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Ours is a country with a great tradition of eccentrics and wackos from Robert Johnson who sold his soul to the devil and Carry Nation with her tavern-busting hatchet and the man who wrote a book with no punctuation and Hetty Green the Witch of Wall Street and the freak-show man P.T. Barnum, etcetera and so forth.
What makes this eccentricity possible is the rational order of things that we count on in everyday life, such as last Friday when I rode a train into New York, racing through a tunnel to the underground railyard of Penn Station, to the massive escalator up to Seventh Avenue to hail a licensed cab and ride uptown, in traffic directed by men and women in yellow vests, to the Weill Cornell medical center where a kind neurologist with diplomas on his office walls explained to me, a writer and citizen, the brain seizure that caused an episode of speaking gibberish a week before and how we shall prevent its recurrence by rational science-based methods, nothing involving reptile ovaries or magnetism or dancing in moonlight.
And my love and I go for a walk and eat supper in a sidewalk café as an ambulance pulls up to a seniors' center and a cat goes by in a baby buggy and a young woman wearing a sticker that says, "Ask About Me" and all around us young people in various stages of mutual attraction carry on conversations that appear to be amiable. I could be wrong but I don't believe that words like "sleazebag," "traitor," or "communist scum" are in play here. People are having a good time.
The first rule in romance is "Don't be weird." In the mating rituals of youth, the best advice, particularly for males, is "Show enthusiasm for the finer things of life, the arts, learning, fine dining, travel. Try to avoid bitter complaint about the conspiracies of the powerful to deny you your due. Tread lightly when disparaging and allow that others may have different views."
Yes, there is news of parasites carried by lettuce and bacteria in exhaust from A.C. units in large buildings and now and then random outbreaks of violence, but these are dealt with by public officials and workers on the basis of strict regulations and long-established customs, not by the whims of tyrannical chieftains in stone huts on distant mountaintops. This rational order allows me, an elderly man, to sit across from the love of my life and enjoy my salad and pasta in proximity to a fascinating variety of twentyish persons anticipating a good life in the land of the free.
Even so, my love and I and the young people around us do not appear to be obsessing about politics — no, we are enjoying this perfect summer evening in New York in the company of friendly strangers we would count on the rational system of our enlightened Founders 250 years old to maintain the beauty of this evening onward and onward. Thank you, Lord, for this life. Amen.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.