A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I have been a regular listener (more or less), since October 1994, and I have little to complain about with the usual format of APHC. The regular features: "Lives of the Cowboys", "Guy Noir", "Fred Feral", "Famous Celebrities", and the advertisers, are all great. I think you still have a lot of storytelling potential left in them. I especially enjoyed "Celebrity Classics" (Iliad, MacBeth, Oedipus Rex), and look forward to a few more of them, if you find some more classics that are adaptable. Tim Russell's "Mr. Rogers" and "Julia Child" are totally hysterical, so please keep "Famous Celebrities" as a regular feature.

Guy Noir's sabbatical in Las Vegas was really interesting, in that it demonstrated that Guy can have plenty to do outside of the Acme Building. Last year's show in Baton Rouge, where Guy had his encounter with "Battlin' Boudin" the fighting chicken, was also a lot of fun. Let Guy out of the Acme building more often! Perhaps in upcoming shows, he can get a case or two that will require him to travel somewhere.

As for Dusty and Lefty, perhaps it's time for one or the other of them to do something really radical. You have already had Dusty almost get married at least once, and I seem to recall he had a job as a marketing consultant for a while, how about having Lefty go into politics? You could make up a campaign song that Lefty could yodel to the accompaniment of his sour guitar, and Dusty could make some wisecrack to the effect that the jingle guarantees that only deaf people will be voting for him. Lefty needs to take yodeling lessons from Janet Sorenson, or give it up...

The last I heard of "Larry" was the show where he was going to go with you and Sue Scott on vacation to Costa Rica. You have unlimited possibilties with Larry now out of the basement. By the way, I feel that the "plunger left in the bowl" joke, while somewhat risque, was not in bad taste since you don't often use bathroom humor.

My favorite part of the show is The News From Lake Wobegon. You have a rare gift for storytelling, and the citizens of this small town out on the prairie sometimes seem more real than my own neighbors. The monologue from October 12, 1996 was one of your best ever, I think. The ending, where Clint and Lyle are riding home together after depositing the passed-out-drunk Rollie Hochstetter at his home was truly moving; this is the last sentence (I paraphrase), where Clint says, "Even when you're 92 years old, on the last day of your life, you're still looking way, way down the road".

This kind of story is an inspiration to us all, and I hope you have many more years worth of stories like this to tell. My thanks go to you and all the crew and staffers that make APHC happen every week, keep up the good work.

Larry Charlot
Sacramento, CA

Dear Mr. Charlot -----

Thanks for the suggestions and I'm glad you liked the story about Clint and his observations on old age. Now that I'm there myself, I can see the truth of it. GK