Garrison Keillor – Prairie Home

When you bang up your knee so it swells up like an elephant’s and it brings tears to your eyes to take a step, the… Login to continue reading Login…

Spring leaped out at us in New York last week — suddenly one day it was 80, just like me — it sprang at us shang a lang lang as once we’d sung so we were sprung from the steel corset of winter and I took a couple of Londoners to lunch at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station where, when I was 11, I ate my first oyster on a trip from Minnesota with my dad. I saw him eat one and so I ate one and I trace my independence back to that 1953 oyster — when you eagerly devour something that would disgust your beloved aunts, you’ve taken a step toward becoming your own person.

I talked to a friend last week whose Lutheran church in Minneapolis is trying to attract people of color. Lutherans have been white for centuries, coming as they did from Scandinavia and Germany, countries that were never great colonial powers and didn’t grab big chunks of Africa and Lutheranize the indigenous people. Some Lutherans are more gray than white, but if you go to a Lutheran church you sense a monochromaticism due to the fact that people in the pews tend to be descendants of Lutherans, the faith was handed down, it’s like farming — most farmers grew up on a farm — not many Manhattanites develop a passion for soybeans and head for North Dakota to buy 400 acres and a John Deere.

In case you’re wondering why I was not in church Sunday morning, I was in the Omaha airport at 6:30 a.m. waiting for a flight back to New York, listening to an announcement that unattended baggage would be confiscated, eating a breakfast croissant and blueberry yogurt, drinking coffee, which came to $19.74, which happens to be the year I started doing my old radio show.

Believe it or not, I used to be rather cool. This was before you were born, probably, but I have pictures.