Lake Wobegon Days

by Garrison Keillor

  b. Things we never had when we were your age

  3. And you treat us like dirt under your feet.

  C. You act as if

  1. The world owes you a living

  2. You got a chip on your shoulder

  3. The rules don’t apply to you

  II. Something has got to change and change fast.

  A. You’re driving your mother to a nervous breakdown.

  B. I’m not going to put up with this for another minute.

  1. You’re crazy if you think I am.

  2. If you think I am, just try me.

  C. You’re setting a terrible example for your younger brothers and sisters.

  III. I’m your father and as long as you live in this house, you’ll—

  A. Do as you’re told, and when I say “now” I mean “now.”

  B. Pull your own weight.

  1. Don’t expect other people to pick up after you.

  2. Don’t expect breakfast when you get up at noon.

  3. Don’t come around asking your mother for spending money.

  C. Do something about your disposition.

  IV. If you don’t change your tune pretty quick, then you’re out of here.

  A. I mean it.

  B. Is that understood?

  1. I can’t hear you. Don’t mumble.

  2. Look at me.

  C. I’m not going to tell you this again.

  * Dorm Songs:

  Four layers of brick boxes,

  Stacked by the river,

  Each one filled with music.

  A stranger sits on my bed,

  Eating a box of tiny animals.

  It is his room, too.

  The hot lamp lights the book,

  A box full of sentences wiggling

  Like earthworms drowning in paper.

  Green beans and meatballs

  In steel boxes under hot lamps.

  A pool of white potato!

  I push the empty plastic

  Along the steel rails, collecting

  Myself from a small assortment.

  I find myself in The Rec,

  Once again a disaster.

  Lights flicker with emergency.

  The tiny steel ball

  Rings invisible bells,

  Gravity descending.

  The paper ball bounces

  Between wooden hands on the green table.

  Someone is knocking!

  A hard diamond of light

  In the middle of the dark glass.

  Then “Leave It to Beaver”!

  Wally, are you crying

  There in the dark room in the box?

  Wally, are we brothers?

  Mr. Davenport suggested revising one verse to “A sharp diamond of light / In the center of the dark glass. / Then a boy named for a small-boned creature!” but he gave it an A and added, “See me sometime. I’d like to talk.” Evidently he had forgotten that John had seen him several times and that he, Mr. Davenport, had talked a lot each of those times—female consciousness and male mythology and the right side of the brain, which, in John, went numb after a few minutes of nodding. He felt he was too much like Nissan already.

  * Authored by Wm. Dixon Bell, the Flambeau Family Series (Hutton & White) competed head-to-head with the adventures of the Minnehaha Creek Gang (Augustana), a group of seven Luther Leaguers who, in book after book, enjoyed good clean fun, cheerfully helped around the house, and used nonviolent resistance to bring vicious nonbelievers one by one into the faith.

  * “I iron you clean shirts, why can’t you wear those? It wouldn’t hurt you to comb your hair once in a while. Beans? What sort of lunch is that? Don’t eat so fast, what’s the hurry? Sit up, it hurts just to look at you. Don’t you know how to sit in a chair? Put your feet on the floor, and don’t lean back, you’ll break it. Speak up, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t give me that dirty look. Pick up your feet when you walk. You didn’t dry these glasses—look at this, you call this dry? Why do you always go around slamming doors? How many times do I have to tell you? When are you going to learn? Why can’t you get it through your thick head? What’s the matter with you?”

  * I felt the same when I was young—the patrons of the Sidetrack seemed A unspeakably crude and filthy and degenerate and old. Now they seem about my age.

  * One of a declining number who say, “You couldn’t pay me enough to go up in one of those things,” Mrs. Mueller rides the Greyhound to visit Kathy and Danny in Orlando, two days and two nights by land as against three hours by air, but she’s in no hurry. She sits behind the driver and eats from a big sack of good things she has made and hopes that whoever sits next to her will not be the hijacker.

  Read more of the cleverly hilarious Garrison Keillor in Viking and Penguin Books

  Explore Lake Wobegon with these titles from Viking and Penguin

  Pontoon

  A Novel of Lake Wobegon

  “Keillor has always been a great cataloger, equal parts Homer and Montgomery Ward, and rarely to better effect than in Pontoon.”

  —Thomas Mallon, The New York Times Book Review

  Garrison Keillor makes his long-awaited return to Lake Wobegon—replete with bowling ball-urns, a hot-air balloon, giant duck decoys, a flying Elvis, and, most importantly, Wally’s pontoon boat. And as the wedding of the decade approaches (accompanied by wheels of imported cheese and giant shrimp shish-kebabs), the good-loving people of Lake Wobegon do what they do best: drive each other slightly crazy.

  ISBN 978-0-670-06356-7

  Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956

  Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956 depicts the most harrowing time of life in Lake Wobegon—adolescence. With his trademark gift for treading “a line delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment” (The Plain Dealer), Garrison Keillor captures postwar America and delivers an unforgettable comedy about a writer coming of age in the rural mid-west.

  ISBN 978-0-14-200093-9

  Wobegon Boy

  John Tollefson, the son of Byron and Mary of Lake Wobegon, leaves Minnesota to manage a public radio station at a college for academically challenged children of financially gifted parents in upstate New York. Though he makes a pleasant bachelor life for himself in New York, he feels rootless, restless, joined in no struggle, with nothing at stake. Can a romance with a historian named Alida Freeman give his life the nobility and grace it lacks?

  ISBN 978-0-14-027478-3

  Leaving Home

  “Leaving Home is a book of exceptional charm … delightful … genuinely touching.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  In this collection of Lake Wobegon monologues, Keillor tells readers more about some of the people from Lake Wobegon Days and introduces some new faces.

  ISBN 978-0-14-013160-4

  More of Garrison Keillor from Penguin

  Homegrown Democrat

  A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America

  In this thoughtful, deeply personal work, one of the nation’s best-loved voices takes the plunge into politics. With great heart, supple wit, and a dash of anger, Garrison Keillor describes simple democratic values—the Golden Rule, the obligation to defend the weak against the powerful—that define his hardworking Midwestern neighbors and that today’s Republicans seem determined to subvert. A reminiscence, a political tract, and a humorous meditation, Homegrown Democrat is an entertaining, refreshing addition to the rancorous political debate.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303768-2

  Good Poems

  Here is an anthology of poems from The Writer’s Almanac, chosen by Keillor for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their “utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m.” Good Poems includes verse about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendance. Featuring the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Co
llins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds, it’s a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry—whether they know it or not.

  ISBN 978-0-14-200344-2

  Good Poems for Hard Times

  In Good Poems for Hard Times, Keillor has pondered over the archives of his beloved Writer’s Almanac radio show to select a batch of consoling, rousing, and truthful poems guaranteed to raise flagging spirits. But these poems are not about suffering. They’re intended to inspire those in need of a dose of wisdom or honesty by holding out a picture of the grace of ordinary life.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303767-5

  A Prairie Home Companion

  The Screenplay

  Foreword by Robert Altman

  The companion to Robert Altman’s popular film, A Prairie Home Companion features a special eight-page photo insert, as well as an interview between Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor, who once again showcases his unique style of wit and humor in this fantastic crowd-pleaser.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303823-8

  Love Me

  A Novel

  Aspiring writer Larry Wyler leads a quiet life with his wife Iris in Minnesota, but he wants more. When his literary debut becomes a hit, he departs for a Manhattan apartment, and a job at the New Yorker. But when his second novel bombs and he finds himself in the grip of writer’s block, Wyler discovers that success is a fickle mistress, indeed. Creatively barren, nearly destitute, and longing for Iris, he accepts a job writing “Ask Mr. Blue,” a column doling out advice to the lovelorn. Slowly, painfully, Wyler finds a measure of clarity for his own life, and then sets out to win back his wife’s affections.

  ISBN 978-0-14-200499-9

  The Book of Guys

  Stories

  “Guys are in trouble these days,” says Garrison Keillor. “Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement and now it’s just a problem to be overcome. Guys who once might have painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling are now just trying to be Mr. O.K. All-Rite, the man who can bake a cherry pie, be passionate in a skillful way, and yet also lift them bales and tote that barge.” This collection confirms Keillor’s reputation as an ingenious storyteller and a very funny guy.

  ISBN 978-0-14-023372-8

  WLT

  A Radio Romance

  In the spring of 1926, the Soderbjerg brothers plunge into radio and launch station WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) to rescue their failing restaurant and become the Sandwich Kings of South Minneapolis. For the next quarter century, the “Friendly Neighbor” station produces a dazzling array of shows and stars. Francis With, a shy young man from North Dakota, entranced by radio, quickly becomes the Soderbjerg’s right hand. Soon Francis is a budding announcer adored by Lily Dale, the crippled nightingale of WLT kept hidden from her fans, whose firing contributes to the downfall of the station. And then comes television.

  ISBN 978-0-14-010380-9

  Happy to Be Here

  “Keillor’s best stuff is clean (in the sense that lines are clean), down to earth, exquisitely good-hearted, highly ludicrous, and as labored as nitrous oxide … This book will either leave you dumbfounded or happy—almost deservedly happy—to be anywhere”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  ISBN 978-0-14-013182-6

  We Are Still Married

  Stories and Letters

  “The shock, for a radio fan leafing through this collection, is to discover, perhaps not for the first or fifth time, that his hero is even more gifted as writer than as entertainer … If Kafka were writing this spooky stuff, you would call it Keilloresque, but it wouldn’t be nearly so funny.”

  —Time

  ISBN 978-0-14-013156-7