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Post to the Host Send your own post to the host. Dear Mr. Keillor, Kinky Friedman, the once gubernatorial candidate of Texas and All-American Humorist, tells a story that he visited the home of Mark Twain and went into the billiard room and asked if he could shoot a few and was told that he couldn't because Garrison Keillor once broke so hard that a few of the balls exploded. Any truth to this story? Bill H. Aurora, CO I'm afraid it's true. We did a live broadcast from Mark Twain's fabulous house in West Hartford and as part of the show, Roy Blount and I went up to the third floor to shoot pool, the first actual game of pool on live radio, to the best of my knowledge, and I broke and the cue ball shattered. It just simply disintegrated. I doubt that it was Mr. Twain's cue ball, but I don't know. It was old, that's for sure. Of course, I apologized up one side and down the other, and the curator said, "Oh, pshaw," or words to that effect, and now I see I have become part of the legacy of the home, as a vandal and despoiler. Oh well. It's a great old house and if you're up that way, you should go see it. It's worth an hour or two. What I take away from it is the bleak tragedy of his later years, starting with his stubborn faith in the Paige typesetting machine, which led to his bankruptcy, which led to the family's decamping for Europe, and then the wretched death of his beloved daughter Susie of meningitis there in the house. The young woman was alone, as I understand it, hallucinating, wandering through empty rooms, and died in her parents' bed where she had played as a child. It's hard to forget that, once you've been in the house and heard the story. Permalink | Comments (5) Post to the Host: Garrison, I recently read Leigh Montville's biography of Ted Williams. In it I discovered that Williams spent a year playing for the Minneapolis Millers prior to making the majors. During that time, he fell in love with Minnesota. He would frequently return in the off-season to hunt and fish all over your fine state. Is there any chance he ever happened to wander into Lake Wobegon? What would the residents have made of him? Kind Regards, Andy R. Williams did play for the Millers back when they were a Red Sox farm team and I remember seeing him towards the end of his career, when the Sox came to Minneapolis to play an exhibition game. The Splendid Splinter sat in the dugout as the fans peered down at him there on the bench and speculated whether he would come out to bat, or perhaps even tip his cap, and in the 9th inning he did — came out to pinch-hit and got a fat pitch and whacked it over the wall and trotted around the bases. He looked good, trotting. That was the only time I saw him and then, not long after, I read John Updike's splendid homage to Williams in The New Yorker, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," a title I remember well forty-five years later. I never heard of Williams coming to Minnesota. I had thought he preferred deep-sea fishing off Florida, where he lived. But who knows? Minnesota has tens of thousands of lakes and the great man could've driven up to one, rented a boat, and had himself a splendid day on the water and nobody the wiser. Had he wandered into Lake Wobegon, somebody would've recognized him for sure — maybe Art at Art's Baits, or Dorothy at the Chatterbox Cafe — and that person would've guarded his privacy assiduously. Mr. Williams would've sat in splendid isolation and picked out his bait or enjoyed his grilled cheese sandwich and nobody would've asked for his autograph. The person who recognized him would want to be the ONLY person to know that Ted Williams was in town, and then once he was gone, that person would've told everybody. They would've said, "Naw, you're pulling my leg." And the person would've said, "He was here. I talked to him. He was a nice guy. I don't care if you believe me or not." That's how that would work. Permalink | Comments (5) Post to the Host: In today's NY Times there is an article on how Norway is closing down the consulate general office in Minneapolis (but keeping open the offices in Houston, NY, and San Francisco). I am sure the Norwegian bachelor farmers are going to be PRETTY UPSET over this turn of events. Cheryl R. What the Wobegonians conclude after travelling to Norway, Cheryl, is that Norwegians aren't as Norwegian as they used to be, and that the true keepers of the culture mostly live in the Midwest and a few near Seattle and a few in Brooklyn. We go over to Norway and speak Norwegian and they just stand and stare at us. They can't even understand their own language. And it's easier to find linguini in Oslo than to find boiled cod. So the removal of the consul from Minneapolis is fine by us. If His Majesty's fancy-pants foreign service prefers to hang out in San Francisco, New York, and Texas, so be it. The job of consul general was mostly ceremonial anyway — e.g., the bestowing of medals and awards which, in our case, we don't want anyway. Let them leave town and see if we care. One summer in Houston and they will be begging to return, which is fine, but we will not get down on our knees and beg them to come back. Oh no. It will be a sober day in Oslo before that happens. Permalink | Comments (3) Post to the Host: Mr. Keillor, Have you ever thought about putting together a CD of your duets with Kate Mackenzie? I always thought they were the best. You sound good together. Do you know if she is still performing anywhere? Bob G. Kate was lovely to sing with. Her voice is so pure with a sweet ache in it and she made everything she sang sound original. Before she went west, she lived in a log cabin in Wisconsin and that was a good place to sing. Robin and Linda Williams came out there once and we rehearsed a bunch of Chuckwagon Gang numbers that we never did record but we didn't mind — it was all fun to do.Good times. I sat down to dinner with Laurie Lewis and her band after the show Saturday night and we started singing the Hazel Dickens song, "Won't You Come And Sing For Me" and it reminded me of the old Hopeful Gospel Quartet that Kate and the Williamses and I started twenty years or so ago. I believe there is a Kate duet on the "Duets" CD that Prairie Home released a year or so ago. I doubt we'll put together a CD. I'm not a recording artist. The studio is a form of torture for me. No patience, I guess. But I do wish that, before I get old and quavery, Kate would come back and sing on the show. That would be a great gift. I don't expect she will — she took a step away from performing and she liked the life she found outside it and I admire that kind of independence. There's nothing compulsive about performing: it's a choice we make. Permalink | Comments (3) Dear Garrison-- Elizabeth M. The Fitzgerald is a little gem of a theater and I'm glad that "A Prairie Home Companion" played a part in saving it from the wrecker's ball. And Robert Altman sure loved it, as you can see from his movie. I think of him there, especially when I go into the basement. There, where Ella Schovanec and Kathryn Slusher and the other production people run the copier and revise the scriptage, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan played their exquisite dressing room scene as Mr. Altman sat in his high throne and directed the cameras. I certainly remember the day I first saw the old pile back in 1978 and I'm glad we played there. But I'm not nostalgic. It's too dangerous for someone my age. And we outgrew the Fitzgerald a long time ago. The show loses money every time we perform there. And I like forging ahead. Restlessness is in my nature. So it's a real pleasure to cross the river and go to the State, which is a thousand seats bigger, and which has a roomy backstage and where the audience last Saturday struck me as rather young and smart. Radio is portable and we love to hit the road and go to places like Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we've never been before ----- we'll be there the end of May ---- and Abilene, Texas, where we'll go next fall. And on and on. When a show has gone on as long as this one, you can't afford to look back. You keep focused on next week's show. That'll be in Town Hall on West 43rd in New York and a very excited audience will come in and be further excited by Madeline Peyroux, Del Mccoury, Billy Collins, Robin and Linda Wiliams, the Royal Academy of Radio Acting, and the Guys All Star Shoe Band. Hooray for radio. I do admit that I am touched when I look out the stage door of the State theater and see Dayton's (now Macy's) where I used to do all my Christmas shopping. Permalink | Comments (3)GK, After all these years of performing on live radio, don't you sometimes get worried that you will be so comfortable on air that you will blurt out something completely inappropriate? Or even worse, that you will start laughing at one of your OWN JOKES, and not be able to stop? Cricket K. I haven't gotten to that comfort level yet. You don't know how self-controlled I am. Very. The inappropriate things always occur in the course of a story. Violence to an animal, for example. I once had a man shoot a cow that he was trying to get up the stairs from his cellar. (Or was he trying to get it down from the upstairs bedroom where a practical joker had led it?) That drew some mail, and also the time when I had a man euthanize a cat by shooting the head off rather than drown it. Some people felt that was inappropriate, but of course I could always blame it on the character in the story. As for helpless laughter, that only happens in rehearsal. Martin Sheen played a weaselly fellow in a Guy Noir script once and he got the character so perfectly ---- and the contrast between that and the President on "West Wing" was so shocking ---- that I started giggling and couldn't stop. Like a 10-year-old girl. Embarrassing. But it all took place in a hotel meeting room in L.A. and nobody knew except cast and crew. Permalink | Comments (7)Post to the Host: Dear Mr. Keillor, I have been listening for nearly as long as the show has been on and that phrase was the first one I could remember without having to listen to a broadcast. Andrea A. I remember constructing the line back in the early days of the show, Andrea, and taking care with each phrase in the series. It was a very deliberate invention. I was doing a sort of routine that was migrating from stand-up toward an extended story and I needed a line to indicate THE END. The stand-up started out as a broad parody, based on the police blotter column in a small-town paper (and also the social notes, e.g. "Mr. and Mrs. Keillor had supper Thursday evening at the home of the William Pedersens. Also present was Mrs. Pedersen's brother Duane and his wife Lurleen."), so that's where the "news" came from in "The News from Lake Wobegon". It's a signature line that holds up pretty well, I think. I grew up with strong women and I like the romantic characterization of men and then the line about children, which has been picked up by other people including educators, is a sort of anti-test-score joke and also expresses the hope of parents for their children. They each have enormous possibilities, whether or not anybody else thinks so. Permalink | Comments (4)Dear Mr. Keillor, Thank you for helping me in this dire emergency. Patrick Hotdish is casserole, Patrick. It's a meal in one dish, vegetables and grain and perhaps meat, and its good peasant cooking and it exists in every culture. Surely you ate it growing up. It might have rice or noodles and it needs some sauce and then you add what ingredients you are moved to add. Be inventive. If you want to start with a classic, do the tuna noodle hotdish, which employs a can of cream of mushroom soup (don't add water), a can of tuna, a bag of egg noodles, and perhaps a package of frozen peas. Cook the noodles, glop in the soup, add the tuna and peas, and if you want to be fancy, crush some potato chips for a topping. Then there is hamburger hotdish. Brown the meat, season it with Worcestershire, glop in a can of chopped tomatoes, and combine it with noodles. Or rice. And add whatever else you think might be tasty. (But not tuna.) For more and better ideas, Google "casserole" or look for recipes on the sides of Creamette noodle packages or Campbell soup cans. 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