A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

A Little Bit Over 29 Ton by Russell Ringsak
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Listen

Folks'll ask me, after the show,
"What do you do?" and I say, "Oh,
Drive the truck."
And they'll say, "Oh."
Then the guys'll sometimes say,
"What's she weigh?
The show."
I'll say, "The show? I don't know,
"But we cross the scales when we're on tour,
"And I'm pretty sure,
"The whole thing'll gross right around
"Fifty-eight thousand two hundred pound."
And they'll say: "Oh."

And I got to thinkin', just for fun:
That's a little bit over twenty-nine ton,
And we haul it around with diesel power
At about sixty-five miles an hour;
But every week, for two hours, I reckoned,
The show travels a hundred-eighty-six thousand miles a second.
That's eleven million miles a minute;
Right up there at the legal limit.

So all that tonnage, we pack up and haul,
To send out a signal that weighs nothing at all.
On the other hand, on a given day,
The listening audience will maybe weigh
Five hundred million pounds; so it's not bad, compared to, say
A rock concert, which is not only loud,
But the gear weighs near as much as the crowd.

So in that sense it's a bargain, to do a show
With twenty-nine tons of gear, or so;
Plus a chicken, and maybe a duck.
And don't forget, the twenty-nine tons includes
A truck.