(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
GK: Mr. Tom Keith our sound effects man is with us today and you people have no idea how hard it is to get him to come. Sue Scott is thrilled to come to New York. Tim Russell loves New York. Tom Keith loves home.
TK: Too crowded. Traffic is terrible.
GK: You think of places where traffic is no problem, like eastern Wyoming, and is that a place you'd long to be on a Saturday night?
TK: I would.
GK: He means it, folks.
TK: You get good TV reception in Wyoming.
GK: That's what Tom Keith does when he comes to New York.
TK: Our hotel has cable. It's great.
GK: Tom Keith used to come to New York every week, back when his career was really cooking. He'd land (JET LANDING) at LaGuardia and (TK BRIT: Mr. Keith? Your car) the limo driver was right there and he came in to midtown to a studio and did sound effects for commercials, one after the other, at a thousand dollars a crack----
TR: Swift as an impala....quick as a jaguar....it's the 1999 Eland. (SFX) Why not go for the unusual? The 1999 Eland. (SFX)
GK: He was the most highly paid sound-effects man in the commercials business. Mr. First Take, they called him.
TR: When you think about summer vacation with the kiddoes, why not consider Kilimanjaro Petting Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan? Your kids will thrill to the sight of elephants (SFX), lions (SFX), wapiti (SFX), and giraffes (SFX), not hidden away in habitat as in so many zoos, but out there in the open and available for petting. And orangutans too. (SFX). All at Kilimanjaro at Kalamazoo. (TK KID: Wow.)
GK: And then something went wrong. Tom never talked about it. It was a commercial that had to do with chickens. (SFX) Chickens were Tom's speciality. Nobody could do chickens like he could. (SFX) But a woman who Tom was in love with came to a session where he did chickens and--- she laughed at him....
SS: Chickens?? Are you kidding?? (SHE LAUGHS)I've never seen anything so ridiculous. A grown man doing chickens! Goodbye, Henny Penny. (LAUGHS,SLAMS DOOR)
GK: And she left. (TK: Maureen!!!! SOBS) And ever since then Tom has had painful memories of New York. He comes here and goes to his room and watches TV, trying to forget.
TK: The Masters golf tournament was on last night. It was great. And there was a Richard Widmark film festival. I watched four of them.
GK: Everyone else in the cast goes to a show, goes out to dinner, walks around the city late at night and thinks about life and comes back to the hotel and writes in their journal....
SS: "I sit looking out my window at the city lights & all the billboards, the pictures of beautiful people ---so much beauty in the world and yet sadness everywhere. People laughing and having a good time & also troubled people & homeless. What is real? What is true?
GK: And they go to eat Caribbean food or northern Italian or Indian or Thai and go to bed feeling that they've had a big experience. And Tom Keith? He calls room service.
TK: I'd like the cream of broccoli soup....not too spicy, is it? Good. And the grilled cheese sandwich on white bread....and the cole slaw. And for dessert, the tapioca pudding with whipped cream. --- What to drink? You got milk? Good.
GK: And room service comes (KNOCKS ON DOOR) and Tom pays up....
TK: Ten....eleven....twelve----- what was it? Twelve fifty-five? Okay. Let me see if I have change. ----Boy, eight bucks is pretty steep for a grilled cheese sandwich. Okay---- twenty-five....fifty....fifty-five. And here's a quarter for yourself.
GK: And he sits down in front of the TV and watches golf. (TV GOLF ANNOUNCER, HUSH, GOLF SWING AND KONK, CROWD REACTION. TV GOLF ANNOUNCER) Two blocks away there's great theater.....
TR: ME???? CRUEL?
SS: YES. YOU. CRUEL. TERRIBLY CRUEL. BLIND AND NEEDY AND INARTICULATE --- AND CRUEL.
GK: And a few blocks north, opera (TR TENOR). And music. (RD PIANO CADENZA). And movies....movies you'd never see in Minnesota......foreign movies. French. (TR SOUNDTRACK DIALOGUE) And Russian. (TR SOUNDTRACK) And Italian. (TR SOUNDTRACK) And Ingmar Bergman (SWEDISH). And Akira Kurosawa. (TR JAPANESE) And up in a room on the forty-second floor of the Times Square Motel 6, Tom Keith sits and watches golf. (TV ANNNOUNCER. SWING. CROWD REACTION. SPLASH) In the room next to his, a young production assistant writes in her bound journal....
SS: I feel that the essence of my being is spoken to by the bright lights and the traffic, the tremendous sense of energy. I feel somehow renewed in my search for the greatness of life, for spiritual insight----
GK: And in the midst of all this sensibility (TV ANNOUNCER, GOLF SHOT, CROWD) Tom Keith is eating his cheese sandwich on white bread when suddenly (CHICKEN), a commercial interrupts the golf tournament, a commercial in which a proud chicken (SFX) picks up her putter and walks across the green (CHICKEN CLUCKS) and lines up the putt and putts an egg (KONK, AND UNEVEN ROLL) and it goes right into a nest (ROOSTER CROW). And the chicken walks over to the nest and picks up the egg and (CHICKEN) she throws it over her shoulder into the gallery (FLIGHT OF EGG, BURST, CROWD REACT). That was the commercial he made years ago that the woman laughed at----
TK: Maureen----- (SOBS)
GK: And he looks out the window at Gotham flashing and winking and blinking at him, and finally he turns off the TV (CLICK) and he presses the button and the curtains close (MOTOR) over the window, and he puts his head on the pillow and falls asleep, and he dreams....
(SAILBOAT, CREAK OF RIGGING)
SS: It's so windy! Do you really know how to sail?
TK: Of course. Aren't you cold in that little tiny swimsuit? You want a coat?
SS: No. You make me warm. You're so ---- capable. I find it so amazing. Your strength, your confidence, your incredible intelligence, and yet your gentleness, your caringness. Gosh---- to think of spending a whole week in the Caribbean, just you and me---- Wow.
TK: Coming to starboard.....(CREAKING)
GK: But it's a dream you can have anywhere. You don't need to come to New York to have it. You can have it in eastern Wyoming as well. (PIANO OUT)
(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor