I got up and walked along the main drag. I saw an old man walk out of the post office who reminded me of Florian Krebsbach, a man in a brown porkpie hat and pale blue polyester suit and green plaid shirt with a string tie with an agate on the clasp and wearing white shoes. When I lived here 30 years ago, Freeport was my post office, my supply station, and once I went into the bank and asked a loan officer if I could borrow money, offering my fiction as collateral as a farmer might borrow against his corn crop.
Down the street is the Pioneer Inn. A few guys at the bar were talking about fishing and the lottery, neither of which was paying off for them lately. One of them said that Big Watab Lake, southeast of there, is feet deep and home to some mighty pugnacious fish, none of which he had caught lately. Being there, drinking a beer, looking down the bar toward the others standing 15 feet away brought back a sudden clear memory of and sitting in the very same spot near the door and overhearing men talk and wishing I knew how to join in that conversation.
A sudden jolting memory I had put away for 30 years. Nobody ever welcomed us to town when we came in No minister visited to encourage us to worship on Sunday, no neighbor dropped in with a plate of brownies. Several times I stopped at neighboring farms to say hello and announce our presence and was met in the yard by the farmer, and we spent an uncomfortable few minutes standing beside my car, making small talk about the weather, studying the ground, me waiting to be invited into the house, him waiting for me to go away, until finally I went away.
In town the shopkeepers and the man at the garage were cordial, of course, but if I said hello to someone on the street, he glanced down at the sidewalk and passed in silence. I lived south of Freeport for three years and never managed to have a conversation with anyone in the town.
I felt like a criminal. This fear of outsiders was explained to me years later by a Stearns exile who said that the German population was so traumatized, first by the anti-Teutonic fevers of World War I that forbade the use of their language in schools, then by Prohibition that made outlaws of decent upstanding beer drinkers, that they never could trust auslanders again. A strange face is, to them, a cruel face. Proximity does not bestow membership. I accepted this because I come from similar people.
We were taciturn people to start with who could sit in silence for long stretches and not feel uncomfortable. If strangers came to the door, they were dealt with and sent on their way. They were not people of the Word, and their friendship meant nothing to us.
Stories about prodigals welcomed home, outcasts brought into the circle, rebels forgiven: all from the guy at the end of the bar. There was nothing more to say. In order to be accepted, I had to invent a town like the imaginary friend I had in second grade, David, who walked to school with me.
The loner nursing his beer at the end of the bar is starved for company. He and his wife have little to say to each other these days, and in the long shadows of a winter night, in extreme need of society, he drives to town and sits at the bar, where his pride and social ineptitude get in the way. I respect Stearns County for its egalitarianism. And it has a real culture.
So I made up stories about its character, morphing some of my old fundamentalist relatives into German Catholics. I had a train pull up on a sidetrack in and an aging Babe Ruth step down and wave to the crowd. He was with the Sorbasol barnstorming team that played the local nine that afternoon, and the Babe hit one so far it was never found again. The ballpark is still there.
The Whippets play there, and in the spring middle-aged men who have smelled the April air come with a glove and toss a ball around. Here beside the tracks is the foundation of an old grain elevator that, one Saturday night in the summer of , as various couples sat and smoked and drank beer and necked in their cars along the train tracks, went up in a pillar of flame feet high, and people leaped from those cars and tore for cover and the churches were full the following Sunday.
Most of those couples married soon afterward, and most of the marriages lasted. Not a true story, but when the thing blew up, it seemed real enough. It was there that Clarence Bunsen gave his famous Memorial Day address. Their feet hurt, their jackets pinched, they needed a drink.
The crowd stood waiting on the grass. A boy recited:. It would be more fitting if we were silent for two minutes and looked around us and thought of our people here and their gifts to this country. Everyone looked around at the markers and the little flags fluttering and listened to the breeze in the leaves. An oriole sang.
And then someone blew his nose. The whole honor guard was crying. Old men with rifles to their shoulders dug down in their pockets and got out their big red hankies and blew. I feel the same way about Stearns County and Lake Wobegon. All I do is say the words: cornfield and Mother and algebra and Chevy pickup and cold beer and Sunday morning and rhubarb and loneliness, and other people put pictures to them. Great medical advances came along just as we needed them, and Medicare to pay for them.
We are lucky to have been born when we were. The young people in the streets are aware that a time of suffering lies ahead. Science is pretty clear about the ecological impact of industrial agriculture and the rapacious destruction of forests and overfishing of the seas and the virtual disappearance of many insect species, but none of this has enough political impact to turn the ship of state. Or if Yellowstone blew up and ushered in a year of darkness.
That could be the Pearl Harbor that moves our country to action. Children have great power to shame the rest of us, as every parent knows, and this cause is worth their effort.
Everything we love is in the balance, language, art, music, history, the art of story, dance, Eros, baseball, bird-watching, and the effect of apocalypse on the bond market would not be good. The last Good War was won by boys who rushed to sign up, after seeing newsreels of sunken battleships in Hawaii.
One of the two major American political parties is in denial that global warming exists because it is devoted to an illiterate leader.
That party appears likely to take over Congress in and two years later No. If he does, we may have a constitutional convention at which the presidency is made a lifetime term. Meanwhile, we have a Supreme Court with a solid majority of Ayn Rand justices who deny that the state has the right to govern individual behavior. Gun control will be dead, conservation will be an individual responsibility. Bezos and Mr. Musk can move to the moon but the rest of us are earthlings. I put my faith in scientific enterprise.
Someone will come up with a way to turn plankton into something that looks like and tastes like ground beef. Someone else will figure out how to make linguine from dead leaves.
Get busy and invent a car that runs on urine. So much gas is wasted by people driving around looking for a lavatory. This will come as a great relief. I feel resurrected, but what to do with it? Did I win this privilege unfairly? Did I jump the line? I was dragging my feet, ready to enter retirement, dementia, and the nap in the dirt, but now apparently I am supposed to do something worthy of this amazing blessing.
But what? Maybe writing these dinky essays about the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees is no longer good enough. Thanks to scientific wizardry, I am now, in effect, walking on water. What I also come away from it with is an appreciation for professional kindness. So she checked and the wound looked good. I was dazzled by her kindness. She pulled the sheet back up and then she took her hand and brushed the hair out of my eyes. The kindness of this gesture was deeply moving.
I feel tears in my eyes as I write about it. I insisted that my dear wife go to Florida with her sister as planned and not fuss over me. She went and is having a fine time, which makes me happy. When two guys have gone up your vein to your heart and fixed the flutter, you should put aside your mournful mortality and enjoy the gift.
My friend brushed the hair out of my eyes and a moment later she brought me a small plastic container of applesauce. And now let us turn to No. Thirty years ago, winter arrived on Halloween and Duluth got 37 inches of snow and the next day men were out shoveling their sidewalks.
It was a beautiful day. And a few months later I met my wife to whom I am still married and vice versa. To me, the blizzard and the romance are closely connected: having faced death, I was ready for love and she took me in her arms and there was a powerful mammalian attraction. She gave off heat, I loved her conversation, I could imagine spending winter with her. The subject of Florida has arisen recently, now that she has family down there, and I have reminded her of the Florida condo building that collapsed.
But she worries about me walking on icy sidewalks. Pluperfect is our home. I have nothing against the idea of warm weather, except as it may indicate global warming that will trigger apocalyptic events that will cause great suffering to our great-grandchildren and their children.
Where is the stunned wonderment, why am I not writing a psalm or a rhapsody? It brings memories of college years when I imagined I was brilliant and now I am old and dull and the high ambitions of my youth are long vanished in the dust. But when blizzards come along and hazardous driving warnings are issued, a man comes to life. A switch clicks deep in the brain. Now we have something serious to deal with. Nature is trying to depopulate us.
We put aside Christianity and go back to our pagan origins — the Bible takes place in a warm climate, Jesus went around in sandals and light raiment. A pack of wolves threatens our tiny arctic village and we must fight them off with clubs. A vicious pterodactyl has emerged from the forest and we must find large rocks and aim the catapult.
We the Keepers of Civilization are under attack and all our qualms disappear in a flash. We venture out into the howling storm to bring home pizza for our babies, we reassure them that Daddy is here and nothing bad will happen. Warm sunny weather depresses me. And the low point of our year is the summer vacation.
It has a screened porch and a swimming pool and the loveliest eucalyptus trees in the yard. Take a look at it. I tripped on a power cord and banged my head. Who did you say this is? Disability may be one of them. You belong with me. They have the kindness gene.
Men are inherently aggressive. You made me self-conscious. In my old age, I believe in small talk as the conduit of civility. I got this from my dad who, though he was a devout Christian, loved to pass the time of day with strangers. This was curious to me as a kid, his friendly chatter with sinners.
Life is hard, winter is on the way, the kids are driving us crazy, but you and I, friend, are comrades in the quest for meaning and the struggle to get by. And there you have it, a magical connection. Eddie Rosario is a great player to watch, a clutch hitter, known for his tendency to swing at the first pitch, and in the eighth inning the night before he robbed Houston of a double with a dash to the left-field wall and an amazing backhand catch that you had to go online and click the replay six or eight times to believe.
And then he trotted, cool as could be, back to the dugout. The driver had never been to Minnesota but he knew Rosario had played there. We pulled up in front of church. He asked what Episcopalians are about and I said we believe God loves us and wants us to be at peace with each other. Then the Sophias all fell into arguments, as all churches do, and disbanded. So far I have not heard if the Unitarians now eat children again. The christians may have given up on that one, but I don't count on it.
But at the same time as the Sophias were arguing, so were the Methodists and the Unitarians, each with members in their own churches. It was in the air. People left these churches in droves. Satan had run amok. Then the Methodists and the Unitarians all made up, but the Sophias, well, they may still be at it still, if they are there at all. They had a sweet village complete with a fire department, but then people sold their homes and on and on.
Lake Wobegon goes like this, like what I just wrote, but he writes much better than I do, but I was not really interested in his town. I was interested in Tahlequah. In his book you get some childhood stories that are kind of neat.
Like how one of the kids buried his cat in a pet cemetery complete with a sermon and all that entailed. As a kid I had my own pet cemetery. I lost a lot of dogs to the highway that went through town because we had no fence.
Poor people don't know how to take care of animals, or at least we didn't. Took him two blocks to our house and buried him. I buried a dead gold fish and dug it up a year later to see what he looked like. The jar lid was rusty, so I hit the jar on a stone fence between our house and the field and cut my hand. I could see the scar for years. What did it look like inside the jar? The napkin was an orange color. Like the Shroud of Turin, the body had disappeared, but not before leaving its mark.
View all 11 comments. Sep 28, Paul Bryant rated it liked it Shelves: novels. So I'm reviving one of my personal favourites. I call it Guten abend, bon soir, good evening! Wie geht's? Comment ca va? Do you feel good? Ich bin euer confrencier, je suis votre compere, I am your host! Leave your troubles outside! So -life is disappointing? Forget it! In here life is beautiful - the girls are beautiful - even the orchestra is beautiful!
Outside it is winter, but here it is so hot every night we have the battle to keep the girls from taking off all their clothing. So don't go away. Who knows? Tonight we may lose the battle! Okay, we get on with it. Yes, you do not have to throw fruit or panties at me, I know what you want. Tonight we have one of our much loved Celebrity Death matches - 0 yes, haha, you think maybe somebody famous will die tonight?
You like that? Okay, ja, so do we! Ha ha! So, tonight's bout is … Drum roll… Between in the blue corner much loved genial American humourist Garrison Keillor the 6 foot 9 Keillor stands up and sways like an oak.
He wears a suit and large red boxing gloves. And in the red corner, not one, not two, not three — okay, I'll tell you — five separate opponents all of whom believe for one reason or another that he should die a painful death! Mild applause Chicago Symphony plays a quick burst of the theme tune from Circus Boy starring Mickey Dolenz The five authors strut about the ring, all dressed in evil looking leather outfits.
DeLillo leans over the ropes and glares at someone he recognises. Easton rushes over and says "Leave it, Don, it's only one of those crappy goodreads idiots, We'll get them later. Bell : Ting! GK : Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town, the little town that time kind of forgot to remember to forget.
Turned cold around Wednesday, I'd say, kind of… colder 'n' it was in the two or three days it was before that. Monday, I should say, Monday wasn't terribly cold The red corner are working as a tag team one at a time against the towering midwesterner. First up, here comes Carson McCullers. She steps up to GK looking, may I say, very fetching in a kind of cut down Batgirl getup, I could bet that her friends of both genders are liking this a lot.
Carson : Why Mr Greene. For one night only no mannish tweeds. I'm gonna strut my stuff! But alas, the mountainous Keillor, orating blindly, obliviously, flails his arm in a gesture to emphasise how felchingly cold it is in Lake Wobegon and he catches McCullers a glancing blow on the side of the head. It's Ali versus Liston all over again. The Southern gothic pinup girl hits the deck and is counted out.
A disappointement for the feminists in the audience. But she was never in the best of health and I don't really think it was a wise idea to include her in the tag team. Don't complain about that. But gee I dunno maybe some people do they come into the house and they say Well it's kind of too flat out there, I never seen it so flat out there.
As it is today. Too flat. Somebody else 'll say Yeah but I hear it's suppose to incline a bit on Wednesday.
Next up, Jonathan Franzen — he squares up to GK who never stops talking and stares gloomily towards the audience, pretending not to notice any of his opponents, or actually not noticing them.
Franzen winds up and socks Keillor as hard as he can in the solar plexus. Anything to shut this guy up. GK : Ooof! So by Wednesday there was a little more snow on the ground which kind of absorbs sound and since Wobegonians are kind of quiet and don't really roar so much it makes for well a sort of dull uh dreary kind of existence even though below zero temperatures are if I remember physics that I was once taught makes sound travel better uh faster and yet it's still kind of real quiet here because Franzen walks back disconsolately to the red corner.
I'm out of here. GK : there aren't so many people out and those who are aren't in the mood to make much of it. Sound that is. And also should they have been in the mood still they would have had trouble because they're kind of all bundled up, swaddled if you will, and pretty much unable to emit any kind of cry. Light synthetic fabric such as Goretex has not yet found its way to Minnesota. People up there still believe in layers, a great many layers.
Don "The Don" DeLillo steps into the ring. He hurls a copy of Underworld at GK's enormous droning head but like that scene in Awakenings Keillor expertly catches the heavy volume with one huge mitt. Without breaking from his tedious Lake Wobegon yarn, he reaches down and cuffs DeLillo like a great grizzly bear and DeLillo's head flies off somewhere into the far corner of the room.
The doctor climbs into the ring and checks his pulse. Yes, he's dead. Michael Chabon is taken ill at the sight of DeLillo's head hurtling past him, so this means that Brett Easton Ellis is the last author of any literary merit still standing now. As he enters the ring he throws off his leather cape to reveal a flame thrower strapped on his back.
He unhooks the hose and fires it up. Great gouts of flame shoot out. GK : Of course something which can keep even a cold person alive and even warm em up a little bit, fend off death if you will, is a whole basketful of ancient creaking sentimental parlour ballads such as Love's Old sweet song.
By now GK's right leg is completely on fire, Ellis is cackling madly and fighting off the ringside officials who are clambering into the ring. Referee : Ellis, you're disqualurgh… I can't tell you what Ellis does to the referee.
GK : Just a song a twilight, when the lights are low, And the flick'ring shadows softly come and go, Tho' the heart be weary, sad the day and long, Still to us at twilight comes Love's old song, comes Love's old sweet song. View all 9 comments.
Nov 28, Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it Shelves: americanth-c , short-stories , fiction , humor. This is a light-hearted nostalgic look by Garrison Keillor looking backwards to more halcyon days of America that was originally broadcast on NPR as a radio series. It is very funny and touching and a light read for when you are tired of the terrifying headlines. It is also worthwhile to seek out the podcasts out there where he recounts these stories and more as he was a wonderful voice and a subtle sense of humour.
View 2 comments. Oct 10, Cyndi rated it liked it. Although I liked this book ok, I really wanted to like it more. The stories are cute, homespun tales of life in a small town in Minnesota during the 60's? I'm not actually sure and that's one of the problems I had with this book. I'm pretty sure the intention was to show the way life doesn't change much in small towns, but that's not actually true. The nostalgic eye may see it that way, but when you take off the rose colored glasses you can see changes.
Whether we like it or not. A small t Although I liked this book ok, I really wanted to like it more. A small town can only sustain so many people before it is forced to adapt. Anyway, another problem I kept coming across other than the whip-lashing time line, was the changes of point of view from first person to third person by the narrator.
I suppose this may be one of those books that are more enjoyable in audio form. Garrison Keillor could probably save it for me with his voice over skills. I'm amazed that Garrison Keillor is seen as the written equivalent of Norman Rockwell; His stories are only nostalgic if you aren't paying attention. The Lake Wobegone of his childhood is a dark, oppressive place, where the laughs are generally at someone's expense and everlasting embarrassment.
For those of us who identify, the grim humour and beautifully rendered stories evoke not nostalgia, but a satisfaction that those years are long past. View all 3 comments. This story is like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Even though there were some tidbits of interesting history here it was a little long and tedious. I much prefer these stories told in smaller portions over his live radio broadcast, 'A Prairie Home Companion'.
View all 7 comments. Dec 09, Peter Monn rated it it was amazing. Just amazing. The consummate storyteller. For a light, easy going type read, this took a while to get through, and wasn't the most pleasurable book ever.
I'd heard of Lake Wobegon Days and of the author as well, and saw it on a bookshelf and thought I'd try it, thinking it might be a nice, breezy bit of small-town nostalgia type thing Yes, I ate many a cry apple before I got to taste the real thing- I think Sidney McKillack sold me my first one on the corner of Firth Avenue, from his little back street stall, charged me 34, or maybe it was 35 cents, and I still remember the sweet taste of it now- sure beat the pants off an onion, I'll tell ya that much for nothin' Garrison Keillor can write fine, there's nothing wrong with the quality of any of it, but its just so mind-alteringly tedious a lot of the time, that sometimes you find yourself exclaiming out loud "What the hell are you prattling on about now, lad!
There were a couple of smiles in the initial pages, and the chapters 'Home', 'Protestant' and 'School' were all okay, but they just ended up annoying me more in a way, as I thought "Why can't you do this all the time, with the whole bloody book! In contrast, other chapters such as 'New Albion' and 'Forebears' were actually breathtakingly dull, going into all this unnecessary, fictitious, historic depth, and I struggled to actually get through those chapters and the problem was I kept reading the book, hoping in earnest for a few more okay parts, but they never came although a very long grumbly footnote bit in the 'News' chapter, was quite good to be fair At least five times during reading this book, I considered giving up on it and admitting defeat, but kept hoping foolishly that it would perk up again, and I also began to see it as a challenge, like running a marathon or something, to see if I could actually get to the end I succeeded, but at what cost to my mind, I don't know.
In conclusion, this book has a few redeeming parts to it here and there, but I much preferred Bill Bryson's- The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, which does the nostalgic hometown thing with a lot more entertainment, and is easy reading fun, rather than some kind of patience-testing, shudderingly boring, ramble-rampage, like this apparent comic classic Sep 09, Adam Oster rated it did not like it.
I really wanted to love this book. Me and Garrison Keillor have spent a great deal of time together on the road, as I would listen to him ramble on about his times spent on the shores of Lake Wobegon during the fantastic radio show that is Prarie Home Companion.
Of course, I had a feeling that a book dedicated to these long winded tales of days never-existing would find themselves to be too long for their own good, but I had really hoped things would be different.
I spent several nights trying to I really wanted to love this book. I spent several nights trying to get into this book and be excited for where it was going, while struggling to keep my eyes open after only a few pages. Now, I will admit, the book has its highlights.
But they are just too few and far between to make the idea of reading this novel from cover to cover enticing. If you absolutely love Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon, then perhaps this book is for you judging by the multitude of positive reviews in existence for the novel.
If you find them only mildly amusing, you may want to look elsewhere for your reading pleasure. View all 4 comments. Jun 03, Amber added it Shelves: read-multiple-times. Picture me sitting on a train reading this book, getting to the passage where the boys are in the classroom at lunchtime and the headteacher farts nearby and acts as if nothing happened. Gary makes his friend fall to pieces with laughter because the teacher demands to know what is so funny, and Gary says something like "it smells like a badger fart".
I actually slid off my train seat practically under the table, with tears streaming, unable to breathe for laughing, as I was reading it. Jul 22, Elaine rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Everyone, but especially those who survived the s and 50s. Shelves: classics-or-should-be. As a child of the 60s, I have gotten used to books having to be dark and meaningful.
Happy endings are rare and suspect. So it is with pleasure that I discovered Garrison Keillor's books. He makes me smile, sometimes nostalgically, but sometimes just out of clear enjoyment of someone saying what I've always felt but never knew how to put into words. I encourage readers to give this book a chance. How anyone can read about Lake Wobegon's citizenry and not love this book is beyond me.
A church nam As a child of the 60s, I have gotten used to books having to be dark and meaningful. A church named "Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility" Oct 27, Pradnya K. A friend picked it up and asked me to buy it saying it's good and humorous.
I liked the writing. A lot of colloquial stuff one would miss if not native or is not alert enough while reading. I may have missed myself a lot. It's a journey back to the time when Norwegians came to Wobegon and built it slowly. Though it's mostly nostalgic, it is not emotional. The writer talks about his childhood, how things were when he was kid, how, along with other things values changed too.
He knows about his nei A friend picked it up and asked me to buy it saying it's good and humorous. He knows about his neighborhood like he has a hidden spy planted in every household. That well-informed he seems. I especially liked the second half, it's more retrospective and tells interesting tales.
That's a good word to describe this book, if it even is a word. It ought to be, if it's not. Four hundred plus pages and not much to it. Yes, I understand there's not really a plot to it. In fact, I'd bet there's a particular term to describe the type of writing Mr. Keillor endeavors. I don't know it and I just don't care for it. Yeah, there are some interesting parts about how town life affects so many of its residents one of the problems - too many characters to really keep track of , but they are few and far between, at least for me.
A few zingers, for you though, because if nothing else, Mr. Keillor can do a bang up job at making a point clear or making something mundane, funny and hey, this way, you don't have to read the book : - ". God would know I didn't mean it. Mother spit. Our holy water, the world's most powerful cleansing agent.
I'm tempted to agree with Jess that Lake Woebegon might be best on the radio. Heck, I'm really not even all that concerned about what the US was like in the s! But, now I'm up to the almost-modern day and the book's now in first person, so it's better.
But pages?! People, please. I need something light, after "The Liar's Club. View 1 comment. Dear Garrison Keillor, I read your book and liked it a lot. It took me a while to get through it, though. First I started reading it a couple of years ago, but I got so confused in the first few pages' footnotes about how many meters apart everything in town was that I thought it was going to be a boring book and quit.
I started reading it again around August, and when I realized that you were just being cheeky, I quickly picked up on the style and began my enjoyment. I try not to be an obnoxious Dear Garrison Keillor, I read your book and liked it a lot. I try not to be an obnoxious reader, but I couldn't help laughing out loud every few pages. Then I would have to stop and explain to my wife why I'm laughing.
You do a great job putting the awkwardness and beauty of growing up and life in general into words that any Midwesterner could relate to. Thanks for spending all the time and thought it took to create this book. I'm looking forward to the next time you visit Kansas City. My wife and I saw you here the other year--not when it was degrees, but the time after that. Your fan, Eric S. May 28, Robert Case rated it liked it Shelves: fiction , own-the-book.
Several years ago, I purchased a used hardback copy of Lake Wobegon Days at a garage sale. Alas, the pages sat unturned on my bookshelf until several weeks ago when the aftershocks of COVID 19 put me in the regrettable position of wanting something new to read with no libraries in sight, at least one with unlocked doors and still lending books. I've lived in the USA a long time and paid taxes for almost as long, to support this wonderous concept called a public library system.
To see the statewi Several years ago, I purchased a used hardback copy of Lake Wobegon Days at a garage sale. To see the statewide system shutdown fills me with sadness.
At this point in the review, I could take the narrative either way: into a rant about "living in a free country," or take it in the other direction and blame the man in the White House for not responding to the known threat of a deadly virus in a timely or appropriate fashion. Instead, I'll laugh to myself, keep the essay short, and say that unless you're a big fan of Garrison Keillor, this is not his best work.
I'm going to have to take a break on this. It's taken me 2 days to read that much.
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