Saturday, March 4, 2000
Listen
(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell, RD: Rich Dworsky)
(WESTERN THEME)
SS: ....And now, here's DUSTY and LEFTY with a word about the YWCA.
(CATTLE. HORSES' HOOVES. GK & TR WHOOPS)
GK: Okay. Got em in the corral. (WHINNY) Easy, boy. Easy. (FOOTSTEPS ON GRAVEL)
TR: Another successful cattle drive. What you say we get us a drink down to the saloon, huh?
GK: I don't know. You go ahead. I'll just sit down here in the dirt and wait for you.
TR: What's wrong, pardner?
GK: I just don't feel up to socializing. I'm embarrassed about the way I look. I look pretty bad, don't I.
TR: You look like you've been embalmed and it wore off. But heck, so does everyone else.
GK: I'm filthy and I smell like death on a cracker and I don't converse very well, pardner. My vocabulary is so limited. A cowboy uses only a few words and half of them unrepeatable.
TR: Maybe it's time you tried the YWCA --- the Yellowstone, Wyoming, Cowboy Academy --- they've got a dandy course for improving vocabulary.
GK: Is that right? (BRIDGE)
SS: Yes, Lefty, now you can add dozens of new words to your vocabulary every week. Every few miles along the trail, you'll find a YWCA word list under a rock. Study it in the saddle as you ride along and in the time it takes you to make the trip west, you may double or even triple your vocabulary. Learn new words such as....
TR: Advantageous.
GK: Oh, that's good to know.
TR: Debauchery.
GK: Okay. Good.
TR: Prodigious.
GK: Very nice.
TR: Libation.
GK: Boy, it just rolls off the tongue, don't it.
TR: Peregrinations.
GK: Boy, that's a beauty.
SS: You can learn that word and hundreds of others like it, words like "ensconced" and "bedizened" --- "insouciant," "turgid," "nudnik," "vivacious," and "dichotomy," when you enroll in the YWCA. A few weeks later....(BRIDGE)
TR: Care to step into the saloon and enjoy some rotgut whiskey?
GK: Have a libation? Indeed, my good man. (FOOTSTEPS, DOOR OPEN, CAMPTOWN RACES, VOICES. FOOTSTEPS) My, the turgidity and debauchery here is prodigious. Let us hie ourselves toward the refreshments and ensconce ourselves among the vivacious and insouciant. (FOOTSTEPS AND STOP)
SS: Howdy, stranger. You care to dance with a loose woman for fifteen cents a dance and perhaps take liberties with my person?
GK: In all my peregrinations, madame, I have never envisioned such a plethora of pulchritude and all so bedizened and advantageously displayed that only a nudnik could be impervious to it. There is a dichotomy between you and I that was meant to be crossed. Shall we perambulate?
SS: You know, I could get real fond of a smart fella like yourself.
TR: Looks like you hit paydirt, pardner.
GK: Thanks to the YWCA. (MUSIC)
SS: The Yellowstone, Wyoming, Cowboy Academy. Not to be confused with the Yellowstone, Montana, Cowboy Academy. (BUTTON)
(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor
