Oh how I wish Garrison Keillor were my puppy. I would feed him and take him for walks and build him a doghouse of scrap wood and bent nails. In return, he would love me and smile at me in that expressionless way of his. On Saturdays he would tell me jokes and sing old folk songs with his floppy jowls bouncing rhythmically.

Until last Friday, my only encounter with Mr. Keillor had been through the speakers of my car radio, where his breathy, sighing voice found me on my way to other stations. It is true, I am a Minnesotan, born and raised (but not bred). Yet contrary to popular belief, all us Saint Paulites do not each Sabbath eve gather round the old Fitzgerald Theater stage to hear told tales of Woebegone.

We accept those strong women and above-average children as our mascots, proxies of ourselves to an outside world that knows us only for our celebrities. But we do not lie sleeping with our companions in prairie homes. We don’t all speak of winter in reverent tones. The lutefisk swims not atop our stoves. And what’s this about Lutherans?

I’ve heard it said that “A Prairie Home Companion” flirts with boredom. I think perhaps even the faithful followers of the long-running show might accede that point. Keillor’s voice was made for radio. But it was also made for a hypnotist’s office where the hypnotist’s goal is to lure you into a deep sleep. Garrison Keilor could make a CD in which he mumbles gibberish for 78 minutes and make millions selling it to parents of newborns.

“Goo goo,” he says. Breath. “Gah…” Sigh. “Gah.”

Friday night was my first time seeing the show. Well, actually it was a preview show; a dress rehearsal. This was because a) Saturday’s show was sold out, b) preview tickets are cheaper c) I made a mistake. Mix and match.

Nevertheless, it was a complete performance. Music, singing, accordion playing, two mandolin players, and old-timey radio sound effects. “A Prairie Home Companion” is not boring, let me start with that.

That robotic, synchronized clapping you hear on the radio is sincere, though it may not seem it. Keillor stands in the middle of the stage, a tall, stooped-over man, doing a slow-motion stand up routine, and the audience eats it up.

But if you’ve never seem him perform live before, the most interesting thing about the show is the complete blankness in Keillor’s face. Maybe it’s those big cheeks of his, but I think I saw him smile only once throughout the show, and even then it looked like someone was pushing up the corners of his mouth with chopsticks.

He is a funny, funny man, but his face is a lump of warm Playdoh.

Much of Keillor’s monologue this weekend addressed an issue that is top-of-mind for many of us Minnesotans: the looming arrival of hated, suffocating winter.

The last two weeks here have been, as the man said, like something from a murder mystery title sequence. The image that comes to mind is of an Edward Gory illustration, soaked in vinegar. Friday I looked out the window at work at 2 p.m. and it looked exactly as it had at six that morning: dark. Completely dark.

Keillor does a good job of capturing the you’re-not-one-of-us feeling that winter gives to many Minnesotans. “This is the time when people who aren’t from here leave,” he said (quotes used to indicate he was speaking, not that I’m accurately relaying what he said).

Winter, for all its crushing doom, has a nice way of getting everyone to pick teams: you’re either with us (humans) or against us (nature). Most people pick how you’d expect, although there are some who side with winter. But most of those people don’t make it, so, you know, not to worry.

Saturday I had planned on preparing the house for winter (weather-stripping, window-wrapping, etc.), but in the end all I could muster was one painted radiator. Still having problems with water coming through the kitchen ceiling, and the tree in the backyard has developed a dangerous looking baseball-sized crack. But I’ll save that for a things-that-are-broken update later in the week.

Sunday was God’s way of making Garrison Keillor look foolish: it was sixty-five degrees and sunny. A perfect day for a walk, or two or three. On the way home we stopped by the hardware store and picked up two pumpkins, which my girlfriend likes for their decorative value. I can only see them as they’ll look three weeks from now, rotting and slimy, begging my not to touch them. And of course I’ll be the one who has to throw them away, great dripping snot-balls that they will have become.

But for now, they’re just pretty. Pleasant autumn decorations, like colored leaves and apples and cinnamon. If you’re a nice Minnesotan child, dressed up for trick-or-treating, they say “Welcome to this home, we have candy.”

But, as the droop-jowled Keillor said, if you’re from anywhere else, the pumpkins say, “Get out. Go home. Migrate.”

This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2004 at 6:36 am and is filed under Minnesota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.