A Ball Game, a Book, and a Brat: Happiness

By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website

10 July 21

eing a 78-year-old unemployed orphan does not qualify me as a tragic victim and that is just a fact, plus the fact I am married to a woman who has a big heart, loves a good time, is fond of me in particular, and she is also able to read instruction manuals, which is something you don�t notice during courtship, your mind is on other things, but now in the twilight years when one is tempted to throw the new printer over the parapet and hear it crash on the pavement below, it is good to have a rationalist in my life.

So I don�t need to discuss my fear and loathing of washers, dryers, coffee makers, and air conditioners, their mysterious manuals, because that�s her department so instead I�ll tell about Amazon and their purchase of MGM this summer, which earned a bundle for my family so that people now assume we�re going to leave Minnesota and move to an island in the Caribbean. No way.

I�m a Minnesotan and I love it here because here we come to summer by way of a penitential winter and an unpredictable spring so that by July, we�re thankful for whatever we get. We once had snow on the 4th of July. People pretended it was fluff from the cottonwood trees, but fluff doesn�t melt in your hand. Nobody got bent out of shape: it was fun. So long as water comes out of the tap, the toilets flush, and there�s coffee on the stove, life is good.

I went to the Caribbean once and lay in the sun to get a nice tan and become attractive and instead I burned and became pitiful. My ancestors came from Yorkshire, not Yucat�n. Shade is my natural habitat. We learn by mistakes. Good judgment comes from exercising bad judgment. This is why we go ice-fishing, so we�ll learn to appreciate a comfortable living room and a game of Scrabble.

Summer is paradise but we Northerners don�t take it to mean divine approval. We accept life as it comes. I went to the ball game Wednesday and saw the White Sox drub our Twins, 6-1, and enjoyed reading a memoir by a woman married to a jerk whose kids didn�t appreciate her one bit, on Kindle, which I ordered from Amazon in the first inning and it arrived at the bottom of the third.

Speaking of Amazon, you may have heard they purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $8.45 billion, which was a great boon to my family since we�re related to the founders Stanley Metro and Mayer George Latimer and we still hold a big chunk of stock. (The �Goldwyn� comes from a sign at the University of Minnesota stadium, �Win, Gold & Maroon.�) The Minnesota movie industry began with silent movies, silence being a dominant Minnesota trait, and in black & white, snowscapes looked like desert sands, as Polar Pictures proved with �Nanook of the Sahara.� The studio had been in New York where they shot �The Ten Commandments,� but when Moses read from the tablets, the crowd of extras couldn�t listen, they talked among themselves, New Yorkers being the way they are, so the studio moved to Minnesota and MGM managed to buy Polar in the Depression and shot the Tarzan movies in vast limestone caves where the roots of pine trees looked very viny and jungly. Then, one day, Mr. Metro, asked what he loved most, said �Porches� and they thought he said oranges and so the studio moved to L.A. And Gene Kelly waved goodbye as the train pulled out of the station, heading west, and we knew that our glamor years were over and our future would be in corn and soybeans and other row crops. (My given name was Gene Kelly but I changed it because I got tired of being introduced to people who then started singing �Singin� in the Rain,� and I�ve been okay with that.)

Mayer Latimer is my great-uncle once removed and is still lively and has many descendants so I doubt that I�ll receive more than a few million from the deal but that�s okay. For an elderly orphan, I am doing pretty well. Yesterday, my wife changed the filter on the AC up in the ceiling, standing on a ladder. I stood with my hand on her back to steady her. With the money we saved not calling a repairperson, I purchased a bratwurst with onions at the ballpark and a root beer float. In Minnesota, we find our happiness where we find it.