Garrison Keillor at the State Fair (Part 3: The Young Man Expands His Vowels)

His mouth is full of stale, dusty earth. The boys are silent as Garrison slowly blinks the stars from his eyes, and becomes aware that the balloon, hovering above him, is tethered firmly to his hand by the pink ribbon. The silence grows, as Garrison carefully pulls the balloon towards him, hand over hand. Wrapping his arms around the large red balloon, Garrison grunts slightly as he rolls over on top of the balloon with all his weight. The pop resonates with great force throughout the fair grounds. Almost immediately a great cheer erupts, with much joyful laughing among both the children and adults. The boys surround Garrison, hoist him to their shoulders and tussle his hair. They parade him about with shouts of “Way to go Garrison! Atta Boy!” and “You’re the prince of the fair, Garrision!”

Garrison never returns to his imaginary job, after that imaginary lunch-break at the state fair. He begins to elongate his vowels and measure his breathing. He does not write scathing letters to the Saturday Evening Post, or Newsweek; instead he pens wistful little essays for his teachers, extolling the playground games the other boys play, inbued with magic and wonder. In his ears, to this day, the sound still rings: you're the prince of the fair.

End

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Just Shut Up, Will Ya

A Young Garrison Keillor at the State Fair (part 2)

Young Garrison is temperamental in his indulgence of that which he finds auxiliary. He rises, with some difficulty, and swipes at the insolent balloon. He is not athletic, often picked second to last for sports, and he meekly strikes the balloon under the tie. The balloon dips and rises, taunting Garrison’s efforts at violence. Before long Young Garrison is wildly chasing after the balloon, swearing that he will pop it, deflate it of its pretense. “I shall expose you’re hollow insides, Balloon. You will shrivel like a raisin under the unyielding force of atmospheric pressure!”

Young Garrison has run clear around the perimeter of the fair, and is now cutting a zig zag path through the heart of the over heated crowd. The other young boys being to notice, “Is that Garrison with that balloon? Is he laughing? Come on y’all.” From all corners of the fair the boys come running, alerted to the fun by the usual channels of giggles and youthful energy that the Adults either cannot feel or ignore. Soon there is a dozen or more boys running up behind Garrison, urging him on toward the balloon. He at first fears they are going to catch him and hurt him, but as the boys catch up he realizes the stinging slaps on his back are of encouragement.

The hyperactive procession attracts the attention of the adults, who look up with mild surprise from their plates, piled high with animal and corn and dough. “Is that the Keillor boy playing with a balloon? Well I’ll be darned, it’s good to see him playing, don’tch’a think, Gertrude? Never thought I’d see it myself.”

Garrison and the Balloon are approaching the bandstand, at the front of the fair. The boys are reaching a fever pitch of disbelief and encouragement. “Go Garrision, GO. Catch that balloon, Garrison! I can’t believe you’re running, Garrison!” Just as Garrison feels the smooth plastic of the ribbon on the tip of his middle finger, his foot catches on an upturned clod of grass. In the air, Young Garrison sees only the mocking redness of the Balloon against the partly cloudy summer sky. The procession comes to a screeching halt, in an amorphous semicircle around the Young Garrison, prone and exhausted in the dirt.

Young Garrison Keillor at the State Fair -- The Rise of Romanticism, a Happy Story (Part 1)

A young Garrison Keillor is at the state fair. He is not particularly happy to be there. He is uncomfortable around the country-folk, dirty teeth and jeans make his heart race. He has no sweet tooth, and is repulsed by the mounds of fried sugar he sees enveloped in the tobacco stained mouths of men and women clad in garishly comical flannel outfits. Not enjoying candy is only one thing among many that differentiate little Garrison from the other boys, and the other boys clearly do not like him. They spit into the air on the teacups, leaving levitated luggies in the path of the queasy Young Garrison. He spends most of his time at the fair hiding between idling vintage tractors and behind the pigs.
He pretends he is in a small office in a midsized town. He shuffles pretend paperwork from one pile to another, stamping each with a rock and furrowing his brow at the stacks, that even in his mind he cannot hope to keep up with. It is his favorite game. He plays it for hours without tiring.

At this particular state fair, featuring a three-time champion prize pig and a woman with a goatee at the cotton candy machine, Young Garrison was using his imaginary lunch break to write an imaginary letter to the editor of the Saturday Evening Post. He wondered, rhetorically, just how the magazine could propose to be of any relevance to the modern world, with its Playboy and Mad Magazine. He was just working up to his conclusion when he was startled by the sudden appearance of a giant red balloon.

“Get out of here balloon,” Garrison said, “You’re whimsy is ephemeral, and contingent on my perception of you as an abstraction!” The balloon re-asserted its redness. “And I assume you think your redness to be in stark contrast to the brown-green expanse of the field, particularly the hazy exhaust of the tractors, which you are presently set against.” The balloon rose in altitude a bit, and teased Young Garrison about the forehead with its pink ribbon.

Stills From Wes Anderson's new film, on location

Starring that nervous little Coppola, and Bill Murray.

direct action

The twitti-bund, socialist-internetworked-ati are hard at work being dispassionately mobilized. These brave, indifferent souls face armed militias with only their wit, and desire to see something they can later recount as having been lame, or sweet.