A Close Call and then the Creation

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I walked into the neighborhood bank the other day and there in the lobby, loading the ATM machines, were two guys with fistfuls of money, bricks of $100s, $50s $20s, a sight I’d never seen before, perhaps a signal from alternative reality that my chance at bank robbery was here, but then I saw the third man, his hand on the pistol in his holster, and so instead I walked up to the cashier’s window and asked for a couple grand so I can make New Year’s gifts to doormen at our building and Mitch the plumber and our cleaning lady and also to some deserving children.

I know it’s pitifully small-minded of me but I enjoy walking around with a $100 bill in my pocket. It’s a token of good luck. A silver dollar used to be a token but luck has undergone inflation. I’m old enough to remember when I picked radishes at Schreiber’s truck farm for a nickel a bunch, I remember it whenever I eat a radish. I was a dishwasher for $1.35/hour and a parking lot attendant for slightly more. In 1969, I sold a small humorous piece of writing to a magazine and got $500 for it and that settled me on a writing career. It wasn’t a matter of talent; it was about money. I chose radio because I could write for it and it paid better than radishes.

I married up, which is a good idea for a man, and when I came home from the bank my wife was very excited about the Webb telescope out in space sending pictures back to earth of celestial bodies millions of light years old, stars in the process of creation, that sort of thing, and it was very uplifting to hear her excitement about this marvel, even though it’s made her dubious about Creationism, which troubles me as an Episcopalian, but she was absolutely breathless with wonder at the advance of science, not realizing she was married to a potential bank robber.

I’m sorry if gay men miss out on the uplifting influence of the superior gender. Men, even in the 21st century, are still corrupted by our centuries as slavers, tyrants, despoilers, mobsters, monsters, and miscreants, whereas women, deprived of the opportunity to do evil, have pursued purity of heart and high standards.

This is true of my beloved and also of my women friends and colleagues. In my performing career, I sing duets with a woman friend, and once, backstage, about to go onstage and sing the Louvin Brothers’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” she pointed to my cheek and handed me a hanky and I looked in a mirror and there was some of my supper on my cheek, which I wiped off and we went out and sang.

Some men in the audience, envious of the glamorous company I keep, would’ve loved to see some corn kernels and a smear of meatloaf on my face, but the women only wanted to hear the song, which, forgive me for saying this, makes so much more sense sung by Heather and me than by Ira and Charlie Louvin. Two brothers shouldn’t need to win each other’s love, and most of the brother duets ran into serious problems, Don and Phil, the Wilson Brothers of the Beach Boys, and so on.

Men without women are in trouble and they know it. If Rudy had had a wife in 2020, he wouldn’t have given the press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping with hair dye running down his cheeks and told the big lie about the election, which led him down the slippery slope toward his defeat in court and bankruptcy and who knows what lies ahead. A wife would’ve said, “Wrong Four Seasons, sweetie, and go wash your hair.” If Melania had checked her husband’s speech, she would’ve said, “Skip the part about vermin poisoning our bloodstream. It’s creepy and weird.”

The chunks of hundreds and fifties were within easy reach, but I didn’t yield to impulse, I came home and listened to the woman I live with express wonder at the infinitude of the Creation, and instead of doing ten to twenty for grand larceny, I get to have lunch with her. This is a good way to start the New Year.
No more long shots, stick with what you know to be true, be glad for the Ben Franklin in my pocket. I am prepared to be lucky.

Garrison Keillor © 01.08.24