Radio host, humorist Garrison Keillor tells Lake Wobegon stories

Garrison Keillor, host of the live variety radio show “A Prairie Home Companion,” walked on stage wearing red shoes with matching socks and a tie Wednesday evening at the IU Auditorium for a sold-out show that kicked off Arts Week.\nKeillor is most well known for telling stories and jokes that reveal his insight about life in America, and he shared these stories with the audience.\n“We’re looking forward to good stories,” said Susanne Ashby and her mother Clydene Fischer, who said they drove three hours from Evansville just to see Keillor that evening.\nKeillor began his show humming and then asked, “What key is good for you?” The crowd joined him as he sang part of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”\nAshby’s and Fischer’s expectations of “good stories” were met when he spoke of how he became a writer and a humorist.\n“All aspiring writers are alcoholics and suicidal. It’s just something you have to deal with,” he said.\nKeillor said that famous poets like T.S. Eliot have been turning students away from poetry forever, and that’s what made him want to be a humorist.\nOne of the stories he told was about the tragedy of Sept. 11. \n“9/11 did not change us as a people, it just got us in a debacle of war,” he said.\nHe said that airports today are funny because “you get to see people fuming, they need to lighten up.”\nHe said that ever since the shoe bombing ordeal, everyone – even “wives of soybean farmers – put their orthopedic shoes on the conveyor belts.” \n“Someone will come to the airport with an underwear bomb and we will have to get to the airport four hours early to be sniffed by underwear sniffing dogs,” he said.\nBloomington residents Joe and Donna Zagorski did not want to miss any of his performance as he moved seamlessly from story to story.\n“We’ve seen Garrison Keillor before, we’ve been following him for years,” said Joe Zagorski. \nKeillor is known for talking about the fictional Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon. \n“He hits the nail on the head about small town life,” Donna Zagorski said.\nSet in Lake Wobegon, one of the stories he told was about his Aunt Evelyn, who would sit with her friends, who were all in their mid-80s, and one friend Gladys would talk about her husband, who had just discovered Viagra. After years of inactivity, they were “back in the saddle,” he said.\n“She had to go to bed with this old man and would turn the mirror to the side so that she wouldn’t have to look at him,” Keillor said. \nHe said when Evelyn died five years ago, she left a letter that spoke of how she wanted her remains to be handled. She wanted her ashes to be placed inside a green bowling ball that Raul had given her when they spent a weekend in Nevada. Her grandson Kyle had found the letter and the first thing he asked was, “Who’s Raul? I didn’t know that grandma had a secret life.”\nKeillor said Kyle and his friend Duane then came up with the best way to handle Evelyn’s remains. The plan was to go to Lake Wobegon with a parasail and Duane’s speedboat, place the bowling ball inside the parasail, bring it “up to a height” and drop it so that everyone in town can see a burst of green drop into the blue water and splash.” \nKeillor not only offered homespun anecdotes, but also told stories that the whole audience could relate to when he spoke about growing up.\n“Parents are raising you in a low thermostat environment with temperatures high enough only to support life. You lie in bed freezing and know that you have to get up and go to school again,” he said.\nKeillor told the audience, comprised mostly of non-students, that children today “hiss at you with their pre-ripped clothing looking as if they’d fallen into a tackle box.”