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A Note from Garrison Chicago, Illinois Welcome to the historic Auditorium
Theater and to this week's live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion"
which I never intended to become historic but time flies when you're having
fun and now I keep running into beautiful young people who tell me they
grew up listening to the show. Some of them confess that, as children,
they fell asleep to the New from Lake Wobegon and that, during their tempestuous
teen years, on family car trips they sat sullenly listening to Guns 'N
Roses and Bon Jovi on their Walkmans as the parents played old monologues
about throwing a tomato at your sister. And now here they are, in their
mid-twenties, sitting in the fourth row. Chicago is the home of WLS which was the home of the
"National Barn Dance" back in my childhood, and we listened
to it in Lake Wobegon when the wind was out of the southeast. Homer &
Jethro played on the show, and the Hoosier Hot Shots, and Pat Buttram,
the Sage of the Airwaves, and it was corny and fun and full of hijinks.
Chicago gave us Jim and Marian Jordan (Fibber McGee and Molly) and the
famous closet that cascaded junk every week and the saying, "Tain't
funny, McGee." And The Breakfast Club with Don McNeill. And it gave
us Studs Terkel, of course, a patron saint of public radio. Studs was
in business in radio when I was born, doing a record show "The Wax
Museum" on WENR, playing records by his friends Big Bill Broonzy,
Woody Guthrie, and Mahalia Jackson, and he is still chugging along at
WBEZ. It is so inspiring for an old guy of 60 to see a young
guy of 90 going strong, and Studs is the soul of the city. He describes
himself as looking like "a minor mob figure the day after he died"
but he's a scrapper, a union guy, a White Sox fan, an old progressive,
an admirer of Fighting Bob LaFollette and Clarence Darrow because they
were their own men and didn't take orders from anybody. Cool good taste and elegant irony don't interest him
so much as a good argument, the good fight. Chicago is a city with a heart,
and he's a Chicago guy, a free man, an artist, a gentle soul of great
humor and kindness, and our show this week is FOR
STUDS. |
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Now Available:
A Christmas Blizzard
GK's New Holiday Story
A comic novella about a Hawaii-bound holiday traveler who ends up stranded in his North Dakota hometown.
Audio edition also available»
The Prairie Home cruise has become legendary on two of the Seven Seas and now is setting sail on a third, a weeklong spring break cruise of the western Caribbean along the Mexican coast, and it leaves March 14 from Tampa.
Stories of a Wobegon romance far from home, all delivered with Garrison Keillor's trademark humor.
Read the first chapter»Signed Copies Available»
The latest collection of Lake Wobegon short stories gathered from live broadcasts include Confirmation Sunday, the church directory photos, Pastor Ingqvist's leather bound sermons along with song lyrics and the "95 Theses," among others. Companion audio also available.
Order now!»