From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...
I have absolutely no memory of this bit. From reading it, I thought I had the sketches in the wrong order, this being the first sketch after their Florida trip, but no, they had done some shows, then suddenly couldn't. It sounds like a major storm rolled in and the show was suspended for a while. So, naturally, when they returned, I decided to make that my premise. I think I really captured GK's voice and cadence for this monologue, but it didn't make the cut. Not a sketch I could repurpose, so it just dropped from my brain pan. So, here it is, new to all of us, a look at the big chill of 2003.
We're Back
GK: We're back after a short hiatus. We were off the air a couple of weeks. It wasn't a planned vacation. It just happened. We, of course, had been in Florida. They had been suffering from a heat wave (with actual heat) for the two weeks we were there. And then we headed home.
I guess as you get older, you can't adjust to conditions like you used to. And we didn't re-adjust that well returning home to our "brisk" weather. Call it weather-lag, or maybe it was the climate equivalent to the bends but it seemed colder. Of course, it was colder.
Then came the March snows, dumping even more snow on us. Burying the city. Seriously, very high accumulations. You didn't need a snowplow to dig you out, you needed Indiana Jones to locate and excavate you.
And conditions inside the theater were no better. It was cold. Very cold. People's eyelashes were snapping off. I caught some stage hands scattering fruit with hammers, it was so cold. It was so cold we had switches and knobs snapping off the equipment.
The rehearsals for the show didn't go as planned. At first we thought it was equipment trouble.
TR: (teeth chattering) Ketchup has mellowing agents.
GK: Turns out the equipment was fine. Tim's teeth were chattering from the cold. And when Sue attempted her lines...
(silence)
GK: Turns out her vocal chords had frozen up. You have to understand, for a radio performer this is serious. And we didn't have any better success with the sound effects. Whether it was a horse trotting or a car backfiring or a chicken in a catapult, it came out the same:
TK: Brrrrrr.
GK: After we lost some pledge drive operators in a snow bank, we threw in the frozen towel. We figured we'd all just go home but we were snowed in. So we burned that week's scripts for warmth. And then the scripts for the next couple of weeks as well. We just decided to wait out the Lentil cold snap and begin again once we got a couple of weeks into spring. And here we are. The thaw has started. You can see the house tops again. And Prairie Home Companion is back on the air.
end
I guess as you get older, you can't adjust to conditions like you used to. And we didn't re-adjust that well returning home to our "brisk" weather. Call it weather-lag, or maybe it was the climate equivalent to the bends but it seemed colder. Of course, it was colder.
Then came the March snows, dumping even more snow on us. Burying the city. Seriously, very high accumulations. You didn't need a snowplow to dig you out, you needed Indiana Jones to locate and excavate you.
And conditions inside the theater were no better. It was cold. Very cold. People's eyelashes were snapping off. I caught some stage hands scattering fruit with hammers, it was so cold. It was so cold we had switches and knobs snapping off the equipment.
The rehearsals for the show didn't go as planned. At first we thought it was equipment trouble.
TR: (teeth chattering) Ketchup has mellowing agents.
GK: Turns out the equipment was fine. Tim's teeth were chattering from the cold. And when Sue attempted her lines...
(silence)
GK: Turns out her vocal chords had frozen up. You have to understand, for a radio performer this is serious. And we didn't have any better success with the sound effects. Whether it was a horse trotting or a car backfiring or a chicken in a catapult, it came out the same:
TK: Brrrrrr.
GK: After we lost some pledge drive operators in a snow bank, we threw in the frozen towel. We figured we'd all just go home but we were snowed in. So we burned that week's scripts for warmth. And then the scripts for the next couple of weeks as well. We just decided to wait out the Lentil cold snap and begin again once we got a couple of weeks into spring. And here we are. The thaw has started. You can see the house tops again. And Prairie Home Companion is back on the air.
end
