Lonesome Whistle Blowing

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Keillor's friend and admirer Roy Blount Jr., who plows a similar well-manured field in such down-home humor books as Crackers and One Fell Soup, turns up on A Prairie Home Companion from time to time to demonstrate by example the need for an outfit he founded called the League of the Singing Impaired. He marvels at the nerve it takes for Keillor to wander through his monologues so confidently, assuming that the audience will follow. "He has the courage of his whimsy," Blount says. He also has the courage not to be funny. Years ago, Keillor may say, it was not unusual "to see old people weep for Norway or hear about old men so sad they took a bottle of whisky up to the cemetery and lay down on the family grave and talked to the dead about home."

The veteran Prairie Home Companion audience is used to such moments of sweet gloom, and seasoned listeners will nod and say "Yup, yup" to themselves. Keillor speaks slowly, and there is plenty of time after a meaty sentence to get in two yups and a nod. But talk of homesick, drunk old people lying on graves can unsettle newcomers. Those who treasure the program become proselytizers, but converts are not always easy to find. You recommend A Prairie Home Companion to some special friend who votes right and deplores acid rain, and the friend looks puzzled and irritable when you see him a couple of days later. "Yeah, well, this guy was talking about guilt and death, and he went on and on," the friend might say, "and then there was some music, people from Lapland or someplace singing about I guess it was reindeer milking."

Minnesota Public Radio estimates that more than 2 million people listen to P.H.C., though Keillor says that nobody is really sure. The figure could be low, because if it is correct, it suggests that about one listener in three has bought a hardcover copy of Lake Wobegon Days, which is a lot of loyalty. Powdermilk Biscuits, the show's main sponsor, does not seem interested in paying for elaborate polls. Another sponsor, the maker of an alarming breakfast cereal called Raw Bits, made from oat hulls and wheat chaff, is positively standoffish. "By invitation only," its commercials say. "Send two references with your résumé, and we'll let you know if you qualify."

At any rate, though there are other ways to pass the time Saturday evenings, P.H.C. fans in considerable numbers say they plan their weekends around the show. Nutritionist Leslie Cordelia-Simon and her husband drive from their home in Houston to the Gulf almost every Saturday, then park on the beach and listen to the program. "It's a little respite at the end of the week," she says. In Washington, Ruth Harkin, wife of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, reports that "it takes something pretty drastic" to make them miss the program. "Lake Wobegon is the town we both grew up in," she says. Harkin's staff members recall that his 1984 Senate campaign was scheduled around the show and that they taped it for him when he could not hear it live. Tom Brokaw denies the rumor that he will not admit dinner guests to his house during the Lake Wobegon segment of the show. "I just don't pay much attention to them," the NBC anchor explains reasonably.