Garrison Keillor - That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life

Also by Garrison Keillor

The Lake Wobegon Virus, 2020
Living with Limericks, 2019
The Keillor Reader, 2014
O, What a Luxury, 2013
Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny, 2012
A Christmas Blizzard, 2009
Pilgrims, 2009
Life among the Lutherans, 2009
77 Love Sonnets, 2009
Liberty, 2008
Pontoon, 2007
Daddys Girl, 2005
Homegrown Democrat, 2004
Love Me, 2003
In Search of Lake Wobegon, 2001
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, 2001
ME, 1999
Wobegon Boy, 1997
The Old Man Who Loved Cheese, 1996
The Sandy Bottom Orchestra (with Jenny Lind Nilsson), 1996
Cat, You Better Come Home, 1995
The Book of Guys, 1993
WLT, 1991
We Are Still Married, 1989
Leaving Home, 1987
Lake Wobegon Days, 1985
Happy to Be Here, 1981

To all the musicians, words cannot express The happiness you made with the songs you played In the long parade. God bless.

Copyright 2020 by Garrison Keillor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943449

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photograph: Benjamin Miller, copyright by Prairie Home Productions

ISBN: 978-1-951627-68-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951627-70-6

Printed in the United States of America

I grew up in a northern town
Ground was flat for miles around
We were fundamentalist
Underwear was in a twist
Aloof, avoiding those in sin
Expecting Jesus to drop in
I was staunch and rather pure
Riding on the Brethren bus
And then I read great literature
Lusty, longing, humorous
Telling us to seize the day
Before the flowers fade away
We were taught obedience
To the Word, Gods Holy Book
But Mother loved comedians
And that was the road I took
And so I bent and smelled the roses
Which God intended, one supposes
And now as life slips away
Just as Scripture said it would
I write this little book to say
Thank you. So far, so good.

CONTENTS

The Keillor family tree is located on .

My Life

I TS BEEN AN EASY LIFE and when I think back, I wish it were a summer morning after a rain and I were loading my bags into the luggage hold of the bus and climbing aboard past Al, the driver, and the bench seats up front to the bunks in back and claiming a low bunk in the rear for myself. Were about to set off on a twenty-eight-city tour of onenighters, two buses, the staff bus and the talent bus (though actually the tech guys, Sam and Thomas and Albert and Tony, have most of the talent and the rest of us just do the best we can). I kiss Jenny goodbye and she envies me, having been on opera and orchestra bus tours herself and loved them. The show band guys sit in front, Rich Dworsky, Chris, Pat and Pete, Andy, Gary or Larry, Richard, Joe, Arnie the drummer, Heather the duet partner on Under African Skies and In My Life and Greg Browns Early. Fred Newman is here, Mr. Sound Effects, and well do the Bebopareebop commercial about the meteorite flying into Earths atmosphere about to wipe out an entire city when a beluga in heat sings a note that sets off a nuclear missile that deflects the meteorite to the Mojave Desert where it cracks the earths crust and hatches prehistoric eggs of pterodactyls, which rise screeching and galumphing toward a tiny town and a Boy Scout camp where a lone bagpiper plays the Lost Chord that pulverizes the pterodactyls tiny brains and sends them crashing and gibbering into an arroyo, and I say, Wouldnt this be a good time for a piece of rhubarb pie? and we sing, One little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie. Serve it up nice and hot, maybe things arent as bad as you thought.

At the table sits Janis or Katharine or Jennifer, who has the cellphone that Sam or Kate or Deb will call if there is a crisis. If they called me about a crisis, then theyd have two crises. I sit at a table so I can write on a laptop, but the show is written, the Guy Noir sketch, the commercials, the news from Lake Wobegon about the pontoon boat with the twenty-four Lutheran pastors, the canceled wedding of the veterinary aromatherapist, the boy on the parasail who intends to drop Aunt Evelyns ashes in the lake when the boat towing him swerves to avoid the giant duck decoy and he is towed at high speed underwater, which tears his swim trunks off, then naked he rises on a collision course with a hot-air balloon.

The boys on the bus. Pat Donohue Andy Stein, Arnie Kinsella, Gary Raynor, and Richard Dworsky.

The bus is home; everyone has a space. You can sit up front and listen to musicians reminisce and rag on each other or you can lie in your bunk and think your thoughts. The first show is the hardest, a long drive to Appleton, then sound check and show, breakdown, drive to Grand Rapids and arrive at 4 a.m., a long day, and then we get into rhythm, Cedar Rapids, Sioux Falls, Lincoln, Denver, Aspen, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and on. The bus pulls into a town around 4 or 5 a.m. and you stumble out of your bunk and into a hotel room and sleep and have lunch and head to the venue midafternoon, and each show is mostly the same as the night before, you walk out and sing Tishomingo Blues

O hear that old piano from down the avenue.

I smell the roses, I look around for you.

My sweet old someone coming through that door:

Another day n the band is playin. Honey, could we ask for more?

And the show ends with the crowd singing Cant Help Falling In Love With You and Auld Lang Syne and Good Night, Ladies and whatever else comes to mind, and they go home happy, and the bus is sociable, and there is beer and tacos and ice cream bars. You belong to a family engaged in a daring enterprise and youre on the road and all your troubles are behind you. Sometimes late at night, I imagine climbing on the bus at Tanglewood, past the band guys noodling and jamming and the game of Hearts, and I lie in the back bottom bunk and we pull away, headed for Chautauqua, near Jamestown, New York, and I fall asleep and wake up in Minneapolis and its years later.

I was not meant to ride around on a bus and do shows, I grew up Plymouth Brethren who shunned entertainment, Jesus being all-sufficient for our needs and the Rapture imminent. (The Brethren originated in Plymouth, England, it had nothing to do with the automobilewe were Ford people.) God knew where to find us, on the upper Mississippi River smack dab in the middle of North America, in Minnesota, the icebox state, so narcissism was not available, I was a flatlander like everyone else. We bathed once a week, accepting that we were mammals and didnt need to smell like vegetation. By the age of three I could spell