Lofbomm.com

I woke up this morning with the nostalgic craving for “A Prairie Home Companion”, the down-home American radio program on National Public Radio. I woke up and found it online, and now I’m listening to the stream of last week’s program.

This spring Saturday morning, the host, Garrison Keillor’s voice is taking me back to Saturday mornings in the spring and early summer in Nashville, driving around with Adam, Adam’s dad, and our friend Daniel, searching out garage sales. Or Sunday afternoons driving home from church with Adam, ready for our Sunday afternoon nap. One Sunday, we heard the broadcast from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Forgetting that it was a re-broadcast, Adam and I jetted to the Ryman, hoping to catch the second half of the show, live. The woman in the ticket booth was confused as I ran up breathless, asking if we could slide into the back somewhere.

It brings me even further back to family trips with Mom and Dad and my big brother Jeff. In the back seat, Jeff and I would read books, do crossword puzzles, play card games, follow the map, and name the drivers in the cars around us as we yearly made the two-day drive from suburban Chicago to Chatham, New Jersey to visit Grandma and Grandpa Swanson. We’d always stop in Clarion, Pennsylvania to stay at the Sheraton hotel where Jeff and I would pass the night jumping cannon-balls into the big swimming pool. Grandpa Swanson, a Swede from Minnesota, had a collection of tapes “The News From Lake Wobegon” that I took as a family history, listening over and over on Route 80 between West Chicago and Chatham, Chatham and West Chicago every summer. Garrison Keillor’s story-telling and the deep bass of Randy Travis singing “Forever and Ever, Amen” through my walkman tape player epitomize those family road trips of my youth.

And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are above-average.

-Jessica