Read Online Pontoon by Garrison Keillor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Garrison Keillor
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in California and Nevada before joining WCCO in 1958. He did the weather on radio and TV and also a 6 p.m. newscast for many years while getting into his trademark leopardskin long underwear to play Yonny, the “Scandihoovian Tarzan.” The show was extremely popular and a generation of Minnesota children grew up listening to Yonny sing Happy Birthday in fractured Swedish and tell jokes to his cow Helga and his dog Rasmus. For several years, Olson also appeared as the Duke of Podunk on Dance Party which was carried briefly on the ABC network. He retired as Yonny in 1994. He married June Davidson in 1948 (divorced, 1964) and they had two children, John and Carmen. His son died of leukemia in 1961, which inspired Raoul to create a show for kids and to name his character Yonny, which is Johnny in Scandinavian dialect.
Yonny Yonson. She and her brothers watched him daily for years. The man who told jokes to his dog and honked a horn and showed Little Rascals cartoons and danced with a floor mop to “On The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” and at the end of everyshow took two steps toward the camera and said, “You kids are driving me to drink!” and grabbed a bottle of Coco-Pop soda, his sponsor, and poured it over his head. And sometimes he did it upside down, while performing a handstand, one-handed.
And now she could remember Mother watching him from the ktchen door and smiling.
And she never said a word. “I used to know him.” Nothing like that.
*
Raoul Olson. Aldrich Avenue, Minneapolis. Barbara didn’t think anybody who meant that much to Mother should get the news by phone, so she got in the car and drove to Minneapolis to tell him. She needed a drive anyway. She took the back way, down through Holdingford and Avon to the Interstate and then instead of taking it she stayed on the back roads. Cold Spring, Watkins (“Birthplace of Eugene J. McCarthy”), Kimball, Dassel. She once dated a basketball player from Dassel who took her out to an abandoned farmplace and she sat on the front step of the house, which had collapsed into the cellar, and he sat on the front bumper of his old black Ford ragtop, guitar in hand, and sang her all the blues songs he knew, which were quite a few. Pankake was his name. He was a forward with a deadly jump shot from deep in the corner and scored twenty-six points for Dassel against Lake Wobegon and she, a cheerleader, had talked to him in the parking lot after the game and given him her phone number. She had gone over to the opposition. He told her he had lost interest in basketball after reading Moby-Dick . He had a nice voice. He packed up his guitar and drove her home. It was 1:30 a.m.
Dassel was due west of the city on Highway 12, which suddenly became a big vacuum of a freeway sucking her in toward the towersof downtown and everybody driving as if they were on their way to shoot someone, enormous SUVs looming up in her rearview mirror, hanging on her bumper, then swerving around her though she was driving the speed limit— what’re you doing on my highway, lady? Move over! —and she got off on Lyndale and drove north and found his address, a little blue rambler, the front door open, music emanating from within. One of the big bands playing a ballad and a girl singer spooling out the words, about a lover gone, perhaps for good—she peered in through the screen. Dark inside and a big round mirror facing the door and there she was in the mirror, hand shading her eyes. The girl singer sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when—” She rang the bell. And a sleepy voice said, “Yeah?”
“It’s Evelyn Peterson’s daughter. Barbara.”
He rose from the sofa where he’d been sleeping and opened the door. He was a husky old coot in a ribbed undershirt, tufts of gray hair sprouting under it, black stubble on his face, black silk shorts, flip-flops, a dead cigar in his paw. “What’s going on?” he said. He looked alarmed. “Is she okay?”
“Sorry
Yonny Yonson. She and her brothers watched him daily for years. The man who told jokes to his dog and honked a horn and showed Little Rascals cartoons and danced with a floor mop to “On The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” and at the end of everyshow took two steps toward the camera and said, “You kids are driving me to drink!” and grabbed a bottle of Coco-Pop soda, his sponsor, and poured it over his head. And sometimes he did it upside down, while performing a handstand, one-handed.
And now she could remember Mother watching him from the ktchen door and smiling.
And she never said a word. “I used to know him.” Nothing like that.
*
Raoul Olson. Aldrich Avenue, Minneapolis. Barbara didn’t think anybody who meant that much to Mother should get the news by phone, so she got in the car and drove to Minneapolis to tell him. She needed a drive anyway. She took the back way, down through Holdingford and Avon to the Interstate and then instead of taking it she stayed on the back roads. Cold Spring, Watkins (“Birthplace of Eugene J. McCarthy”), Kimball, Dassel. She once dated a basketball player from Dassel who took her out to an abandoned farmplace and she sat on the front step of the house, which had collapsed into the cellar, and he sat on the front bumper of his old black Ford ragtop, guitar in hand, and sang her all the blues songs he knew, which were quite a few. Pankake was his name. He was a forward with a deadly jump shot from deep in the corner and scored twenty-six points for Dassel against Lake Wobegon and she, a cheerleader, had talked to him in the parking lot after the game and given him her phone number. She had gone over to the opposition. He told her he had lost interest in basketball after reading Moby-Dick . He had a nice voice. He packed up his guitar and drove her home. It was 1:30 a.m.
Dassel was due west of the city on Highway 12, which suddenly became a big vacuum of a freeway sucking her in toward the towersof downtown and everybody driving as if they were on their way to shoot someone, enormous SUVs looming up in her rearview mirror, hanging on her bumper, then swerving around her though she was driving the speed limit— what’re you doing on my highway, lady? Move over! —and she got off on Lyndale and drove north and found his address, a little blue rambler, the front door open, music emanating from within. One of the big bands playing a ballad and a girl singer spooling out the words, about a lover gone, perhaps for good—she peered in through the screen. Dark inside and a big round mirror facing the door and there she was in the mirror, hand shading her eyes. The girl singer sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when—” She rang the bell. And a sleepy voice said, “Yeah?”
“It’s Evelyn Peterson’s daughter. Barbara.”
He rose from the sofa where he’d been sleeping and opened the door. He was a husky old coot in a ribbed undershirt, tufts of gray hair sprouting under it, black stubble on his face, black silk shorts, flip-flops, a dead cigar in his paw. “What’s going on?” he said. He looked alarmed. “Is she okay?”
“Sorry
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