Garrison:
How about publishing your recipe for potato salad! Both my daughter and I have been drooling for "good, old" potato salad since your informative description on your Tanglewood show.
Steve Wolf
Juneau, Alaska
Steve, I was in Juneau last week and walked up the hill and looked out at the bay and recalled a radio show I did there years ago and a great fishing trip on which my stepdaughter caught a salmon and konked it and cut off a little slice of it and ate it—fresh sushi—and also a terrifying plane landing through heavy overcast between mountains. Three vivid memories of one small town. That's a good reason to keep travelling back to the same places, to recall all the previous times. And a good reason to make a great potato salad, too.
There is no recipe, exactly; it's more like a melody that one improvises on. Though you can find plenty of recipes for homemade mayonnaise, and it's worth the slight additional trouble—you just blend eggs (with some extra yolks, I believe) and oil and mustard, it takes seconds to do (but get the exact measurements somewhere, please)—and then you assemble your ingredients: potatoes of course, probably the little red ones, and boil them in their skins until they're cooked but not soft; chopped celery, a chopped pickle, boiled eggs, chopped onion, and dill. And salt and pepper of course. And you pour the mayo over it and moosh it around, and you've got yourself potato salad.
There's room for creativity, of course. A little salmon, maybe. Some humpback whale. In Juneau, some juniper berries or June bugs. Worth the trouble, especially compared to the glop they sell in gallon containers in supermarkets. If you're too busy to make potato salad, Steve, you're too busy.
Garrison:
Whatever happened to the "Café Boeuf"? I loved that segment and have even adapted the concept to the delight of our children who insist on my delivery of the evening supper menu.
Victor Helmuth
Sidney, Montana
The maitre'd Maurice moved back to France, disgusted with the gastronomic timidity of Midwesterners, and we'd like to think that he misses us but how would we know? The man had a fondness for cooking intestines and brains and kidneys and that sort of thing, and in the Midwest, we do not eat brains. If MacDonalds offers a McSweetbread, they'll be out of business faster than you can say Sarah Bellum.
Hi Garrison,
As a funeral director I have often wondered what fine establishment serves Lake Wobegon. Have there been any funerals of late in L.W.? Were the sermons inspiring? Were the lunches after funeral in the church basement done with hot dishes?
Dying to know,
Jeffrey Thimell
Mr. Lindbergh up at the mortuary is waiting by the phone, ready to serve, and yes, there have been funerals lately, but nobody's who was a friend of mine, so I haven't seen fit to mention them. The lunches would sometimes include a hot dish, perhaps a favorite of the deceased, but the entrée is sandwiches, bologna and cheese and maybe tuna salad. And a full array of condiments. And nectar. A modest but oddly satisfying meal, suitable for a time of grief. You don't put a loved one into the ground and then whoop it up with barbecued ribs and a case of beer. Not here you don't.
Dear Garrison:
Is it time for Lake Wobegon to have a vegan restaurant? What would the natives think?
Dr. Charles Aloisio
Atlanta, Georgia
A vegan restaurant is pretty much what you find in any home from the end of July to mid-September when the gardens are rolling in vegetables. As you know, fresh vegetables from the garden put any other food to shame, including meat. It becomes a trivial side dish when the harvest is in. Compared to fresh sweet corn, meat has no attraction at all. But storebought vegetables are so inferior to fresh that they're not even in the same food group. So over the winter and spring, we go to a more primitive diet of pot roast and potatoes and tunafish and pancakes. We sit hunkered around the fire in our bearskins and eat half-baked beef. And we look forward to a new season of vegetables. I suppose it's different in Atlanta, as so many things are. But that's how it is in Lake Wobegon.
Dear Garrison,
I have been in love with a guy for three years. We've both been married twice, but he doesn't seem to be able to put his past relationships in the past. After three years of watching him run away and come back I'm getting tired of waiting to see if he'll ever commit. What should I do? And how do I find someone who actually wants to have a relationship?
Thanks,
Nancy
Nancy, if you're thinking about finding someone else who is less encumbered by the past, then probably you should move in that direction. There is a gentle way to ease out of this love affair—not painless, but kind—and that's the route to take. No big confrontations, no demands, no long discussions, no therapy. The next time he runs away, don't be there when he decides to come back. Be there but not there for him. Be a little removed. And then remove yourself farther. This is not a fit subject for discussion. His feelings are not with you and he can't express himself honestly and so you have to do the work of resolving things.
Garrison:
My daughter is 20 years old and very shy. She is in college and doing very well but is deathly afraid of new people, especially boys. She's very pretty but does not date. I am afraid that people sometimes mistake her shyness for aloofness. I have tried to convince her to take the first step with people and smile often. But she feels that this is hypocritical. Any advice from you? Maybe I should just butt out, as she is now an adult?
Lila
Don't butt out, don't butt in. Be a friend, mama, and enjoy the company of this bright attractive young person who (miraculously) you raised and who now is independent of you and therefore able to become a friend and confidante. Lighten up. Friends don't nag. Smile at her and she'll be happy to smile back. She'll date when she's ready to and when she meets somebody she feels a fondness for. Don't worry how other people might perceive her. Enjoy the time you get to spend with her and don't darken it with hissy lectures on personal comportment and social skills.
Dear Garrison,
I have enjoyed you for years and have finally gotten the courage to say this... If you leave your wife, I will leave my husband, and we can run off together. Possibly to Iowa. (You being from Minnesota, and me from Illinois, I think that would be fair.) I am 44 and my husband is 60, so I know all about you older men. What do you say?
Patty
Your possible, future, amour
Dear Patty,
A fine imagination you have, my dear, but I don't see Iowa in my future. At 60, one is grateful to live in a state of happiness and calm and productivity and one is not anxious to exchange it for turmoil and guilt and regret. And I'm afraid you underestimate the miseries of being hooked up with a writer. We are a broody bunch, loners, cranky, poor social skills, given to dismal obsessive behavior, and when we get a book going, we can be semi-sociopathic. We want to be surrounded by love and admiration and all the comforts, and we also want to be left alone. It's a rare person who would care to be the spouse in that situation. Like being married to a criminal or a politician. I can save you from a great deal of misery, my dear, and I believe I will do that.
Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am an international student from China here at University of Hawaii. Unlike a lot of radio/TV show hosts, you never say things just to get a bigger audience. You always have an opinion and are not afraid to express it. Now that I understand the American culture a bit better, I laugh at your jokes, too! I saw that some people have criticized you for ridiculing the president and jeopardizing "national unity." I believe you say those things because you fear for your country and the values it stands for, which, in my opinion, is real patriotism.
Best Regards,
Tracy Xia
Dear Tracy,
Welcome to the U.S. I hope you get to see more of it than the little island paradise of Hawaii. And wherever you go you will find Chinese, one of our hardiest immigrant groups. "Hardy" means "able to thrive under unfriendly conditions." The Chinese made it in America because they are even more industrious than we are. They built the railroads, a back-breaking job, and they typically ran laundries (one more tedious unpleasant job) or restaurants (ditto) or became shopkeepers and traders. They maintained strong family loyalties into the third and fourth generations and beyond. And we native Americans respect them for their values.
Part of my antipathy to the president is based on the fact that he was a classic rich kid who slumped his way through college, dodged the draft, went AWOL from his National Guard unit, and made his way through family connections and rich pals, and never had major defining moments as his father did. Had no curiosity about the big world out there. Simply relied on luck and charm. Maybe he's his own man now, but I don't see it.
I see his politics as an extension of his own privileged life. Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower, all the major Republican presidents of our time came from hard-scrabble roots and knew something about hard work. This one doesn't. I don't care if 85 percent of the American people think he's a hero, to me he is who he is. I knew people like him in college. I've been in rooms full of people like him. Believe me, I have much more in common with an aspiring student from China than I ever will with him. And that's the truth, kid.
God bless you and I wish you a long and happy life.
Garrison:
I know you are now a Republican. But I wonder what has been the response of Democrats to your conversion? Do they feel betrayed, or have they tried to have you committed?
Gerald D. Bowden
Scotts Valley, California
Gerald, they're amused, I guess, but sometimes when I sing "We're All Republicans Now," there's loud cheering, as if they think it's a big joke. Or maybe they love the idea of becoming Republicans who do, after all, have more fun, being about 2% as earnest as Democrats and whose minds are closed in the most wonderful way. There is less debate in the Republican party than there is public nudity in Minnesota. And in unanimity, or apathy, or whatever you call it, there is a great degree of comfort, Lord knows.
Dear Garrison,
I'm in love with a girl from California. Problem is, although I was raised in Portland, Oregon, I am a Midwesterner at heart. I just wanna settle down, have a couple kids, and a garden. But she wants to travel the world, explore the wilderness, and generally have fun. She's a pistol, full of energy, love for life, and all that western hokum. What's a fella to do?
James
James, there's plenty of time to have kids and raise a garden after you've explored the wilderness and seen the world. You need to have stories to tell those kids and wonderful memories to think about as you cultivate your tomatoes. A woman who's full of energy and loves life sounds like a woman you ought to get to know better.
Garrison:
Recently, I was in Butare, Rwanda, at the National University and stopped in the library. I found 10 copies of Leaving Home and one copy of Lake Wobegon translated into French. Is it satisfying to know your words have reached the far corners of the world—even in a small, dusty town in East Africa. I should note that I did not look to see how often the books were checked out.
David Shepardson
David, once a book is written, it doesn't exactly belong to the author anymore. It's expelled out into the world to make its way, sink or swim, and he goes off to do something else. The book Leaving Home is a curiosity to me. It would be a curiosity in English or in French, in Anoka or in Rwanda. If I picked it up, I'd be a little amazed at having written it and then I'd start thinking about all the people I neglected in order to do the work and I'd feel bad. So I don't pick up old books. I confess my sins and go on to commit new ones. I just finished a novel, which comes out in August, and I'm at work on a new novel now, which is about tomatoes. Don't look back.
