Hi -
did Garrison actually own a pet chicken as a child? He sounded so sincere on Saturday's show, and Francine seemed so delightful, I'm curious. Thanks for any info.

Patsey M.

I'm glad I was able to convince you, Patsey, and now that you're writing in for confirmation, I feel that I ought to lie to you and say, yes, Francine was a real chicken and she saved my life once in a blizzard, but for some reason I am in a truthful mood, it being Holy Week and all, and so the answer is: no. We ate chickens in our family. My father cut their heads off with a hatchet, chickens that I personally caught with a coat hangar, chased them and hooked them by their ankles and brought them flapping to the chopping block where he dispatched them and handed them off to my mother who dipped them in boiling water and stripped their feathers and then performed the autopsy. I'm sure there were children who had pet chickens, delightful ones, but I was never so delighted by animals. They are very good to make up stories about, though, and so we do. Often. We can say whatever we like about chickens and they will never write us fussy letters or call up their lawyers. Chickens are cool with fiction.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
We are excited to see the show in Milwaukee on May 10 at the Milwaukee Theater. Did you know you will be performing in the same venue where Theodore Roosevelt gave an 80-minute speech moments after he was shot in the chest, in October of 1912? You're familiar with the story, of course, that the manuscript of his speech was stowed in his breast pocket and slowed the bullet enough to save his life. There's a plaque in front of the Hyatt, where the shooting took place a couple of blocks away. It was the Gilpatrick Hotel back then. The Milwaukee Theater was the Milwaukee Auditorium at the time. It's since been beautifully redone.

John T.
Milwaukee

There is a nice symmetry to the story, John. The length of the speech made for a thick manuscript which saved his life and in gratitude he gave the entire thing, unabridged, and no doubt enjoyed the tremendous fuss and anxiety in the wings. It's hard to imagine a time when presidents travelled about with only a couple of plainclothesmen to protect them and a few city cops. But when the show was in Iceland a couple years ago, I was invited to dine with the president of Iceland, Olafur Grimsson, and drove out to the presidential mansion, which sits at the end of a long straight driveway with no visible security. I walked to the front door and knocked and the president opened it. There was a uniformed naval attache with him but very little other security that I could see. The Scandinavian countries are rather proud of their low security, even after the assassination of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme who was attending a movie with his wife, no bodyguards. The ability of a leader to walk freely among the people is, I suppose, a test of the national civility. But the shock and horror of an assassination is too much for a country to bear. Anyway, we're looking forward to Milwaukee and I hope to get over to the Pfister Hotel and sit in the lounge in the lobby and listen to that terrific piano player. If there is a song about Theodore Roosevelt, I'll bet he knows it.

Note:
These posts are in response to last week's Old Scout column.

To the Host:
I've been a fan of Prairie Home Companion for years and recently I've been enjoying your column in the Saturday Kansas City Star. Today's column was about your doubts about your faith which I think we all have at times if we're honest. I just want to recommend a book to you. It's The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. It answered a lot of my questions about how the gospels were written. Have a Happy Easter!

Sandy B.
Kansas City

Thanks, Sandy, and as soon as I finish reading Garry Wills's "What The Gospels Meant" and "What Paul Meant," I will look for the Strobel book. I'm a little busy writing a book of my own this spring so time is limited, but if it's going to answer nagging questions about scriptural authority, then I had better get to it.

Garrison,
Your thoughts about how the Gospels were "cobbled together" rather than handed down on high reminded me of something I read recently by Karl Barth (in Church Dogmatics 1.2). Yes, the humanness of our scriptures requires faith; but that is exactly the point! The Lord chose not to give us the scriptures "mechanically" but to give them to us through people in all their humanness. Barth refers to this as "the miracle that here fallible men speak the Word of God in fallible human words... being justified and sanctified by grace alone, they have still spoken the Word of God in their fallible and erring human word... Verbal inspiration does not mean the infallibility of the biblical word in its linguistic, historical and theological character as a human word. It means that the fallible and faulty human word is as such used by God and has to be received and heard in spite of its human fallibility."

Andy S.
Elizabethtown, PA

Your point is a good one, I'm sure, but I was brought up in a Bibliodolatrous group that held that each word, each comma, each semi-colon, was placed there by God Almighty and was not to be questioned or quibbled with, which of course was a spur to scholarship but also to legalism and to a squadron of Pharisees. Fallibility was not part of the deal. The Sanctified Brethren admitted to no doubt whatsoever. But I will look up the passage from Barth. And thanks for sending it on.

Host:
Say, I was wondering what the "bump" is in "beer and a bump" when you stop by the Sidetrack Tap in Lake Wobegon? My kids and I listen to tapes of the stories when traveling in the car. We are guessing it's a shot of whiskey. I wish someone could validate or straighten us out on this one.

Thank you,
April

I think parents are supposed to lie to kids in a situation like this and say, "I don't know and I don't care," or say, "The beer is root beer and the bump is when you belch, you're supposed to stand back to back with your best friend and bump behinds and then waggle them back and forth as you turn counter-clockwise." But you're right, it's whiskey in a shot glass. The bartender pulls a glass of beer and sets it down and sets the shot glass down smartly next to it and then fills it almost to the brim with Jim Beam or some other non-fancy hooch and you hold the shot glass up and salute the bartender and you toss it down, chased by a swig of beer. I haven't done this for thirty years or so, but I remember the sensation. The burn in the throat and the warmth in the chest and then how good the cold beer tastes. One beer and one bump gives you a nice warm buzz and then you sit in the tavern with your pals and have a couple more beers and shoot the breeze and study any strangers who come in. Such as that woman and her kids who got out of their car and came in here. Who are they? Why are they watching us? Where are they traveling to? Hey, wait a minute! Did she just ask Wally what's in the shot glass? I cannot believe it!! Where is she from? Not from around here. Oh well, it takes all kinds.

Hi Garrison,
Was a bit confused about the ELCA bit about "spiritual, but not religious" people. Are you saying that non-religious people can only either be narcissistic or "bad people"? Your show is about as evangelistic as it can get away with on our public airwaves—do you have to directly insult non-Christians, too?

Zach L.
Madison, WI

The evangelicals are going to be surprised to hear how evangelical the show is—they had thought otherwise —but you're right about Evelyn Lundberg taking a dim view of the "spiritual but not religious"
crowd. She is pretty caustic about all sorts of people,especially the young and idealistic, and she lets people have it, both barrels. "Just grow up," is her advice. "Get over yourself." If you were offended by her message, then you must've been the one it was intended for.

Hi, Garrison,
I'm 65 and have always been pretty happy with my use of the English language. However, in the last few years, I've noticed that every once in a while misspeak. Example: I was telling someone that an acquaintance was a lovely person and was "self-defecating!" It made me think of the friend who said that his golf wasn't so good these days, he was rather "erotic" on the course. In both cases, the speakers knew as soon as the flubs were out of their mouths that they had made a big mistake. So, how about you? Are your sixties having any effect on your loquaciousness?

Mary W.

Those aren't mistakes, Mary, those are comic inventions and I think that "self-defecating" points toward a new career for you as a writer — it's a phrase that anyone would be tickled to have invented. An "erotic" golfer strikes me as off kilter but "self-defecating" is brilliant. As for me, what I have to fight, at 65, is the lumbering pretentious voice of the great white male. That is why I don't teach and I'm avoiding politics this year. The risk of self-defecation is too great.

Post to the Host:
My husband and I are spending the summer in Minnesota and so I just have to ask... Is Lake Wobegon a real place and if so where is it? We'd like to visit! Our friends say it doesn't exist but we're not convinced. Please reply with the truth — no matter how painful.

Jane H.
Delton, MI

Lake Wobegon is a fiction, Jane, a big trunk where all sorts of real things are stored, odds and ends of experience and impressions, but if you headed your car north on I-94 and got off at Sauk Center, you'd find a bike trail called the Lake Wobegon Trail that you could wend your way on through Osakis and Melrose and Freeport, Avon, Albany, all of them very real towns, and you could get a taste of Minnesota that you won't get from driving the freeways. It's lovely, wooded country and if you were so moved, you could drop in at Fisher's Supper Club in Avon, overlooking Lake Watab, and partake of the deep-fried walleye. (I own a share of Fisher's, which is run by local people and is really good.) And thanks for visiting us in the summer.

Post to the Host:
My thoughtful husband surprised me on Christmas with tickets to your show on March 15th . I am very excited about seeing your city. But I noticed that I will be there over Holy Week! I have been trying to be a better Catholic lately (its not easy) and I hate to think that I will fall out of God's graces if I don't at least make an effort to find a church in downtown St.Paul . We will arrive Holy Thurs. and leave sometime on Palm Sunday. Can you help me out? See you soon.

Marysue from Ohio

You can either climb up the hill to the Cathedral of St. Paul or you can attend Assumption, the old limestone church with twin spires across 7th Street from Mickey's Diner (where Robert Altman filmed the first and last scenes of "A Prairie Home Companion") or you can visit the little French church on Cedar, around the corner from the Fitzgerald. You can't miss the Cathedral — Archbishop Ireland made sure of that — and it has a gorgeous interior (recently cleaned) with the Seven Virtues prominently illustrated. Assumption is a grand old church. And the French church would be very very glad to see you. Both the French church and the Cathedral are the work of the French architect Emmanuel Masqueray, a slender dapper boulevardier from Paris, who spent the first decades of the 20th Century here and made some gorgeous buildings. The style was almost outdated when he designed them and so it was St. Paul's last chance for that sort of grandeur. After him, buildings got colder and blockier. Assumption is the oldest church in Minnesota still in operation, from back in stagecoach days. And if you want to hear the Mass in Spanish, you can walk across the river and get that at Our Lady of Guadalupe. (I think. But I'm not Catholic, I am pedestrian.)

Post to the Host:
I'm an old (84) WW2 veteran who can remember dancing to Glenn Miller and who played trombone in a Dixieland group after I got out of the Navy in 1946. I also wrote and published a book titled "Hang Tuff" about my Navy buddies and our war days in the Pacific. (buy now)

All that leads up to why I appreciate your brand of music on PHC, which I hear (religiously) every Sat.P.M. from 6 to 8.

Your show doesn't need a thing. Just keep on doing it as you do.

Robert H.
Cleveland

Good to hear from you, sir, and interesting to hear a vote for Sameness at a time when the nation is clamoring for change, but there you are. A show that seems stable to you, however, to me seems like a cauldron of change, the soup bubbling every Saturday afternoon during rehearsal, and us tossing more onions in, more celery, wondering if it needs some coriander, and now I wonder if we need to settle down and pay more attention to the tried and true. I'd like to hear Rich Dworsky play a solo piano piece every week, some old song, which Rich makes sing without lyrics, and I'd like to hear Pat Donohue do the same. And I like those Powdermilk Biscuit medleys we do now and then, where we hang little scraps of things on the line, the Minnesota Rouser and "I'll Fly Away" and "It's A Grand Old Flag" and the Dvorak Humoresque and the Mickey Mouse Club theme. And in your honor, I'm going to try to get Prudence Johnson to sing "In The Mood," the old Glenn Miller hit. A pretty sexy song.

Dear Garrison,
I am usually impressed with your story telling abilities, but I was disappointed in your tasteless account of the girl in school trying to hold the fart. I found the strings hanging from her nose particularly disappointing since you usually don't stoop to the need to use body functions as a source of material which appears to be the current vogue of many comedians. I'm hoping this was an exception rather than a trend.

Sincerely,
Another English major,
Phyl L.

Sorry you were disappointed. Some neighbor boys were at the show and I did that story to impress them and of course they enjoyed it tremendously. As for bodily functions, there are great English authors I could refer you to — Chaucer, Joyce, and so forth — but you know all that.

Post to the Host:
WOW! Garrison read my joke on the joke show!!!! I really didn't believe it could ever get on the air. I sent it at 6:03 EST and he read it about 15 minutes later. I guess you've proven the "live broadcast" claim.

Here it is again:

I was depressed last night so I called Lifeline and got a call center in Pakistan.

I told them I was suicidal.

They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

As a real English Major (UNC-Chapel Hill Class of 1969), I can't WAIT to get my CD and find out what this degree might be good for (besides knowing NOT to end a sentence with a preposition...).

Richard T. R., Sr.
Washington, DC

Your joke was the talk of the dinner table after the show, Richard. Someone asked me which of all the jokes was my favorite and I said, "the suicide one" and they nodded and laughed. It's economical, it takes a couple nice twists, and it makes something dark into something funny, which is the beauty of comedy. You did well, mister.

Post to the Host:
I have been listening to the show as long as I can remember, mostly on warm summer nights in my home town of Yuba City. Now I am 22 and find your show very comforting on Saturday nights.It is amazing how much I relate to Lake Wobegon life, growing up very Lutheran and very German out here in California. How do you find this way of life so inspiring?
I am an aspiring artist, and all I could express was how I wanted to get out of my small town. How did you embrace it and make peace?

Emily S.
Campbell, CA

It's natural and inevitable that you wanted to get out of your small town. Everyone has to win some space and light and distance. So did I.
I still do. People from the midwest have always been ambitious travellers and what is travelling about if not to escape from the too familiar? It's still a thrill for me to get in a cab at LaGuardia Airport and ride over the Triborough Bridge and see the towers of Manhattan and ride along the FDR Drive and across 96th Street and Central Park. Escape, escape, escape. But a writer works from the material that chooses him and while I might have rather written crime novels set in Copenhagen, that wasn't what came to me to write. Rather I'm moved to write about the (deeply disguised) lives of old relatives and to honor their fortitude, good humor, and faith that they belonged to the Lord and the Lord would not forget them. But I haven't made my peace with anything. Peace isn't what a writer is about. I'm as jumpy as can be.

Post to the Host:
I have a very unusual house built in 1900. The kitchen is and always has been in the basement. I have done a title search and found the first title exchange listed Hermine B. Deragisch as the seller. Later research showed she was born in Austria and her husband Lea C. Deragisch was born in Switzerland. Their first American residence was in Springfield, Minnesota. In one Prarie Home Companion show I thought I heard Garrison say "the women went down to the kitchen". Was I hearing correctly and is there a style of house which has the kitchen in the basement?

Jennifer B.
Salem, OR

The kitchen at Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church is in the basement and so is the dining hall and fellowship room. I'm not aware of any residence with a basement kitchen. Women would not tolerate that, I think, unless there were a good reason — perhaps there'd be a summer kitchen down there, since it's cooler in the basement, or maybe a canning kitchen, but not your primary kitchen, which is a social center, and the basement is not where you'd want to take people to socialize. It has punitive connotations. Also an atmosphere of storage.

Post to the Host:
I used to listen to your show here in Ireland on RTE Saturday nights at 7 p.m. and I was in despair when the show disappeared from Saturday evening and then I found it again on the Interweb. So thank you for being there again. Were you were aware of the darkness that came to Irish lives when your show disappeared from our Saturday evenings? How can we stop such senseless waste?

Michael S.
Dublin

What the RTC decided in their wisdom to dispense with was the one-hour abridged version of the show that is also heard in New Zealand and Australia, and what you hear on the Interweb — what we call the Internet, but never mind — is the full two-hour version, which I'm sure you've figured out by now. I had heard about RTE's decision, and of course I would never question a fellow broadcaster on that sort of thing. We live in an age of oversupply in radio, with some of the most interesting stuff to be found on the Interweb (Internet) and all of it easily accessible, and so broadcasters everywhere are facing the day, not so far off, when the Web/Net starts to swamp their boat.
Downloading audio will be so simple that even gizmo-challenged people like me will be doing it, and then what happens to the big studios and the tall radio towers? I don't know. A brave new world emerges from the old, and an old broadcaster like myself feels a twinge of regret.
It's like when the movie theater closed and we had to settle for the small screen.