(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
We'll continue after a word from the Ketchup Advisory Board.
TR: It was a neighborhood like any other neighborhood, a place where people mowed their lawns and filled their feeders and barbecued their bratwurst and sat around the picnic table by the lilacs and drank beer and if someone walked by and said hi how are you they said not so bad how's yourself and if he said, Can't complain, whatcha up to? they said, Not much, you care for a beer, and he'd sit down with em and have a beer and sometimes in the course of walking three blocks a man might have to drink six or eight beers, but it was a good life and then one summer something happened. Bare circular spots appeared in the lawns, as if a ballerina with sandpaper shoes had stood there and spun. A couple oak trees fell over. A guy opened his garage door and it was full of stuff that wasn't his. Immense birds came to the feeders, vultures and buzzards. TV reception was lousy. Tap water tasted like paint thinner. Cars full of teenagers came late at night and threw toilet paper into the trees. There were bad smells. And people got together and they said, "Maybe we're not getting enough ketchup." So they started putting ketchup on everything, and pretty soon, everything was back to normal. Boys went fishing in the creek and old guys sat and whittled and told yarns and nuns played softball and dogs rescued kids from quicksand.
GK: A message from the Ketchup Advisory Board.
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor