggestions in a calm voice, no shrieking, no wild hand gestures. Minutes pass. No panic. The husband unzips a pocket on his knapsack and there is the wallet. All is well. No divorce lawyer got involved, no therapist, priest, or psychic.

These two are rationalists but I am a writer and Democrat and I need assistance when leaving on a trip to make sure I have my wallet, phone and phone charger, ID, Visa card, meds, hearing aids, notebook and pens, eyedrops, boarding pass, and make sure I am wearing a belt. I’ve lost some weight and sometimes, approaching the TSA desk, briefcase in one hand and ID in the other, I feel trouser slippage and how would Security deal with a depantsed person — would there be due process or might you be put directly on a flight to El Salvador? You tell me.

The Leader of Our Great Nation shows a powerful sense of self-confidence that was denied to us who grew up in Christian homes in the Midwest. We were given a keen sense of our own insignificance. I saw — under ferocious preaching on Sunday that did not encourage a large ego — that we were not worthy of admiration, and only by God’s grace did we presume to come to His Table. In school, we learned about LaSalle, Marquette, Father Hennepin, Joseph Nicollet, who had claimed the Midwest for France, but Louis XV was more interested in sugar from the Caribbean than fur from the North and so he withdrew and Voltaire said, “All we lost was a few acres of snow.” This remark still stings, centuries later. We could’ve been French and instead we raised corn to feed the hogs.

I left home for New York to make my wife happy, the best reason there is, and here I learned to enjoy my insignificance. Nobody notices me on the subway so I get to look at them. I’ve stumbled and fallen three times and each time four people rushed to my side within three seconds to help me up, not because I’m an author but because I’m human. I fell on Amsterdam Avenue and whacked my head and lay stunned on the sidewalk for a moment and six people rushed to my side, helped me up and a man hailed a cab for me and they kept asking if I was okay — I was more than okay, I was gratified. In Minnesota I was a motorist, here I’m a pedestrian. I’m aware of a civil society around me: I look out for you, you look out for me.

And sometimes an old friend calls from back home and pours out her or his heart in a way they never would’ve in the social gatherings where we used to meet. Around the dinner table we talked politics but in the hush of the late-night cellphone call, we speak from the heart. A friend of half a century calls and talks of her husband, a scholar and musician, his tenderness toward my family, and how she looks upon his suicide as a noble deed, to cut short the pain of his decline. I listen and don’t comment. I used to be a celeb, now I’m a confidant, a great honor. It doesn’t say so on my ID but those who need to know seem to know. I don’t do therapy, don’t offer rationalism, just try to be the best listener I can be. Thanks for listening.

Garrison Keillor takes readers back to his hometown of Lake Wobegon in Boom Town, a humorous story about young entrepreneurs shaking things up a little.

CLICK HERE to buy your copy today!