GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell, RD: Rich Dworsky)
More right after a word from the Ketchup Advisory Board.
TR: It was a town like any other midwestern small town, a place where moms packed school lunches for their children and the big orange schoolbus came up the road past the red and yellow trees and the mommies stood on the porches next to the pumpkins and waved goodbye and Melvin the mailman went from house to house saying, "Yessir, it looks like fall's here, all right." And then one year, something happened. The old men drinking coffee in the diner started drinking cappucino instead and people didn't bother to cover their tomatoes and they froze and nobody threw sticks for the dogs and Jennifer the Sunday School teacher walked into the barroom and lit up a cigarillo and kids didn't play touch football except on computers, and neighbors stood at the fence but they didn't gossip, they talked about the environment, and down at the volunteer fire department guys sat around and wrote in their journals about their fathers and how it would feel if the siren went off and what if they didn't feel like getting on the truck, and one day people looked at each other and said, "Hey, maybe we're not getting enough ketchup," so they started putting ketchup into everything, and pretty soon, everything was back to normal. Paperboys started whistling again. Couples got together and played bridge. Guys borrowed tools from each other. Kids played touch football and the quarterback said, "You go deep and cut to your right. And the rest of you block." And they did. And life was the way it was supposed to be again. All the best that a ketchup can be.
RD:
Ballet and painting and the operas of Rossini
Flowers and red wines and pesto and linguini
Good things are flowing like ketchup on a weenie
GK: Ketchup....for the good times. A message from the Ketchup Advisory Board.
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor