(MUSIC)
Garrison Keillor: I've come to the College of St. Catherine because we need women to take over the job of running the world so that men can do what we're truly suited for which is child care. We've been hearing for forty years about women assuming leadership and they've assumed some but not enough which means that men are forced to waste their lives in management when we know darned well we'd rather be at home, making sandwiches and driving kids to soccer and helping with math homework and reading stories at night. This is where our true talents lie. Men are not leaders; we are storytellers. There is a difference. (BRIDGE) I was brought up by women in a world that was dappled and golden.
Sue Scott: Here is your lunch, dear. Chicken noodle soup and a tuna sandwich and tapioca pudding.
GK: It looks scrumptious. Thank you.
SS: And after lunch we'll go to the library, dear. (BRIDGE)
GK: The library -- the peaceful paradise of my childhood. I sat in the windowseat and read tales of chivalry and knighthood (HORSES, HEROIC SHOUTS, BUGLES, SWORDFIGHT) and stories of adventure on the high seas (BOAT HORN, RIGGING, CANNON) and stories of men rescuing women (SS DISTANT CRY FOR HELP) who were chained to a railroad track (DISTANT WHISTLE) or to a conveyor carrying them toward a chainsaw (HIGH-PITCHED WHINE OF CHAINSAW) and at the last moment the hero rode up (GALLOPING HOOVES) and untied her (
SS: Oh thank you, thank you, thank you-- My Hero) (MUSICAL TA-DA) I loved the library and Mrs. Hodgkins, the kindly old librarian in the plaid skirt and the glasses hanging on a chain around her neck--
SS (OLD): So what books would you like today, little Carson? Biography, geography, philosophy, philology, philately, psychology, astrology, astronomy, theology, economy, Deuteronomy, --
GK: Got new dictionaries?
SS (OLD): Got a whole bunch of new ones. (BRIDGE)
GK: I'd sit in the corner of the library and read a dictionary. For pleasure. "Pleasure, noun -- the condition or sensation caused by the experience or anticipation of delight, or the indulgence or gratification of desire." And that was the library. My cathedral. The palace of the people. Where anybody could come and take possession of the treasures of literature. Run by women, because women believed in freedom and opportunity to be who you wanted to be.
SS (OLD): You're a good reader, Carson, and that means you're going to make something of yourself -- someday you'll follow your dream and go places and you'll find out that the only limitations are the ones you place on yourself -- (BRIDGE)
GK: That's what women believed. The men I knew believed that wherever you are, that's where you're supposed to be. (TR SWEDISH) So stay put and shut up. (TR SWEDISH) You made your bed so now you have to lie down in it. (TR SWEDISH) Just learn to be grateful for what you have because it could be worse. (TR SWEDISH) Yes, it's a rough life but it's good enough for the likes of you. (TR SWEDISH) Don't think you're special because you're not. (TR SWEDISH) You're no better than anybody else so don't think your life is going to be any different from theirs. (TR SWEDISH) (BRIDGE)
GK: And that was the dichotomy in our family. I learned the word dichotomy out of a dictionary and I used it whenever possible. Especially when I talked to my closest friend Catherine who, in addition to being my confidante, was also imaginary, not that this made her any less wonderful to me--
Prudence Johnson: You're so smart. You know that? You have the nicest hair and you smell good and you're the smartest boy I know. The others are only interested in football.
GK: Well, that's a dichotomy right there.
PJ: I love the way you use words like dichotomy, so easily, as if they were natural for you. Most boys don't know dichotomy from a ditch in the ground. With your vocabulary, you're going to go a long way in the world.
GK: I don't know. People in my family -- some people, not all of them, but some -- quite a few actually, maybe most -- think that I'm no different from anybody else.
PJ: That's not true. Everybody is different. Everybody is an individual. An individual with limitless possibilities. (BRIDGE)
GK: I wished she were right about that. Still, she was imaginary. --And then one horrible day I arrived at the library -- (SHAKING LOCKED DOOR) it's closed? But poor Mrs. Hodgkins, the librarian with the glasses hanging on the chain, what happened to her?-- (STING, BRIDGE) I found out about her a week later at the bus depot when I was going to Moorhead to pick potatoes.
Tim Russell (BUS CALLER, ON P.A.): Now leaving on Platform 2...for Delano, Montrose, Howard Lake, Cokato, Litchfield, Willmar, Kerkhoven, Benson, Belgrade, Glenwood, Kensington, Elbow Lake, Breckenridge, and Moorhead. All aboard on Platform 2.
SS (OLD): Hello Carson. Remember me?
GK: Mrs. Hodgkins! What are you doing on your knees with that bucket and pail?
SS (OLD): They fired me, Carson. Threw me out the door like I was a used Kleenex.
GK: Who did this to you? -- But of course I knew who had done it. (TR SWEDISH) Men. Men who said, What do you need a nice library for? One with windows. (TR SWEDISH) We'll build one in a cave and save money. (TR SWEDISH) What do you need novels and history for? We'll just have auto repair manuals and books about football. (TR SWEDISH) Good enough for the likes of you. You don't need books to be able to pick potatoes. (BRIDGE)
GK: So I was thrown out in the cold to play with other boys who mostly ran around shooting each other. (GUNSHOTS) War was mainly what they did. (ARTILLERY) Just bloodshed. (DIVE BOMBER, BOMBS) Planes, bombs, laser swords. (LASERS) Carnage was all they knew. I'd have been lost if it hadn't been for my friend Catherine.
PJ: How are you? Your clothes are all dirty.
GK: My family hires me out to pick potatoes. Ten hours a day, hauling a gunnysack around. At the end of the day you can hardly stand up straight.
PJ: I thought there were laws against child labor.
GK: There are, but they're in books and they closed the library. I feel as if life is a dark forest and I';m trying to get through it to the city on the other side and the woods are full of troops equipped with rifles with nightscopes and radar and I'm trying to work with a broken compass and a paper cup.
PJ: That's terrible.
GK: You're telling me.
PJ: If I weren't imaginary, I'd do something about it.
GK: Well, thanks for the thought anyway.
PJ: You shouldn't be picking potatoes. You're so brave and smart and even though you have crusted dirt on your knuckles, there is still an elegance about you that cannot be denied.
GK: Oh, it can be denied. I'm surrounded by deniers. Every day. (TR SWEDISH) Okay. I'm going. (TR SWEDISH) I will. I'm on my way. I just needed to rest for a moment. (TR SWEDISH) I'll try. I'll do my best. (BRIDGE)
GK: He told me to go to the gym and learn how to fight. So I did. I tried. (FOOTSTEPS) There was a ring in the middle of this big room. Sweat-stained canvas. Ropes. Turnbuckles.
TR (OLD TRAINER): Hey-- over here--put these gloves on. Let's see how quick you are with your hands.
(SPEED BAG BWANGING, SLOW AT FIRST, THEN SPEEDS UP)
TR (OLD TRAINER): It's all in the feet. Rock back and forth. Get in the groove. That's the way. Minnesota's never had a heavyweight champion. You could be the Lutheran Joe Louis.
GK: I don't want to be--
TR (OLD TRAINER): Here's Lou.
Tom Keith (GROWLY): Hi.
TR (OLD TRAINER): Get in the ring and show what you can do, kid.
GK: I don't know anything about boxing.
(BOXING SFX)
TR (OLD TRAINER): Work close. Keep moving. It's all about hitting him before he can hit you. And hitting him hard. (BRIDGE)
GK: I felt like a dog trying to ride a bicycle. It wasn't natural.
PJ: You're not a fighter, you're a singer. You're so dashing and winsome. Saying incredibly witty things. Marry me. I'm an incredibly wealthy 19-year-old nymphomaniac. I can make you happy.
GK: But you're imaginary.
PJ: True. But we can work around that.
GK: I don't know.
PJ: We'll go into show business and we'll sing duets and we'll earn gazillions and buy beautiful houses in Tuscany and Provence and St. Moritz and Montana and Bali and Barcelona.
GK: I don't know the first thing about money or real estate --
PJ: I'll take care of everything.
GK: You will?
PJ: I'll manage the whole thing. All you have to do is smile and sing harmony.
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
GK: Hey Catherine--
PJ: Hi, beautiful. Where you want to go this week? Tuscany or Barcelona?
GK: You decide.
PJ: Okay, I will. You know something? you are so incredibly smart.
GK: You really think so?
PJ: To be smart enough to invent someone as fantastic as me --that is so cool.
GK: You're just saying that because I created you.
PJ: No. I really mean it.
GK: You're flattering me so I won't forget you and then you won't exist anymore.
PJ: Honestly, I'm not.
GK: I don't know.
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
GK: The reality was, it was February, the library was gone, the movie theater had been crushed by snow (CRUNCHING, CRASHING) and the opera house burned down when the men's room exploded (BOOM AND FIRE EXPLOSION) so all I did was ride around with my friends Larry and Raymond who had their own car.
TR: We could go to St. Paul, check out the babe situation. What do you say? Huh? Lots of hot babes. I got an ID, we'll get some hot babes, go out dancing, have mixed drinks, impress the heck out of those hot babes, and then we'll park somewhere--
GK: Look. It's February. You can't sit and neck in a car.
TK: How come?
GK: You leave your motor running, the car fills up with carbon monoxide, they find you in the morning, dead--
TK: We could go to their house. The babes' house.
GK: What about their parents?
TR: We'll tiptoe in in our stocking feet.
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
PJ: Hey-- what's wrong? You look so sad.
GK: I just can't figure this thing out.
PJ: What's to figure out? Let's just hotfoot it on down to boogie town, dance the night away under that silver ball turning turning in the strobes, the saxophones and castanets, living out our left-brain Technicolor Scott and Zelda dreams on the boulevard Randolph, O mi corazon-- what do you say? And afterward we'll fly to Provence. Or Barcelona. The Isle of Rhodes.
GK: I wish you were real. Boy, do I wish you were real. I wish we were driving to Wisconsin to a justice of the peace to be married and --
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
TR: I got a better idea. We'll start a gang and we'll rob banks. Get ski masks and a fast car and a pillowcase to carry all the loot in.
TK: Sounds good to me.
GK: That's crazy. Let me out of the car. (SIREN)
TR: Too late. They're after us. Shoot your gun.
GK: I don't know how to-- (CAR SPEEDING AROUND CORNER)
TR: Shoot at their tires. C'mon-- shoot. (TOMMYGUN) (CAR SWERVE) Good.
GK: Oh gosh. Coppers on our tail. (SIREN CLOSER) How'd I get into this?
TR: Throw those sharp tacks out on the highway! Throw out the tacks! (CAR SWERVE, GUNSHOTS)
GK: So I threw out the tacks and the police cars (TIRES EXPLODING) ran over them and got flat tires and we turned down a dirt road to our hide-out in the woods.
TK: Good haul today. Pour me some of that whiskey and I'll deal the cards. (SHUFFLE) Aces and deuces wild, low man calls, five-dollar ante, no inkles, two down and you're out. You in?
GK: No.
TK: What's the matter?
GK: I just don't feel like it.
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
GK: A life of crime just isn't what I want, Dr. Flexner.
SS (FLEXNER): So if I'm hearing you right, you're turning away from senseless violence and looking for a woman to run your life for you, am I hearing that?
GK: Yes. I'm an artist, Dr. Flexner, I know how to bake a cherry pie, I can make a great souffle', I can sing and dance, laugh, hug, be vulnerable, be passionate, but I'm completely unequipped to deal with money, politics, legal stuff, it's all a big mystery to me. Social life, communication-- I can't do it.
SS (FLEXNER): I've noticed, over the years that you've been in treatment, that you do seem basically inept and lost and helpless--
GK: It's the truth.
SS (FLEXNER): So that's why you feel like you have shackles on your feet and the water tastes like turpentine and you want to lay your head on some lonesome railroad line and let the 2:19 ease your troubled mind?
GK: Yes.
SS (FLEXNER): And if I'm hearing you right, you're looking for your good-lovin gal to let you be her salty dog and she'll be your ball and chain, is that correct?
GK: Yes. The longest train I ever saw was sixteen coaches long and the only gal I ever loved was on that train and gone.
SS (FLEXNER): Well, we've raised some interesting issues today and now our time is up. I'll see you next Tuesday.
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
Dream, baby
How long must I dream?
GK: And that's what brings me to St. Catherine's today -- I'm looking for that Catherine I knew long ago who was such a comfort to me when we lost the library and I had to pick potatoes. I don't fit in to the world. At all. It's all so foreign to me. The male world of power and conflict--
TK: Okay, let's play some poker. (SHUFFLE) Aces high or low, ten bucks, two calls and you go to the dump, lady in the cloister, six or higher to open, and stand on your bid or walk through the soup. Okay?
GK: I don't understand that world at all. I want women to run things for awhile. They're better equipped for it. They know it and we know it so it's time for them to do it. (TR SWEDISH) Not now. Don't bother me with that. (TR SWEDISH) Go tell somebody else.
John Niemann (SING):
When I get done with this robbery, you know where I want to gota?
Straight down the Mississippi river, to St. Paul, Minnesota.
To the College of St. Catherine, and a girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by, if there's anything she could do
(Chorus)
O St. Catherines, love you dearly
I'll send you lots of money yearly
I need your help and I ask sincerely
Won't you please take a hold of me---
(INST CRIPPLE CREEK UNDER)
GK: Hi.
PJ: Hello.
GK: Remember me?
PJ: No. Sorry.
GK: You used to be my imaginary best friend.
PJ: Well, I decided to get real.
GK: Okay.
PJ: You mind moving your car -- you're blocking mine?
GK: That's your car? The black Lamborghini?
PJ: Right. Thanks. (CAR REV AND PULL AWAY THROUGH THE GEARS AND CORNER)
BAND BUTTON