Garrison Keillor

Mousehound · 05-31-2012, 06:47 PM

My parents once sent me cassette recordings from Garrison Keillor. The man is just the most fantastic story teller I have ever heard. If you need some good soul food, I really recommend his stuff. Here is part of "The Six Labors of Father Wilmer," from Fertility which I found here.

Quote:

One of Garrison Keillor’s monologues[3] tells of the time a member of the Catholic church in Lake Wobegon thought it was too dark in their beautiful old church building. So during Holy Week he had six powerful mercury vapor lamps installed high in the ceiling. When Father Wilmer saw the intense blue light shining down on the Good Friday service he was devastated. There was no way to dim them. It seemed to him like some sort of Protestant conspiracy, designed to remove all the mystery from his faith.

So the night before Easter Father Wilmer loaded his 22 rifle and went into the sanctuary with the crazy idea of shooting out those lights. That rash action was only narrowly averted when he thought he heard the Virgin Mary say to him, “What’s the matter with you? Have you got cornflakes for brains?” So he went and got the church’s thirty-foot step ladder instead. He set it up and saw the top waving around way up by the lights.

Without looking down he slowly climbed up under the first light, reached up, took hold of it, and twisted it out. Then he moved the ladder, looked up, saw it still swaying up there, and bravely climbed again. He stretched way up and pulled out the second light. He moved the ladder again, and again and again, got the third, the fourth, the fifth light. As he started up the sixth time, he looked up all those rungs and prayed, “O Lord, please don’t be ironical. If you wanted me to fall, it should have been on the first one!”

As I remember, the story continues by telling how Fr. Wilmer takes the lights down to the local dump, and sails them off the edge like big Frisbees.

Catbird · 05-31-2012, 07:01 PM

Just be aware that reading or listening to Garrison Keillor will cause you to have extreme cravings for Jello salads.

Mousehound · 05-31-2012, 07:04 PM

I just love his Lake Wobegone stuff:

Lake Wobegon is a quintessential but fictional Minnesotan small town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Keillor

blue gecko · 05-31-2012, 08:07 PM

They are such wonderful stories (and shows). The James Harriet series is very good as well and much along the same flavor.

Mousehound · 05-31-2012, 08:09 PM

That's true. Thanks for reminding me. I need to get my hands on those books too.

Catbird · 05-31-2012, 08:32 PM

You can listen to some archives of the Prairie Home Companion show here:

http://tunein.com/radio/Garrison-Kei...-Show-p180456/

Doing a search on that site brings up some other Keillor archives as well.

You can find mp3's of the current and past shows at:
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/p...2012&x=15&y=10

I haven't read Herriot for years. I think I'll add those books to the Kindle list. I don't want to read them right after I have the surgery though - they make me laugh too much and it'll hurt!!

ETA: An even better search done across TuneIn: http://tunein.com/search/?query=keillor
All the shows are there.