I grew up in the 50’s as the “golden age” of radio was dying, and I can vaguely recall listening to some of the great radio drama and comedy shows before they either moved to the new medium of television or faded away.
About 30 years later I tuned in to public radio one Saturday evening and heard a guy telling stories about a small town in Minnesota. The show was “A Prairie Home Companion”, which had been broadcast for few years in St. Paul, and I think went national on NPR around that time.
The show was hosted by Garrison Keillor, who told stories about the mythical people in the mythical town of Lake Woebegon, Minnesota, “the little town that time forgot”, with mythical sponsors including Powdermilk Biscuits, Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie and Bertha’s Kitty Boutique, and music regulars including Stevie Beck, “Queen of the Autoharp”, mandolin and fiddle player Peter Ostruschko, pianist Butch Thompson, and many guest musicians.
I don’t know the exact timeline, but the show eventually included a team of radio actors, a house band, sound effects guys, comedy skits, a monologue by Garrison that started out with “Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown, out on the edge of the prairie”, followed by stories of Norwegian bachelor farmers, Lutheran Pastor Ingqvist, Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church, the Sidetrack Tap, making fun of the residents with obvious affection for them at the same time.
Music was always a big part of the show – folk, blues, bluegrass, jazz, cajun, a-cappella, classical, opera, … Also occasional story-tellers, comedians, choral groups, poets, and once even a woodcarver (on a radio show) with Garrison checking in periodically to describe the progress.
Music, humor, stories, radio actors, sound effects, Ole and Lena jokes, … I was hooked, and listened almost religiously on Saturday evenings for many years, and accumulating dozens of cassette tapes of the shows that I could listen to in the car during the week.
Jan and I attended several shows at the World Theater in St. Paul back in the days when you didn’t need a ticket in advance, and a couple of times when the show came to Iowa. The show became a huge hit for Public Radio, but, being public radio, that only amounted to a few million fans, so a lot of people, especially those younger than me, have probably never heard of it, and those who have probably think it’s pretty corny, which is one reason I like it.
Around 1987 Garrison decided to end the show and move to Denmark with his new wife. We were able to get tickets to the sold out Farewell Show in St. Paul, a tearjerker that ran over about an hour because nobody wanted it to end. (Sounds kind of pathetic for grownups, doesn’t it?)
The Danish retirement apparently didn’t work out, and Garrison came back a couple of years later with a somewhat different show in NYC with a different name and more of a New Yorkish feel, then a couple of years later returned to St. Paul and resurrected the old A Prairie Home Companion name and feel.
I did not listen regularly after the First Farewell, but would catch the show, or parts of it, frequently on the Saturday broadcast or Sunday replays.
I was listening once in 2005 when the first “A Prairie Home Companion Cruise”, to Nova Scotia, was announced. I had never had any desire to go on a cruise ship, usually hearing cruises described as a way to eat 24 hours a day, but this one sounded like fun, and in August we drove from Iowa to Boston with two good friends who were also fans of the show, and boarded Holland America’s Maasdam along with a thousand or so other fans of the show – a group mostly our age and older, with a heavier than normal weighting of church choir pianists, school teachers and librarians.
It was one of the most pleasant weeks I’ve ever spent. Besides the scenic beauty of Maine, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, each evening on the ship would include a main show, one of which was the radio broadcast for that week, then music the rest of the night, with the guest musicians and members of the house band – all great musicians in their own right doing their own thing in the various bars and lounges around the ship. (We would walk through the ship’s casino on the way to the lounges and see the casino workers looking forlorn beside their empty tables). Garrison would start off the day with a morning hymn sing and end the day with music and dancing in the Crow’s Nest.
To top it off, one of the guest musicians was a long time favorite of mine – Gordon Bok, from Maine, who writes and sings wonderful songs of Maine and the sea. Also the great cajun band Beausoleil, representing the French-Canadian music influence of the region.
And, being a public radio show, education was a focus on the cruise, with naturists discussing the birds and marine animals, talks about Nova Scotia, and workshops with the radio actors and Fred Newman, the phenomenal sound effects guy.
We would later go on two other APHC cruises – one in the Western Caribbean with the same friends, then maybe the trip of our lifetime, a cruise around Italy in 2013, starting in Barcelona and ending in Venice.
Garrison has recently announced his retirement from the show this summer, this time probably for good.
While the show will continue with a different host, his retirement will mark another “end of an era” in radio.
Thank you, Garrison Keillor.