The astonishment of mornings on the river last week

I tell jokes because I remember a time in my life when I crowded into a booth at a bar with eight other guys and some guys leaning over us and we told jokes and now I don’t see people doing that anymore. It’s a guy responsibility — women are worriers, men are kidders — and I remember one afternoon, over rounds of beer and bumps, that we told 75 different How Many Whatsis Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb jokes — we kept a list (Irishmen, therapists, optimists, agnostics, Russians, English majors) and all of them were reasonably funny. No more.So naturally I wonder if AA and rehab and treatment centers are responsible for the disappearance of the joke circle, and instead of pickles walking into a bar, we have a circle of men on folding chairs talking about their emotionally distant fathers who failed to validate them. So a man talked about his father who was a magician who cut people in half. “Did he work in a carnival or circus?” “No, he worked from home. I have a half-brother and a half-sister.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The astonishment of mornings on the river Last week. I
spent my mornings last week at a little white house
with a porch overlooking the Connecticut River, astonished by the
early morning light, the devout silence except for the twittering

(00:42):
of exhilarated birds, and the longer I sat there without
opening my phone or laptop, I felt the prospects of
the day getting better and better. This is the benefit
of going to bed early. It causes concern among others.

(01:06):
They wonder as he's sick, was he offended by something?
But I rise at five a m. And tiptoe downstairs,
and I'm dazed by wonder, which is a good thing
for a man. The business of humoristicism comedy is about

(01:27):
incongruity and dissonance and irony. But morning light makes a
person grateful for the natural world, for quiet and coffee,
and for the love and friendship of the sleepers upstairs.

(01:48):
It's a revelation of delight, of our creator's delight in
his creation. And though we're brought up to be skeptical,
wary of big hope hopes, prepared to deal with the
injustices of life, still the dawn light argues with stoicism,

(02:09):
and you see the beauty of the ordinary. And then
a distant leaf blower starts an angry drone, like an
air raid siren, And here we are back in comedy.
What was wrong with the old fashioned hand operated rake?

(02:31):
Why does anyone need this monster that puts you in
mind of the German lufwaffa, the electric chair, the cruel
dentistry of my youth. But eventually it goes away. This
is true of most aggravations, the ones that don't go away.

(02:54):
We can escape by coming to a little white house
on the river. My wife's ancestors came here from New
Jersey to escape the summer heat, but now with their conditioning,
we come to escape noise. Being a professional entertainer means

(03:17):
I am obliged to amuse my family. Some one reads
the front page of the paper and is incredulous about
some prominent person and says, I just cannot believe that.
So forth and so am blah blah blah, And I say, so,
I'm from Minnesota, and I begin every joke with sow so.

(03:43):
A Unitarian life saver was on duty at the lake
where Jesus walked on water to rescue a ship and
the lifeguard told his friends, can you believe it? The
guy says, he's the son of God and he can't
even swim. When they ask for a joke, I try
to have one ready for little kids. I say, why

(04:06):
do gorillas have big fingers because they have big nostrils?
Or what is the problem with living on M Street?
You have to go three blocks to pee? I love
dumb jokes, the profundity of them. Did you hear about

(04:26):
the dyslexic man who walked into a bra. There's a
wealth of man walked into a bar jokes, all of
them good. Plus dog walked into a bar and pickle
walked into a bar. The bartender said, what are you
doing here, You're only a pickle. The pickle said, I'm

(04:48):
celebrating the fact that I can walk. Give me a drink.
So the bartender made him a Manhattan with a little
leaf in the middle. The pickle said, what's that and
just said Central Park. I tell jokes because I remember
a time in my life when I crowded into a

(05:10):
booth at a bar with eight other guys and some
guys leaning over us, and we told jokes. And now
I don't see people doing that anymore. It's a guy responsibility.
Women are the warriors, men are kidders. And I remember

(05:31):
one afternoon, over rounds of beer and bumps, we told
seventy five different how many whats this does it take
to change a light bulb joke? We kept a whole
list of them, irishmen, therapists, optimists, agnostics, Russians, English majors,

(05:53):
and all of them were reasonably funny. No more so naturally.
I wonder if AA and rehab and treatment centers are
responsible for the disappearance of the joke circle. And instead

(06:14):
of pickles walking into a bar, we have a circle
of men on folding chairs talking about their emotionally distant
fathers who failed to validate them. So a man talked
about his father, who was a magician who cut people
in half. Did he work in a carnival or a circus?

(06:37):
Now he worked at home. I have a half brother
and a half sister, but it was my abandonment of
alcohol twenty years ago that made early morning beautiful again.
So it takes just one therapist to change a light bulb,

(07:00):
but the light bulb has to really want to change.
And the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish
funeral is that at the funeral there's one less drunk.
That's me. Have a nice day. Planning December already, why
not celebrate the holidays with a prairie home companion Christmas.

(07:23):
Garrison Keiller and his troop will make stops in Saint Paul,
New York, and Galveston, Texas. What a show, music sketches,
the news from Lake Wobegon, and loads of fun. For details,
click the events page at Garrisonkeiller dot com.