(GK: Garrison Keillor; FN: Fred Newman; SS: Sue Scott: TR: Tim Russell)
GK: ......after a message from the Catchup Advisory Board.
(MUSIC)
TR: These are the good years for me and Barb. We got a couple thousand dollars from the supermarket to help us forget the pork sausage that squirted out of a butcher's hand and went down Barb's blouse. A computer glitch caused the IRS to believe that I am a horse, and we were able to deduct our oat bran expenses. Barb's brother confessed to making up funny stories and e-mailing them to strangers, so Barb's parents were found innocent on all eight counts of wire fraud. And my old high school buddies got together one evening and finally made the connection between beer and their failed marriages. We should have been happy. Then late one night I found Barb in the den, online, obviously agitated. - Honey, what's wrong? What are you doing?
SS: Oh, Jim, I need to get to New York. I feel suffocated here in the Midwest. I long for the sort of personal fulfillment one can only find in a major metro area.
TR: You're still upset that they closed the waffle house, aren't you. What was that you always ordered? ----The Mahi Waffle Loha with the pineapple slices?
SS: It's not waffles I crave, Jim. It's art. History. Culture. Did you know that New York City has hundreds of museums, including the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art?
TR: New York needs more museums. There are no public toilets there. Museums give em a place to duck into and empty their bladders. Besides, we have a fine museum right here in town.
SS: Sure. With rotting snowshoes and arrowheads and a dollhouse and a big piece of quartz. The Museum of Modern Art has paintings by Van Gogh and Picasso.
TR: All readily available on calendars and coffee mugs.
SS: This town is a cultural vacuum, Jim. Face it.
TR: You're forgetting the great job the high school did with "Paint Your Wagon". Those kids sang their hearts out and danced like the dickens. Jumping around on stage. Had their lines all memorized. And all those facial expressions ---- it was quite the show. The same kids who'll come and shovel your walk or change your storm windows or rake the yard. You think those Broadway actors'd come and shovel your walk? I doubt it. Unless it's some big fundraiser called "Broadway Shovels" and they all get their pictures in the paper.
SS: You think I'm turning into a snob?
TR: I think you're not getting enough ketchup. Ketchup has natural mellowing agents that reduce the yearning for $100-a-seat Broadway shows and contemporary art made out of toilet plungers and animal skulls and old TV sets. What you say we curate some ketchup right now.
SS: Oh, Jim. You're so sensible.
RD: These are the good times, in your leather jacket.
Splitting the firewood, and now it's time to stack it.
Life is flowing, like a plastic ketchup packet...
GK: Ketchup. For the good times.
RD: Ketchup... ketchup...
© Garrison Keillor 2002