{"id":1584,"date":"2015-05-08T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T15:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=1584"},"modified":"2015-05-08T12:56:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T17:56:50","slug":"an-evening-with-garrison-keillor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/an-evening-with-garrison-keillor\/","title":{"rendered":"An Evening With Garrison Keillor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wpf_wrapper\"><a class=\"print_link\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Print this entry<\/a><\/p><!-- .wpf_wrapper --><p>When \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d first went on the air, Richard Nixon was a month away from being run out of the Oval Office. \u201cAnnie\u2019s Song\u201d by John Denver topped the pop charts. The Ford Pinto and the Plymouth Valiant were the best-selling cars in America, and the median price of a home in America was $37,400. It was July 1974, and Garrison Keillor and his troupe took the stage for about a dozen people in the audience in Saint Paul, Minn.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the show is heard by four million listeners each week on more than 600 public radio stations, as well as abroaThank youd, according to its website (prairiehome.org). Under the heading, \u201cGarrison Keillor sure owns a lot of words!\u201d there is a list of registered trademarks and service marks. Fans of the show will recognize these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Be well, do good work and keep in touch.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Catchup Advisory Board.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Lake Wobegon.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Powder Milk Biscuits.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Where the women are strong, the men are good looking and all of the children are above average.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At 72, Keillor is still working steadily. Last Saturday evening, he brought \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d to an appreciative audience in Goshen, Indiana. By the next night, he was on the stage of the Belcher Center at LeTourneau University in Longview, accompanied by his longtime pianist Rich Dworsky. A mainly silver-haired crowd filled much of this lovely venue, which has great acoustics and plush seating.<\/p>\n<p>Keillor is 6-feet-four inches tall, and carries the posture of a man used to ducking under doorways. He walked out onto the stage a few moments after Dworksy sat down at the grand piano. Keillor wore a dark suit, a bright red tie, and red canvas tennis shoes accented by red socks. His famously bushy eyebrows have turned white, but he still commands a stage. His only cue was a sheet of paper adhered to the floor of the stage at which he occasionally glanced. He paced around, sat on a stool, paced some more.<\/p>\n<p>For nearly two hours, Keillor sang, told jokes, recited long passages of poetry, led the audience in a couple of hymns and delivered a long monologue on enduring the unpleasantness of a colonoscopy, assisted by a nurse who was a high school classmate. She then got to see a side of him that he did not expect to reveal. Having recently endured the same procedure, I could empathize. Judging from the age of the crowd, nearly everyone there could as well.<\/p>\n<p>Keillor\u2019s memory for songs, jokes and doggerel is amazing. Without cue cards, a teleprompter or anything but that sheet of paper on the floor he went nonstop. His delivery and sense of timing is matchless. Since my memory is so bad I often forget what I wrote about last week, I went online to find a few of the jokes he told<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2022 One morning, the devil came to church<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In a bust of smoke and flame.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>He ran up and down the aisle.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>He said \u201cBeelzebub is my name.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I am evil incarnate,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The object of all your fears!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The old man said, \u201cYou don\u2019t scare me at all,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Been married to your sister for 48 years.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>\u201cDarling, you\u2019re always been with me.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>On life\u2019s long bumpy ride.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Through sickness, hair loss, bankruptcy,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>You\u2019ve been here by my side.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My heart attack and the house burning down.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>That night the lightning struck.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And liver cancer \u2014 now suddenly,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I\u2019m starting to think you\u2019re bad luck.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>My mother turned 89,<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>And much to our surprise,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>She decided to get outdoors<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And started to exercise.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Mother walked 10 miles a day<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And now she\u2019s 93.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Poor old mother, we don\u2019t know<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Where on earth she could be<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Keillor\u2019s mother lived to be 97, which bodes well for his chance of continuing to entertain us, on the radio and in live performances, for many years to come. He quit smoking more than 30 years ago, and gave up alcohol a decade ago. That improves his chances of being around, though I am unaware of any guarantees on longevity.<\/p>\n<p>He concluded his performance Sunday night by leading the audience in singing \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic,\u201d prefacing it by saying, \u201cI know I\u2019m in Texas, but this is all one nation\u201d to scattered applause. The song, written by Julia Ward Howe to the tune of \u201cJohn Brown\u2019s Body\u201d was published in 1861 and became an anthem of the Union forces during the Civil War. Regardless of one\u2019s Southern roots or preferences, it is a lovely piece of Americana.<\/p>\n<p>And it was a lovely evening as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wpf_wrapper\"><a class=\"print_link\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Print this entry<\/a><\/p><!-- .wpf_wrapper -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Print this entryWhen \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d first went on the air, Richard Nixon was a month away from being run out of the Oval Office. \u201cAnnie\u2019s Song\u201d by John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[50,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}