I HAVE bad news. In the midst of the worldwide economic meltdown we are experiencing these days, I have taken a hard look at revenue from this column and find that I am earning but a tiny fraction of the $6.5 million (€5 million) I had projected for 2008, which leaves me no choice but to impose aggressive cost reductions, including a 75 per cent reduction in writing time and the elimination of editing. I apologise for the inconvenience. And thank you for your patience, writes Garrison Keillor.
I don't understand the economic turndown whatsoever, and in fact wonder if "turndown" is a good word for something so catastrophic as to impel that bald man - who appeared to be packing a revolver - to accost me in the menswear department of Macy's in downtown St Paul. I was scouting sports coats, which looked bulkier and gloomier than how I want to look. I aim to be limber and natty so people do not take me for a repo man.
Anyway, he said: "Your column was all that kept me going the past 18 months through a ferocious divorce from Melanie, the outsourcing of my job and repossession of my mansionette and a nasty case of traumatic hair loss, and now I'm facing a prison term for whacking my stockbroker, but your column is a ray of light in my life, and could you spare me $20 to buy a sparkly T-shirt for my little princess?"
He reminded me so much of a man I once took $3,000 off in a game of Roll 'Em poker in a back booth of Mom's Cafe in Tupelo, Mississippi, back in 1969.
That man was known as Uncle Earl and he was well sloshed on a drink called the Stroke, which I believe is made with rum, bourbon and sloe gin, and he was leaning hard on a bimbo in a red dress that displayed her glistening orbs like fruit on a plate. As I say, Mr Baldy appeared to be concealing a weapon in his pocket, and one could imagine him fingering the trigger as he brooded over the bum hand life had dealt him, so I proffered him a $20, and now that I think of it, I was not in St Paul, I was in Tampa. Weird. This was on Monday. My column is due on Tuesday morning, but I was not thinking about that yet because with the cost reductions, I am allotting myself 15 minutes to write the 750 words which I once spent two hours on (believe it or not), but no more, and whenever a reader approaches me, such as Mr Baldy, I know that my 15 minutes was time well spent.
What was I doing in Tampa? Even as the column goes through painful changes, it's important that I reward accomplishment, and so I have sent myself to Florida for a couple of weeks to bask in the sun and to stay motivated so the column will continue to be strong and insightful, despite cutbacks, just as the bimbo stuck with Uncle Earl despite his lousy poker hand and just as the guy in Tampa - who, by the way, I now recall did have hair, one of those thinning ponytails - said to me: "I don't know any other columnist who writes like you."
I am assuming he spent the $20 on the T-shirt, but maybe he got a smoked ham sandwich. What I know is that we will get through this turndown by being true to who we are. That is what has gotten us this far. - (Tribune media service)