On Turning 76
By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
26 May 18
The lilacs are in bloom out at the old family homestead and it's pleasant to
stand by the bushes and smell them and recall that the outhouse used to
stand a few feet away. Who does not feel his faith in resurrection
strengthened by this news? We've all been stinkers at times but once we
leave the body behind, we shall bloom in the life to come.
My ancestors settled on that land in 1880, and my father once drove a manure
spreader in the field near the lilacs, pulled by a team of four horses. They
were heading downhill and he maybe forgot to apply the brake and the
spreader clipped the hind horses' legs and they bolted and took off down the
road, my dad hanging on for dear life. The spreader tipped over when the
horses galloped around a corner and my father leaped clear and landed in a
ditch, no bones broken. He wrote a clear account of this in a letter to the
city girl he hoped to marry, a harrowing story about the fragility of life
and how death waits for us when we least expect it and so we should take
hold of love and happiness when it presents itself. It was a well-written
narrative and it won her heart and that's where I come from, a rare venture
into journalism by a taciturn man.
I've found love and happiness, thank you, and what I'm looking for now is a
new vocation, a purpose, a mission. A man can't just lie in a hammock and
identify birds. The birds don't need us to tell them who they are. Travel
for travel's sake doesn't interest me, nor sack races, sock hops, secular
humanism, or psychics. I turn 76 soon and so there's no time for retraining.
I once wanted to be a waiter or a bus driver but those doors, I'm sure, have
closed.
Meanwhile, something dreadful is surely waiting for me up ahead. Over the
years, I have filled out thousands of forms and always checked the little
box saying I accept the terms and conditions and never have I read those
terms and conditions. Eventually those terms and conditions will come due. I
know it and you know it.
Searching for a new purpose in life, I depend on my wife for guidance, as I
do in so many matters. She tells me, "Smile at people. Offer your hand. Ask
them how they are today and listen pleasantly as they tell you." Somehow in
my old age I've taken on a grim expression without meaning to. I'm happy as
can be, contented and serene, and friends ask me if something's wrong.
Evidently my default face is that of an ogre.
My generation was not a lighthearted bunch. We produced Bob Dylan, who is
not a guy you'd willingly go on a long car trip with. We were a skeptical,
brooding, cranky bunch, and I can see that now when I hang out with my
grandson. He is congenial and so are his friends and people his age.
Totally. I see them walking around with their smartphones, which contain a
GPS app that beeps when a friend is in the vicinity, and this app guides
them to each other - the electronic lady voice says, "Coffee shop, 100 feet
ahead on your left. Outdoor table by the door." And the two friends sit down
side by side and they text each other, "Hey how R U?" while checking their
e-mail, Twitter, and Snapchat to see what their other friends are up to. If
they are boys, they play a video game in which hooded assassins dash across
a devastated landscape and wreak destruction and attempt to kill each other.
If they are girls, they exchange pictures of their cats.
I don't have the dexterity to do those things so I am limited to personal
contact. But friendliness is a good enough vocation, I think, for these
twilight years. I come from separatist fundamentalist people who sincerely
believed that you are going to hell because you don't accept the truth that
was revealed to them. So it goes against my principles to befriend you but
I'm going to do it anyway. I have nothing to sell you, don't worry. I don't
care whom you voted for last time. I'm going to be friendly because my wife
told me to be. When you're loved by a person as good as she, you pay
attention to what she says.
Have a wonderful day, friend. Thinking about you, wishing you all the best.
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