Tag: Garrison Keillor

‘Pontoon Boat’ by Garrison Keillor

For my money, Keillor is unsurpassed as a performer of short stories, as well as the writer of them. I’ve loved his gentle but superb Lake Wobegon tales since I first heard them as an impressionable sixth former on Radio 4’s A Book at Bedtime slot in 1986, and he is the only author whose entire oeuvre I have bought (even though some of it is a bit ropey, I have to admit). One of the highlights of my life was asking him a question at one of his London performances in the mid-1990s. In ‘Pontoon Boat’, the local bar proprietor and proud boat owner Wally takes a delegation of Lutheran ministers out onto the town’s lake in his new vessel. Things go a bit wrong – but, this being Lake Wobegon, only a bit.

First published in Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories, Viking Penguin, 1987

‘How the Crab Apple Grew’ by Garrison Keillor

There was a time when I regularly read Lake Wobegon stories to classes. Keillor’s collection Leaving Home was a rich source: ‘The Speeding Ticket, ‘Life is Good’, ‘State Fair’ and ‘Where Did It Go Wrong?’ were always warmly received. ‘How the Crab Apple Grew’ opens with teenager Becky Diener writing a 750-word English assignment for her teacher, Miss Melrose, ‘Describe your backyard as if you were seeing it for the first time’:

How can you describe your backyard as if you’d never seen it? If you’d never seen it, you’d have grown up someplace else, and wouldn’t be yourself; you’d be someone else entirely, and how are you supposed to know what that person would think?

Good point. But then she does find a way to write about her backyard, and the crab apple tree planted in it by her father 10 years after he married her mother. What follows is lovely, and funny, and makes teenagers think about their own parents:

‘A backyard is a novel about us, and when we sit there on a summer day, we hear the dialogue and see the characters.’

Originally a monologue for the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. First published in Leaving Home: a collection of Lake Wobegon Stories, Viking Penguin, 1987