Speaker 1: I did a Christmas show last year in Saint Paul,
ended with the audience singing Silent Night, three verses acapella,
the Infant, Tender and Mild, the quaking Shepherds, the radiant beams,
and minutes later, who should come backstage but my cousin
Phyllis and her family, which made me very happy. Her
mother was my Aunt Jean, who was very funny and
she had a big heart. And when I was a
toddler and Dad went into the army, Aunt Jean took
my mother and us three little kids into her big
house in Saint Paul, and I still remember how welcome we were.
I go back home now and then, and people walk
up to me in the hotel Saint Paul who remember
me as a friendly radio voice, and some of them
were apparently quite attached to that voice. I met a
young woman the other week who gasped as if I
were a ghost, and she said, we listen to you
every Saturday at five o'clock, and I still miss you.
I'd feel that way if I ran into a J. Leebling,
I would be stunned and tell him how I loved
his writing. When I was in the eighth grade, at
Anoka High School. I read The Sweet Science and The
Road Back to Paris, but he's been dead since nineteen
sixty three. I miss Saint Paul, which is still my home,
but not because I'm admired there. I love it for
the same reason when wife loves New York. She came
to New York from Minnesota as a teenager to study
violin and become a musician, and so she went through
hard time. She experienced poverty, she stayed true to her vocation,
and when she got the blues, she found relief by
taking long walks around Manhattan. She was proud she never
asked for help, and that makes Manhattan her true home,
the place where she gained independence. I did my hard
times in Saint Paul. I was broke there. I lived
for years with no savings or insurance. I once had
to live in my in law's basement for three months
pure humiliation, although they were very hospitable. I got fired
in Saint Paul twice, but I survived, and I bought
my first house on Goodrich Avenue in nineteen eighty two
with money from my first book. I like living in
Manhattan now. I love the fact that my wife loves Manhattan.
I like being a pedestrian, being an invisible nobody. I
take my face around the town and experience the here
of the here and the there of the there, without
ever needing to impersonate myself. I go forward for communion
at Saint Michael's just one more sheep. I'm a perpetual
tourist here because I had money when I came here.
I never had to struggle. I'm in awe of Jenny's
dedication to independence. Her grandparents lived in New Jersey. They
were well to do, and she never asked them for
any help. The happiest Christmas that I remember was the
year after we married, and we put on a big
Christmas dinner for a whole bunch of her freelance musician friends.
We made a feast and they were delighted, and it
turned into a long evening of hilarity and loose talk
and merriment. And I didn't know them, but I felt
honored by their friendship. And looking back at that marvelous night,
I see it was all due to their having known
poverty at one time. A person will enjoy a feast
more if you've experienced living on the edge. There is
a dullness that comes with the comfortable life. My parents
grew up in the Depression, and they strove to give
us a life free from want. And now I think
I was drawn to the literary life by a craving
for danger. I was fired when I was twenty five,
and I set out to be a writer, and I
wound up in my in law's basement. I worry, as
old people do, about the kids I see who are
growing up in the dreadful clutter of American life, the
gizmos and the social media bullying. And can they find
delight as I did in skating on the frozen Mississippi
and discovering a j Leebling and Jenny found listening to
Prokofiev and Brahms. I pray for our kids to be
light hearted. The darkness is out there, and Christmas becomes
utterly beautiful, the circle of love and friendship, the lighted candles,
the anticipation of the child, the radiant beams, and the
redeeming grace.