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Speaker 1: When I go to Trader Joe's on Columbus Avenue in

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New York to buy groceries, I do it to buy

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guy food, which my beloved cannot buy because she knows

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it's not good for me. I don't do this secretly.

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I come home in broad daylight, unpack the bag, and

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she watches without comment. Sometimes in place of comment, she'll

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tell about something she read in the New York Times

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about some encouraging development and healthcare or public education. Meanwhile,

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she watches me put away the frozen mac and cheese,

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large potatoes for baking in the microwave, a few years

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of sweet corn, a couple filet mignon, frozen lasagna, frozen meatballs,

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frozen knockoff white castles, sliders. I don't buy greens because

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that's her territory, along with other vegetables, coffee, olive oil, cereal, rice, condiments, etc.

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With coffee, for example, she has a specific dark bean

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from a particular valley in Guatemala that meets her standards. Me,

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I'm happy with Maxwell House Instant coffee is coffee. She

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favors Portuguese olive oil from hand harvested olives. Me, I'm

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fine with Mazzola, I don't defend my choices, and thanks

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to her. I love mac and cheese because I loved

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grade school back in the nineteen fifties, and that's what

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Mabel served in the Benson School cafeteria, and when I

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eat a bowl of it now, I am back there,

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sitting with boys and observing Krinne and Elaine and Diane

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with great interest. As a teenager, I love to ride

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my bike downtown to the Minneapolis Public Library, and I

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got my lunch at the White Castle across the street.

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Sliders fifteen cents apiece when I heat up a frozen one.

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Today I'm fifteen years old again, enjoying independence, spending my

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babysitting money reading Hemingway and Kafka and E. E. Cummings

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and other books. My parents don't approve of. Trader Joe's

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doesn't always stock radishes, but if I see them, I

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buy a bunch because picking radishes was my first job

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around the age of twelve, and I graduated from that

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to potato picking and hoeing corn. I like Trader Joe's

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because the clientele is half my age or less, and

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I stand with my cart in a long double line

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with college kids and mothers of tiny children, and I

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listen to fragments of phone conversations that are fresh and

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fascinating to me. These people lean toward eagerness and curiosity

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with a streak of satire. My people tend toward dismay

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and resignation. The lines move fast Trader Joe's because the

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store has twenty four checkout cashiers, and as I come

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towards check out, this being New York, I wonder how

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many of the cashiers are hoping to be actors, writers, artists, dancers, composers,

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and I worry about them as I catch sight of them.

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I was a dishwasher when I was their age, and

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I hope to be published in the New Yorker magazine.

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Were my heroes John Updike, S. J. Pelman, James Therber

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published for me the magazine was the big league, and

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I needed to climb out of the miners. And when

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I made it at the age of twenty seven, I

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bought full The bigs are still around, but the young

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and ambitious have found new roads. Podcasting, for example, in

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which you pitch your own tent and invent your brand

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and see who stops to look at the goods. I

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find this sort of astonishing and wonderful. I look at

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the young and see how their ambition is to make

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their own good and productive life, rather than when the

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silver trophy be admitted to the big shot society. My

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beloved is fifteen years younger than I, and while I

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sit and toil at my new novel, her ambition is

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to walk six miles a day through the city and

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see the sights. The foot challiced in the park, the

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woman telling her dog to improve its attitude, the delight

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of apartment children set free on the playground, and talk

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to the French tourists taking photographs of squirrels. And the

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guy with a sign writes you a poem five dollars.

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I want my novel to win the National Book Award.

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It won't, but that's what I want. She wants to

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make a good life, and every day she does. I

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come home with my autobiographical bag of groceries and she

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makes no comment. Life circles back. I eat Mabel's macaroni

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and I am once again curious about girls. I once

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picked potatoes, and now I eat one with butter and

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sour cream, and it is delicious, and I feel truly grateful,

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just released a Prairie Home Companion's fiftieth Anniversary two CD set,

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recorded live at the Fitzgerald Theater. Garrison Keeler and the

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Gang celebrate with music, sketches, and of course, the news

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from Lake Wobegon. Get to tales at Garrisonkeeler dot com