How things change

If we remember for 1968 for multiple assassinations, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Black Power salutes at the Olympics, the Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for a second term, and Richard Nixon winning a first term, we think that was one bad year.

And we are right to think so. But 2017 was a horrible year for a lot of reasons, and one of the worst, or best, depending, was the eruption of the Me Too movement, in which women at long last said they had had enough of mistreatment (and worse) at the hands of the patriarchy. Good for them, and too bad for the many men who were shown to be shtick dreks, as they so aptly put it in Yiddish.

Keillor performing in 2007

I'm not even going to list them; it's too sad to think of the many people who turned out to be loudmouth vulgarian cads. But one departure from grace and the public stage hit me harder than the others.

I had always considered Garrison Keillor to be a sort of hero, if a man my age is entitled to have a hero, for crying out loud. He had many talents I admired...a great writer and radio performer (singer, actor, host) and raconteur. He even did a daily radio Almanac show in which he mentioned various birthdays and important anniversaries for the day, and read a poem. Peggy and I went to see him perform in concert with the Baltimore Symphony (for that one evening, I refrained from calling them "The Town Band") and he recited long poems from memory as the beautiful music filled the Meyerhoff Hall.

When women came forward with tales of Garrison being a randy, handsy, old fool, I didn't want to believe the stories, but in time, I did, and how sad it was to see another person I had held in the highest esteem show himself to be just a lot of steam.

So after enough people came along with credible accusations, Keillor lost his place on the Minnesota Public Radio website; the Prairie Home Companion show that he hosted for decades before retiring in 2016 had its name changed. The old shows that used to be available online were taken down and GK's very presence was "disappeared," as they say in Latin American countries with military strongmen.

Which was fine with me; the old magic of the tales he wove about the fictional town of Lake Woebegon no longer seem so enchanting when we realized that the tale spinner was sticking his hands in places they don't belong and writing crude, embarrassing limericks on the walls of the bookshop he owned.

It's sad now. He's still popping up in out-of-the-way places, speaking to fans, saying things like how he recently got a call from an obituary writer doing research on him. He told a recent crowd that the trouble he found himself in will be in paragraph 2 of the obit unless he wins a National Book award or shoots somebody.

“So there you are, you make the best of it, and you go to Prescott, Arizona, where, God bless them, they welcome you,” he said to applause at Yavapai College.

He went on to tell of old girlfriends and high school proms and rhubarb pies and Norwegian bachelor farmers and his cousin who went water skiing, but could not swim. 

And he told the old stories about old men in ice fishing huts and pontoon boats with 24 pastors out for a cruise and the cemetery plot he bought and a hot air balloon that catches fire and a surefire crowd-pleaser about some Viagra at a nursing home.

His legacy in tatters, his glorious past in disgrace, Keillor looks forward and backward at once. “This is my legacy,” he told the Arizona crowd. “I was hoping it would be something else. … of a small town, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all children are above average.”

I was hoping for better from him as well.