Post to the Host
GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between.

Send your own post to the host.
Here's your chance to ask GK your most pressing questions—about the writing life, the radio life, Lake Wobegon, Guy Noir, whatever you like. Also, feel free to send feedback about the show. Honest comments and criticism are always welcome!

Dear Garrison,
I've been a listener to your programme off and on for about the last 6 years now, especially since it started to be carried on BBC7, the BBCs digital radio station for comedy.

I was talking with a friend up in Scotland about APHC and he said he had read a copy of your autobiography, about how you got into radio. I didn't know you had written such a book, only the Lake Wobegon books. Has he got the two mixed up or have you in the past written an autobiography?

Cheers,
Chris Butterfield
U.K.

Chris, I didn't write an autobiography as such but perhaps your Scottish friend happened onto a copy of a book called Homegrown Democrat which includes some stuff about me and which is now widely available on remainder tables for about 69 cents a copy. Remainder tables are the ones bookstores put out on the sidewalk so as to make shoplifting easier. As for writing a real autobiography, it's far down on my list of things to do. I just don't feel confident about being able to, frankly. Like most people, I can take myself back to various points in the distant past — the house I grew up in, my school playground, the Mississippi River, a backyard in St. Paul in the fall of 1947 and cousin Kathy and an apple tree and coal smoke in the air, a visit to Brooklyn, New York, in 1953 — but nothing happens to me when I arrive there: the memories don't expand, the light doesn't spread — my memory seems to consist of postcards rather than film footage — and so I'm leery of writing a series of fables and foisting it off as a memoir. This may be the fate of a fiction writer: you plunder your memory for characters and story elements and bits of dialogue and you wind up changing it, blurring truth and fiction. My father-in-law, who is 82 and never wrote a book before, wrote an extraordinary and beautiful one (unpublished), which is, on the face of it, a memoir of all the cars he has owned. It's a brilliant framework for autobiography, utterly original, and what's more he is blessed with near total recall, and he is free of literary self-consciousness. If I can't write something as good, then why bother? I don't want to walk up to a Barnes & Noble and see the Story of My Life on sale for 69 cents.

Post to the Host:
Have you ever considered resurrecting Buster the Show Dog?

Joshua Allen
Columbia, MO

Not until you mentioned it, Joshua. Buster was a regular back in 1986-87 and also on the First Annual Farewell Show and the Second and Third, with Tom Keith playing Buster and Father Finian and Timmy the Sad Rich Teenage Boy and Kate Mackenzie playing Sheila the Christian Jungle Girl and Dan Rowles playing various roughnecks and functionaries. I don't have Kate or Dan anymore, and Mr. Keith has retired from road work, so his last appearance this year will be in Madison WI in May. I will consider doing this, Joshua, if you will give me a story outline. A hundred words or less. Just tell me what the dilemma is and how we resolve it.

Garrison,
We are so looking forward to your upcoming show in Norfolk, Virginia. We haven't missed one yet. Though, this time we will be sitting in the nosebleed seats in the balcony because the day the tickets went on sale, I couldn't remember our ticketmaster password to buy them and ended up setting up a whole new account just before they were all sold out. Old age and technology can be a real challenge sometimes! We're excited to see that Robin and Linda Williams will be with you in Norfolk. Any change Mavis and Marvin Smiley might make an appearance? Be safe in your travels and we'll see you soon.

Paula Caplinger

Paula, a similar thing happened to me in New York. Got tangled up in technology and was a day late and a dollar short and wound up sitting in the back of the theater for the play "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley but the play was so riveting, especially the performance by Cherry Jones, that it didn't matter. Sat in the fourth row the night before and saw another play and couldn't wait for intermission. My most indelible opera experience was at the Met, the very back row, with the ceiling within arm's reach, seeing Renee Fleming and Susan Graham in "Der Rosenkavalier" a couple years ago. I will think of you while writing the Norfolk show and strive to do things that carry to the back. And I hope Marvin and Mavis will put in an appearance.

Dear GK,
While reading through a special section on Pope John Paul II in the Kansas City Star yesterday, a quote from a priest in Winona, MN hit me like a brick wall.

The 12-page section was full of praise from a broad range of individuals including Hindus, Jews, Baptists, Lutherans, etc. But the priest from Winona had a different take on Pope John Paul II:

"His papacy should have been the greatest in history, but because of his liberal bent, it was very much a disaster. He'll have to answer for a lot, but he has the prayers of the faithful."

Yikes. The Pope had been dead for less than 24 hours. If "he'll have to answer for a lot", I'm wondering about the rest of us.

If I am ever searching for a eulogy, do you think it wise to eliminate Winona from my list?

Dan Furey
Overland Park, KS

Dan, I hope you're not thinking about your eulogy now. A young fellow such as yourself has to be out living his life and making his mark. When it comes time for you to be eulogized, however, you (by reason of your deceased condition) will be spared having to listen to a good deal of malarkey and balloon juice. I heard a few interesting things about the Pope in all the eulogism — his having been an actor and playwright in his younger days, his athleticism, his bold statements about social and economic justice, the fact that he prayed many hours a day — and then there was all the filler, the boilerplate, well-intended but in the end deadening. The priest from Winona (who may have been suffering from hemmorhoids when the K.C. Star called) decided to cut loose and one has to respect his bravery and independence. In my own case, I have decided against eulogies. If you attend my funeral, you won't hear any of that stuff. Just some good music and the ordinary liturgy and the plain gospel which does indeed suggest that we have much to answer for.

Post to the Host:
Garrison, when I offhandedly recommended Kerouac's "On the Road" to our 16-year-old daughter last year, I had no idea it would set in motion her own desire to travel across the United States by automobile. Believe it or not, she is willing to spend five weeks in a Ford Escape with us this summer. We are excited about the trip, albeit a little apprehensive about the amount of time we will be spending in the car. At home, we routinely encounter stressful situations during simple family trips to the grocery store.

To be perfectly candid with you, we've experienced our most ill-tempered disagreements in the car with the radio is tuned to Prairie Home Companion. My wife and I are huge fans of your show, but for some reason our daughter reacts as if the speakers are spewing red hot ashes at her. I can neither explain nor do I condone this behavior, but my wife and I keep telling ourselves she will develop a greater appreciation for public radio once she's a college student — probably sometime after the novelty of Jell-O shooters wears off. I remember I had just graduated from college when I discovered your show about 20 years ago. I was on my cross-country trip in a white '66 Mustang with solid chrome rims. After a few weeks on the road, my antenna developed a short and reception was marginal. A Jeff Beck tape was jammed in the cassette player. And I was running short of beer money. This perfect storm of misfortunes led me to the lower end of the dial and an entertainment anomaly called A Prairie Home Companion.

Our family will be leaving South Carolina for our road trip on June 29 and we plan to take the southerly route through Birmingham, Austin, New Orleans, Santa Fe and LA. We will head north to San Francisco in mid-July and then up the West Coast before turning east toward Yellowstone by the end of July. We should be arriving in Minnesota at the beginning of August. Ironically, my wife's only condition on agreeing to this odyssey is that we make time to catch one of your shows in person. Our daughter has reluctantly agreed to attend. I checked your Web site, but I did not see any summer dates. Could you make sure to schedule one or two shows around the first of August? Alternatively, we would be willing to rearrange our travel plans to see your performances at any of the above areas we plan to visit. Please let me know which would be more convenient for you.

Cal Harrison
Ridgeway, S.C.

Cal, I think Kerouac would be delighted that his book led to your family odyssey — that sitting in his room and banging out "On The Road" on that single long roll of teletype paper he was setting things in motion, including the Harrisons in their Ford Escape. Kerouac didn't have a daughter but if he'd had one and if he'd been able to keep free of the greasy tentacles of alcohol, he'd surely have taken her on this very trip across the country. (Of course some of the adventures of Salvatore Paradise and Dean Moriarty you and your family will want to skip — I honestly don't think there's much to be learned from spending time in jail. The jailbirds I've met didn't think so either. You can get that stuff from books.) This is a great gift she's giving you and you her, one you'll remember for years and years, and I hope it's gorgeous. You'll get to see new things together and you'll get to negotiate which CDs you listen to and you'll have plenty of time to be silent together and also some when you will talk. I hope that when my daughter is 16, she'll want to get in a car with her old man and drive him across the country. My only advice is so obvious and trite I hesitate to say it, but I will. Driving is hypnotic and people on car trips get hooked on motion, but America isn't what's inside your car, so you have to remember to stop and get out and walk around. I don't think our show should be on your itinerary; if you're around Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 11, we'll be at the Ohio State Fair. But your lovely daughter has declared herself on the subject of the show and you should respect that.

Dear GK,
I felt with you in your meditation on being a parent of a young child at 62. Yet I wanted to tell you that your daughter will see it differently.

At 59 my father had the audacity to marry a 24-year-old and have two children. He was 64 when I was born. He was never old to me; he was just my father. He didn't get mad at us like the other young fathers and he had great stories of his youth (like the time he shot his toe off while hunting and his father put his foot in the pickle jar for the wagon ride home, or how he and his brothers played baseball with firecrackers or hung off the trestle while the train passed over, or how he loved his Model A Ford).

One time I found a park pass with his age written on it, and I thought, "Gee, 72 is a big number." That was the first time I even thought about his age. When we played neighborhood baseball, he hit and I ran the bases for him. So, it all worked out. We had him until he was 78 and I never did think of him as old.

I suppose it gave me odd ideas too — at 53 I am the mother of nine-year-old twin boys.

Thanks for the stories. I love the show.

Cheers,
Holly Smith

Holly, I am trying not to talk about Age and Age-related matters, since a woman wrote me a pointed letter saying, "Get off it." She was right and she knew it. Aging is not that interesting as a subject — it has happened to other people in the past who didn't make too much of it and I shouldn't either. But I'm sure glad to have your reassurance, and to hear about your dad.

Post to the Host:
Love the show. Do you think you might have been the model for the feckless "Steve" in Berkley Breathed's comic strip, Opus? The similarity of physical characteristics is amazing (at least to your younger image from years ago).

If this were true, would you consider it a compliment?

Chuck of Garden Grove CA

I am utterly ignorant about comic strips, Chuck. I loved them for years and then got shamed out of reading them and haven't recovered. So Mr. Breathed's work is all new to me. Like South America or the novels of Cormac McCarthy or rock climbing or Scientology or the Cosmopolitan. We all walk a narrow path in life and there are mountain ranges we will never explore. Pretty much everything going on in mathematics today, for example. But a smart colleague has stuck her head in the door and I asked her and she says, "No. Not at all."

Dear Garrison,
I grew up in western Wisconsin in a little town named Arkansaw, and attended high school in nearby Durand. I read Lake Wobegon Days at age 15 and was struck by the similarity between Lake Wobegon and my own small town. And now having found a copy of Leaving Home, I was surprised to see a photo of Durand on the inside. What is the connection?

Matt Anderson
La Crosse WI

I wanted a photo of Lake Wobegon for the frontispiece of that book, Matt. I thought it was my farewell to the radio show and to the town and I wanted to go out with a visual bang. I'd come to imagine my town with the Main Street running north and south on the west side of the lake and the back doors of some of the shops, particularly Ralph's Grocery, looking out on the water. The photographer Tom Arndt showed me his picture of Durand and though it's clearly a river, not a lake, and though other details don't jibe with how I imagined, it was such a serene and beautiful photograph that I put it into the book, uncaptioned, to allow people to imagine it as Lake Wobegon. That was almost twenty years ago. One unexpected benefit is that, over the years, a couple hundred Durandites have come up and told me that the picture is of their town. Good people, all of them. One can never regret a ploy that serves to put you into good company. Once, in London, a couple came up during intermission of a play at the Royal Court theater and said they were from Durand and was I aware — . I don't know any other connection between Durand and Lake Wobegon, but the one is enough for me.

Dear Mr. Carson Wyler:
I have been listening to your wonderful program almost as long as you have been doing it but have never been able to attend when you came to my area. Are there any plans in the works for a visit to the Cincinnati Ohio (the nearest large city to me)?

Larry Moses

According to my old Bergstrom Farm Implements of Osseo calendar, I am due to visit the Queen City of Cincinnati on July 23 for a performance with the Cincinnati Pops, but that's not "A Prairie Home Companion," that's just me singing Schubert lieder or whatever is on the program that night. Maybe "The Banana Boat Song" or maybe Bizet's "Habanera" or "Whene'er I Walked Through Tara's Halls" or the Upset Scene from Louis di Lammermoor. If the performance goes well and I'm not arrested, then maybe I'll come back and bring the radio show.

Garrison:
I heard about an elderly woman who underwent sugery for what was thought to be cancer and turned out to be histoplasmosis which she contracted from airborne chicken poop. Her bachelor son lived with her because of trauma received from a hold-up at the gun store where he was employed and subsequently could no longer work. So he raised show chickens in the basement of his mother's house which led to her illness. The relatives, being finally pissed off, made the son get rid of the chickens and clean out the basement.

I am thinking that they might be from Lake Wobegon. Have you heard of that family before?

Peace,
Candy B.

Candy B, these don't sound like Wobegonians to me, raising chickens in the basement. My people don't live with edible animals, as a rule. The Norwegians did, in the Old Country, live in homes attached to barns, or upstairs from barns, but this was given up when they came to America. I've never seen a house connected to a chickenhouse or barn. I suspect that the folks you mention are living in the city, where raising chickens is against the law, and that's why they keep them indoors. Not a good idea, for man, woman, or chicken. I love the phrase "show chickens," though, and have admired them at the Minnesota State Fair. Such beautiful critters, with lovely feathery slacks and anklets.