Every kid in the Midwest ought to grow up with a healthy diet of AM radio; healthy, as in major league baseball and A Prairie Home Companion. Baseball is best served on the radio, and the caliber of commentary by radio broadcasters far surpasses the tripe of the vast majority of television commentators, with the duo of John Miller and Joe Morgan being a rare exception. It's a shame that I cannot pick up 720 AM from my clock-radio in my bedroom, and I hope that moving away from central downtown solves this problem.

Baseball on the radio occupies a significant portion of my childhood memories, but that's a long discussion for another time (George F. Will talks of this a fair bit in Bunts, which I just finished, thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend to anyone who's ever seen a baseball). A Prairie Home Companion lays claim to fewer memories, but fond memories nonetheless.

For whatever reason, I associate with the show the cold nights of late October and November, at the dinner table eating my mother's chicken pot pie; and I associate the smack middle of summer, when school seems to have been out for a decade, and won't resume for a few more years at the least, after a day spent outside playing oddly-crafted games with our neighbors. Strange how memories organize themselves.

Of recent note, I was over at my friend—and brilliant math companion—Laura's house not too long ago when she offered to heat up some left over rhubarb pie (which was delicious, I should add). Immediately in my head was the jingle for the sponsor Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie: One little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie / Serve it up, nice and hot / Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought. Momma's little baby loves rhubarb rhubarb, Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie. And every mention of Ketchup (or Catsup) reminds me of advertisements for "Catchup". These little side notes in my brain, and the appreciation thereof by people who remember listening to the show—and perhaps still listen—never fail to brighten my day.

Though I haven't listened to the whole show in years, the News From Lake Wobegon, my favorite segment, is available in podcast form, and so I've taken to listening to one every once in a while. Most recently, I heard the June 6th edition (iTunes Store link—it's free, download it) while at work, and the in the last few minutes, I found that I had stopped working to focus all of my attention on Garrison Keillor's words. They're always well-crafted, and always worth a good listen; those last few minutes, though (from 13:48 onward), had me, and I transcribed below the last 1:18, talking of recent high-school graduates looking to escape the monotony of Lake Wobegon for cities of strangers, like Los Angeles.

We wish them well on these summer nights in Lake Wobegon. The honeysuckles smell but all through town; the lilacs, the green grass, the sound of water sprinklers in the evening. We wish them all well, walking around town: young people, young lovers, holding hands, grabbing onto each other—they just have to touch each other, all the time. Email does not work for this; a chat box does not work—Facebook does not work, they want to hold onto each other. They want to…bury my face in your neck, and smell your hair, and hold your hand to my heart.

It's a treacherous world out there—so treacherous. Cliffs everywhere; danger everywhere. But we brave it—we brave it—if we can be with the one we love; and hang on, hang on, tight.