(MUSIC)
TR: These are the good years for Barb and me....ever since we decided that life is too short to spend it fighting government bureaucracy and we bought fifteen acres in northern Idaho and built a walled compound...
(CRICKETS)
SS: Jim? Do we need to leave all those flood lights on all night?
TR: Do they bother you, Barb?
SS: I don't mind the camouflage clothing, but ---- the floodlights and the barbed wire ---
TR: Barb, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes in under the command of the U.N., they're going to come in fast. I need to slow em down. We can't let them overrun our perimeter.
SS: Jim, the problem isn't them. It's us.
TR: What do you mean------?
SS: We came to Idaho to simplify our lives, but maybe we forgot something important, Jim. A food that made you feel a kinship with your fellow Americans.
TR: You mean ---
SS: Ketchup, Jim. It contains natural stabilizing agents that ward off paranoia. Here ---
TR: (CRUNCH) Ketchup on a potato chip. It's so - complex - and yet - mellow.
SS: Just like our country itself, Jim.
TR: Maybe you're right, Barb. (THE SIGH OF AN EMBRACE)
SS: Can we turn off those floodlights now?
RD (SINGS):
These are the good years, in the golden sun, A new day is dawning, a new life has begun, The river flowing like ketchup on a bun.
GK: Ketchup....for the good times.
RD (SINGS): Ketchup.....
(c) 1998 by Garrison Keillor and Michael Merschel