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Went out West to do some shows, hoping to get some Republicans in my life, the people I grew up with, and now I'm living on Manhattan's Upper West Side where they're as rare as iguanas. Went to Boise, Idaho, and Gillette, Wyoming, and Ogden, Utah, where we had a fabulous singing audience at the Egyptian Theater who knew the words to all the old songs like How often at night when the heavens are bright with the lights of the glittering stars, have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed if their glory exceeds that of ours, which had a celestial beauty to it. It was worth the trip.
Road life is good thanks to modern technology. I carry my laptop and work on a new book and use Google to find synonyms that back in the day would've required a Roget's Thesaurus the size of a suitcase, keeping in touch with family via the sandwich-size iPhone, getting cash from an ATM that back in olden times would've required the approval of a squinty-eyed bank teller who would take 15 minutes to confer with executives.
You teenagers are accustomed to this new world; I'm astonished. The vast airport shopping center with scores of stores that sell fashions and books and suitcases — back in my boyhood was only a shed where nobody asked for our ID and we walked out on the tarmac and climbed up the stairs and boarded the plane and said hi to the pilots, both veterans of the Allied bombing of Berlin, smoking cigarettes in the cockpit. You don't see that anymore.
At the airport, I saw men in a bar watching football on TV and yelling their heads off at a long pass that the defensive back tipped out of the receiver's hands at the goal line. The men I know are liberal-arts majors who get excited by politics and talk about the oakiness of their premium handcrafted beer. Beer is a trucker's drink: when did it become handcrafted?
I did three shows for Republican crowds and they were wonderful audiences, one couldn't ask for better.
At 84 a person becomes more aware of the kindness of people. The Mexican ladies cleaning hotel rooms who smile and say, “Good morning,” and the people in airports who notice me squinting at the distant signs and they stop and point me toward my gate and there is a reassuring human exchange. We are not alien to each other. I see little kids in the gate area who're curious about strangers and approach and find a little conversation. It takes all kinds to make up a planeload and some are secluded and solitary and others are affable, and on the plane to Denver there was the lady who sat next to me who'd never been to New York and I got to tell her what a great city it is.
And then on Sunday morning in Gillette, Wyoming, I went to breakfast at Lula Belle's Café, which was packed with men sitting six to a booth, working guys by the looks of them, having their say over eggs and hash browns, completely at home with each other. It looked like a regular ritual. These men are part of the America I love. There would be a place for me at this table.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 54% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.