My mystification on the Connecticut coast A quiet week at my wife’s family’s summer house on the Connecticut River, which sounds fancy but is a cottage full of furniture bought at yard sales. And there, this week, I make a big discovery: even after twenty-six years of marriage, I hadn’t realized the depth of her love of gardening. It was hot and she spent hours weeding a flower bed, three wheelbarrows’ worth, and came back to the porch happy and dripping with sweat. Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
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Guy Noir and the Dolly Lama Join us in The Back Room as we write a progressive Guy Noir story. The Back Room also opens up a 20% discount to the merchandise shop as well as gives you access to previously unpublished works.
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion Johnny Gimble, Flaco Jiménez, The Guy’s All Star Shoe Band, and The Royal Academy of Radio Actors … honey, could you ask for more? This week’s classic A Prairie Home Companion show comes to you from the Laurie Auditorium in San Antonio, Texas, as we travel back to 1996.
Highlights include “Buena Suerte, Senorita” and “Borracho #1” from Flaco Jiménez, “Gardenia Waltz” from Johnny Gimble, “Honeysuckle Rose,” plus San Antonio-themed editions of Café Boeuf and Duct Tape, an oddest laugh contest, the Guy’s Life Is a Trip album release, and the latest news from Lake Wobegon. The link is posted on Saturdays at 5 p.m. CT each week on our Facebook page.
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More about this week’s featured guests
Tejano (also called conjunto) is the traditional Chicano adaptation of the accordion-based polka music played by the Germans who settled south and central Texas in the late 19th century. Tejano accordion great Flaco Jiménez heads up this show’s band, Flaco Jiménez y Su Conjunto. Jiménez has been called Tejano’s ambassador to all other styles of music. Indeed, he has recorded with a vast cross-section of musicians: the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Brian Ferry, Los Lobos, Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Rowan, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, and others. Jiménez was a founding member of the early-’90s Texas supergroup the Texas Tornados, with whom he earned his second Grammy. But some say that Jiménez’s first supergroup was formed in the 1940s, when he was first learning accordion from his father, legendary accordionist Santiago Jiménez, Sr. The elder Jiménez is one of the musicians who first popularized Tejano music in the late ’30s, and his son quickly followed in his footsteps. At the age of seven, young Flaco gave his first public performance when he joined his dad for a few numbers. A few years later, Flaco Jiménez was debuting as a band leader at a friend’s 12th birthday party. In 1957, while still in his teens, Jiménez made his first recordings, under his given name — Leonardo Jiménez. (Flaco is a nickname meaning “skinny.”) During the 1960s and ’70s, he recorded dozens of conjunto hits, toured extensively, and collaborated with several big names. In 1976, Jiménez and his music figured prominently in a Tex-Mex documentary, Chulas Fronteras, by acclaimed filmmaker Les Blank. Jiménez has been honored with countless trophies and prizes, including three Grammy Awards.
“El Mojado Sin Licencia” >>>View available music >>>
Johnny Gimble was a favorite fiddle player in country music for decades. He grew up near Tyler, Texas, and began playing fiddle at age nine. Three years later, he and his brothers formed a band called the Rose City Swingers; a year later they had their own radio show. After high school, he played with the Shelton Brothers Sunshine Boys in Shreveport, Louisiana, and toured the state with then-governor Jimmie Davis. In 1949, Gimble joined the legendary Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. He lived in various Texas cities in the following 12 years, playing with the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price and Marty Robbins before becoming the staff fiddler for NBC’s 5-Star Jubilee. In 1968, Gimble moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and was soon in demand as a session player. His 1974 single with Chet Atkins, “Fiddlin’ Around,” received a Grammy nomination. The following year, Gimble was voted Instrumentalist of the Year by the Country Music Association, an honor that he received multiple times. Gimble was also honored by the Academy of Country Music, which named him Fiddler of the Year each year for almost a decade. Gimble appeared in motion pictures including Robert Altman’s Nashville and in the part of Bob Wills in Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man. In 1994, he was honored with a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (an award given to traditional folk artisans and musicians for their contributions to American culture), and in 2005, he was named Texas State Musician. Performing with Gimble on this show was his four-member band, Texas Swing: Curly Hollingsworth (piano), Kenny Frazier (guitar), Joe Bullock (drums), and on bass, Dick Gimble, Johnny Gimble’s son.
“Bells of St. Mary” and “Trouble Trouble Trouble” >>>View available music >>> |
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The Old Man Who Loves Cheese The Old Man Who Loved Cheese
Did you know that several songs written by Garrison and performed first on A Prairie Home Companion were so popular that they were turned into illustrated books: Daddy’s Girl; Cat, You Better Come Home; and The Old Man Who Loved Cheese. On tonight’s classic rebroadcast, Garrison’s ode to cheese is featured. The book is now out of print but can still be found through secondary vendors and resellers on Amazon and eBay. Even so, the poem is so clever that we thought you might enjoy reading it as well as listening to Garrison recite it on Saturday’s show. So, here is “The Old Man Who Loved Cheese”:
There was an old man named Wallace P. Flynn
Who lived in a house in the trees —
You could smell him for several miles downwind
Because of his fondness for cheese.
For the cheese that was dear to W.P.
Was not the mild kind, such as Brie,
The cheese of polite society —
No, he liked cheese that was in your face!
That smelled like socks from a marathon race,
Cheese that really stank up the place!
His wife knelt down and begged him: “Please,
Have mercy, Wallace, and change your cheese!”
His son said, “Cheese makes your breath so bad,
It smells like death to be near you, Dad!”
His daughter asked him, “What is the sense of
Eating cheese that is so offensive?”
Said Wallace P., “It’s offensive to you
But cheese cheers me up when I am blue.
I don’t know why but a nice sharp cheddar
Makes me feel a whole lot better!
A Limburger or Emmentaler
Makes me grin and jump and holler!
And O! the pleasure
Of a slice of old Cheshire!
Some men want fame and their names on marquees.
Some men love money. I choose cheese.”
So his daughter moved to Oklahoma
To escape the aroma,
And his son went away to Arkansas
Where there is a Halitosis Law,
And his wife, Louise,
Sailed away to the Hebrides
Islands, where an ocean breeze
Steadily blows both night and day
And drives unpleasant smells away.
With his family gone, Wallace P. Flynn
Lost all of his self-discipline.
He ate cheese morning and night,
Cheese so strong that his hair turned white.
He walked around with a cheesy grin.
He’d drive his truck to town and park it
In front of Easy Ed’s Used Cheese Market.
Easy Ed was a skinny old geezer
With little green eyes and a great big beezer
Who sold old cheese that he stored in rooms
Deep underground in cool dark tombs,
Cheese that was covered with thick green mold.
Some of the cheese was twenty years old!
Wallace P. Flynn drove his load of cheese
Back to his lonely house in the trees —
To him, it smelled like fresh spring blooms!
Sweet and pure and good and rich.
While other drivers drove in the ditch,
Overcome by deadly fumes.
He wrapped the cheese in a burlap sack
And buried it deep in a hole out back
And covered it up and put in a pipe
So he could smell when the cheese got ripe.
It lay in the ground for days and days
Until out of the pipe came a yellowish haze,
And when it began to gurgle and squish
And bubble and burble and smell like dead fish,
He heard the gurgles and bubbles and squishes
And cried, “By George! it smells delicious!”
And he scooped up the cheese from down in the dirt
And ate it for lunch, with more cheese for dessert.
The odor was gross — so awful and vile,
It drove away mammal, bird, and reptile.
His dog held its nose with a handkerchief,
The cats ran and stood in the swamp for relief.
The squirrels picked up all the nuts they had squirreled
And moved to a distant part of the world.
One day, a pig stood up on its haunches
And fell over flat on its back, unconscious.
The smell was so putrid, so sour and green,
Even the skunks departed the scene.
The smell was so foul, so fetid and rank,
The mailman bought an oxygen tank.
Good heavens, how the neighborhood stank!
The neighbors called the cheese police,
Who ordered Wallace P. Flynn to Cease!
“We’re coming in! Throw down your cheese,
And put your hands in the air and freeze!”
They cried, advancing through the trees.
They wore cheeseproof masks and cheeseproof suits
And rubberized steel-toed anti-cheese boots,
More expensive than a pair of Guccis
And designed to guard against even blue cheese.
They drove a car with special fans
To remove the odor of Liederkranz,
And a powerful defroster
Guaranteed against Gloucester.
But Wallace P. Flynn locked his door
And sat on the floor and ate some more
Norwegian cheese, which he dug up and which
He spread on bread and made a sandwich.
Green putrid cheese — O how it stunk!
Big rotten glops and sour drips —
Huge evil lumps of rancid gunk
That oozed through his teeth and between his lips.
The cheese police surrounded the place,
But tears ran down the captain’s face —
He grabbed a tree and stood quite still —
The smell had made him rather ill —
His face was pale, his knees were weak,
Strong tremors shook his great physique,
He gasped for breath, his eyes went dim,
That cheese was much too strong for him.
“Halt!” he cried, and then “Retreat!”
And gave his men a backward nod,
And they turned and dashed back to the street,
The Cheese Brigade of the Diet Squad,
And stood in rather loose formation,
Engaged in rapid respiration.
The captain did not stand there, flustered,
But ordered the men to load their guns
With butterscotch custard and sticky buns.
They fired once, and again — bang! bang! —
And then a blast of lemon meringue —
And out of the house came a pitiful cry,
“Stop the custard! Please! No more!
The smell of lemon makes me gag!”
And Old Man Flynn came out the door
With his hands held high
Holding a big white flag.
They took him away, the poor old man,
And drove to town in a caravan,
The red lights flashing, the sirens’ wail,
And drove him down to the county jail.
The captain wrote an official report,
And the next day Flynn appeared in court.
The lawyers stood around and gassed,
And motions were argued, and three months passed,
And eventually the case was tried
By Presiding Judge Jacqueline Hyde,
And a jury was chosen and notified,
And they sat in the courtroom bleary-eyed
As hundreds of experts testified,
Taking positions on either side.
Motions to recess were denied,
And Halloween came, and Christmastide —
When Wallace Flynn Jr. stood up and cried,
“Enough of these legalities!
Daddy, you have to give up cheese!”
He had just flown in from Arkansas
With his wife, Eloise, and his mother-in-law
And a baby boy, Wallace Flynn the Third.
“Look,” he said, “you’ve become a grandpa!
If you love your family, give your word —
From this day on,
No Parmesan!
Swiss, Romano, Roquefort, Edam —
Give ’em up, Daddy, you don’t need ’em!
Why devote your life to cheese
When you can have a grandbaby on your knees?”
Wallace P. Flynn looked at Wallace No. 3,
And the child smiled so handsomely
And held out his tiny hands so wide
The old cheesehead broke down and cried.
“I do relinquish and forswear
All cheese, including Camembert,
Colby — and even my Monterey Jack
Gift pack
From my aunts in
Wisconsin.
I never again will face a
Schmierkase.
From now on, this shall be my goal: a
Life of zero Gorgonzola.
No cheese and macaroni or cheese on my beans,
I am all done with cheese cuisines.
Tuna melt and potatoes au gratin
Shall be (by me) henceforth forgotten.”
And the judge said: “Mr. Flynn, your No
Cheese pledge is all we need. Now go.
You’re free.”
And the jury whooped and cried,
And his daughter ran to the old man’s side,
And kissed his cheek and stroked his hair
And whispered, “Daddy, we love you so.”
And his son wore a smile a mile wide
And he tossed the baby in the air
And the baby laughed — it was quite the show!
And W.P. took the whole Flynn bunch
Around to a corner café for lunch.
He enjoyed a plate of garden peas,
Caesar salad with anchovies,
Fresh fruit flown in from overseas,
Cherries and berries and jujubes,
And two iced teas.
The waitress looked at W.P.
“Is there anything else you’d like?” said she.
“No thanks,” he said. “This is all for me.
All I want is my family.”
That night, he sailed to the Hebrides
And soon he was back with his dear Louise,
And they bought a cottage in a grove of trees
Where humbly buzzed the bumblebees
Among the petunias and peonies.
And Mr. and Mrs. Wallace P. Flynn
Felt quite at home by the oceanside.
Watched the tide go out and the tide roll in,
And were very very satisfied,
Enjoying the days and the beautiful views,
The low-fat lunch and the daily snooze,
Which goes to show that a person can choose
To mend his ways and to begin
A brand-new life
As Mr. Flynn did with his wife. |
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| Live from the Hollywood Bowl Garrison Keillor’s final show in July of 2016 at the Hollywood Bowl was a magical evening. Over 18,000 people attended this duet extravaganza! Garrison recently posted what he called his swan song: a collaboration on the hymn “Only Remembered” with a group of heavenly singers including Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Christine DiGiallonardo, Heather Masse, and Aoife O’Donovan. Watch the video >>>
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