What do you call it?

 

Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

 

I've read most of Garrison Keillor's books, but somehow overlooked this one even though it's more than twenty years old. Mona found a copy of Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 at the thrift store for $2 and grabbed it for me.

It has become my favorite.

Usually I read Keillor's books for the same reason people went to Grateful Dead concerts: there were always a few moments that were simply transcendental.

This is his most complete novel. Most of his books feel like a string of vignettes strung together like lights on a Christmas tree, but this one takes you on more of a journey.

I don't typically like "coming of age" stories. Usually they give you a protagonist that is going about his daily life, then something dramatic (usually tragic) happens, and things Will Never Be The Same.

This is much more gentle. Over the course of the book the main character experiences a subtle shift in perception.

It's very well done.

I recommend it.

 

Oh well.

"I am taking it easy. Reclining on the porch swing, nestled in four pillows, a bottle of Nesbitt orange pop within easy reach. I am fourteen. In 1958 I will obtain my driver's license and in 1960 graduate from Lake Wobegon High School. In 1963 I can vote. In 1982 I'll be forty. In 1992, fifty. One day, a date that only God knows, I will perish from the earth and no longer be present for roll call, my mail will be returned, my library card canceled, and some other family will occupy this house, this very porch, and not be aware that I ever existed, and if you told them, they wouldn't particularly care. Oh well. What can you do? I hope they appreciate the work I did on the lawn." ~excerpted from Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor, ©2001

I Thought of Salieri

A Confession
by Czeslaw Milosz

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

We Mostly Just Ran Laps

 

One of the things that irritates me is "Physical Education."

We all had ten or twelve years of "physical education." We should all be able to throw and hit a curve ball, throw a perfect spiral, hit a devastating backhand, and make free throws with ease. We should understand the infield fly rule and offsides in soccer.

We didn't learn shit.

What a waste of time.

Mud for the Lotus

 

Two of my favorite authors, J. D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut, suffered through searing violence and carnage in World War II, and neither of them talked of their experiences openly. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Salinger's A Perfect Day for Bananafish are both heavily couched in metaphor.

I wonder if it was because they couldn't speak of what happened to them, or because the audience was not prepared to hear it?

A Perfect Day

 When I was ten-years-old I whined to my mother about the absolute drivel we were reading in school. At the time we, as a class, were reading a story about a Very Clever Grasshopper.

And for whatever reason, she handed me a copy of J.D. Salinger's A Perfect Day for Bananafish (PDF Download).

I was absolutely blown away. I had never read anything like that, and had no idea such stories even existed.  I'm sure my mouth was hanging open.

I asked my teacher why we weren't reading wonderful things like this, and she called my mother to tell her that this really wasn't appropriate for young children.

Mom told her basically to fuck off.  (You would have loved my mom.)

I read everything I could get my hands by Salinger after that, and he has been a lifelong joy. More than any other author, every time I read him, I find something different.

I'm re-reading Franny & Zooey at the moment, an ancient yellowed paperback I bought from B. Dalton Booksellers.  It's been with me through high school and college, more jobs and more apartments than I can count.

Still the same, yet always different.

Bow Down

I was vocal in my opposition to the first of the Bush Wars, and I lost track of the number of people who came up to me and professed to agree with me, "but… don't tell anybody."

I lost my job because of it. The office manager wanted everyone to sign a document expressing "support for the troops," and I refused. I thought it was splitting hairs to say I opposed the war but supported those waging it.

And that's when a campaign of targeted harassment started. I would come to work in the morning and find my desk vandalized. My name came up "randomly" for drug testing every single week. I was written up for "wasting company resources" when I forwarded a harmless joke on email.

And all the people who professed to agree with me stood silently and watched it happen.

And that's the fatal flaw with East Texans.

Most of them are not the cruel loudmouths and politicians you see on television. Most of them will pull over to help you when your car breaks down, and show up with a covered dish when someone you love passes.

But they also will stand silent when groups or individuals are targeted by the people in power.

These are people who knuckle under to petty authority without a fight.

Fucking useless cowards.

Slice O' Life

 

I'm my father's caretaker. He's 93-years-old.

In addition to the expected age-related problems, he also has OCD and is somewhere on the autism spectrum.

I didn't know these things growing up. It was much later that I realized that what I considered "normal" was far from normal.

Sometimes people say, "Oh, I'm so OCD!" and what they really mean is that they like to keep their desk tidy. That's not what I mean.

His OCD means we could never have magnets on the refrigerator or pictures on the wall, because he would fiddle with them to the point of exhaustion trying to get them lined up Just So.

It meant there were complex rules for everything from mowing the lawn to taking out the trash, and any deviation from the rule meant you were doing it wrong, and resulted in an angry outburst.

Most people with OCD have some sense that they view the world differently and recognize that they are the ones out of step. My Dad just thinks everybody else is doing it wrong. The reason they don't do things the "right" way is because they are doing it half-assed, they just don't care.

The only "right" time to mow the lawn, for example, is at 2:00 in the afternoon. Can you imagine mowing the lawn in Texas at the hottest part of the day? When I was a teenager I suggested mowing it in the morning or the evening when it wasn't so hot, and if Mom hadn't moved between us he would have punched me.

The gardeners at his apartment complex don't follow his rules, of course, and mow the lawn at more reasonable times. He's too old to fight them, so he just gets deeply depressed and complains to me.

The rules for taking out the trash are complex and ever changing. Certain kinds of trash go into specific bins, some trash is put on the dryer and put in the trash the next day. He has little piles of trash throughout his apartment, and at the end of the week he carefully places it all into one bag-- just one! That's all that's allowed!-- and sets it to the curb on Tuesday.

His autism means he has virtually no social skills.

The very worst moment of my life was when I told him I had enrolled in college, and he burst out laughing. He thought it was hilarious that an idiot like me would even try. Mom went to him later and tried to make amends, but it was too late. There's no way to make that better. It was soul crushing.

These days it's very rare to get a "Thank you." If I cook him a meal, pay his bills, or drive him to his favorite restaurant (always the same one, always the same time, always the same meal), I'm more likely to hear "Oh."

"I baked you a cake!"

"Oh."

 I got him a clock for Christmas that tells him the day and date. He didn't say "Thank you." He told me he didn't want a clock.

Oh.

We don't have Mom to run interference for us anymore.

And it's exhausting.