Nostalgia is in Fashion

Garrison Keillor has a bookstore in Saint Paul, MN where Carlsbad, CA resident, Daniel Van Tassel (below) last month signed his book about boyhood in Minnesota.

Last night I watched a PBS special on Keillor. He mused about his early ambition to become a New Yorker (magazine and city) writer, his chosen geographic relocations and settling back in Minnesota, where he began. I felt such kinship, we are the same age, raised as Midwestern Lutherans, and longed for similar writing careers. We even both began in our respective universities' radio stations, him at the UM reading continuity that I went to NU to learn to write. What is more uncanny, I never made it to the microphones at WNUR, and the UM's transmitter was off the air (but they didn't know it). Our early voices went unheard.

I moved more times than Keillor, but he achieved his New York dream, briefly. Mine was just to have a normal life, but possibly that's an illusion. Now I've embraced living in California, while he has managed to go home again (take that Thomas Wolfe!) Keillor accepts, as he calls it, an ordinary life and he says he finds it good enough. He has the extended family to support him in that choice. I could not determine if he sounded wistful and resigned or at peace with himself at last.

And here in Cali, doncha know, I met someone originally from Minnesota, embarking on a nostalgia tour back there to promote a memoir of "Life in the Heartland at Mid-Century". Back to Barron, by Daniel Van Tassel, delights the Boomer generation no end with true tales of farm life, town trips to Lake Wobegones as well as the big city and all the trouble little boys can get into.

If you're over 60 and still living in the Midwest, you'll chuckle at the memories. If you're over 60 and living somewhere else, you'll chuckle at the memories and perhaps heave a little sigh of sad fondness or relief--your choice, or your luck.

Listen to this article