WOBEGON DAYS

One day in the spring of 1974 the American writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor, along with his wife and small son, boarded a Pullman train and left Minneapolis bound for San Francisco to visit friends. Keillor had just received a pleasingly large cheque from the New Yorker magazine as payment for an article, and he also had in his briefcase a couple of completed stories and other  literary bits and pieces which he hoped to sell. But in a place called Sand Point, Idaho, the train derailed, in the dark, in a freight yard.
Thankfully, it did so slowly and gently and with little fuss. Nevertheless, the Pullman would not be going anywhere else in a hurry, and so the Keillor family clambered down and boarded a coach for Portland, where they hoped to find another rail connection to San Francisco.
Some time later it duly deposited them in Portland, and father and son went to the men's room to freshen up, and then they all went to a cafeteria for breakfast. A few bites into his scrambled egg, Garrison suddenly remembered he had left his briefcase in the washroom, and rushed back to get it. Alas, it was gone, and never a trace was ever found. It was the worst thing that could happen to a writer. I believe it also happened to Hemingway. 
I tell the story only because it forms a sort of backdrop - and perhaps an explanation - for Garrison Keillor's subsequent best seller and American classic, Lake Wobegon Days, a book which has entertained and fascinated me ever since I first acquired it, by accident, about a decade ago. It tells the story, or rather the stories, of the mythical and mysterious settlement of Lake Wobegon (population 942), its people and traditions.
Wonderfully funny, tongue-in-cheek stories, too. Of the Living Flag, and the Sons of Knute Ice Melt contest, of Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Store and the Chatterbox cafe, Clint and Clarence Bunsen, the Lutheran church, and the Norske Folke Society, the grain silo, and a bagfull of other Wobegon worthies and places. The Tollerud farm, the Ingqvist crowd, Carl Krebsbach and Father Emil. Tales of a town - one inhabitant says - where the main industry is speculation.
I don't know why these almost-believable tales of Lake Wobegon so tickled my fancy, but they did, and still do. Later, I acquired two other titles which carried Keillor's stories and storylines forward, but for some reason they didn't quite gel in the same way. Thus if I ever feel the need to return to Minnesota just to wallow, temporarily, among some of the Wobegon folk, then it is to this first book that I return.
Keillor is perhaps better known as a broadcaster in America, and much of his writing begs to be read out loud. As I have no doubt it was originally. As for the question as to whether Lake Wobegon is a real place, well, all I can say is that during my one and only trip to the East Coast of America a few years ago, and finding myself with half an hour to spare, I went into the Harvard University bookshop for a browse and, intrigued, duly found the book under Fiction.
So I bought another copy and gave it to one of my sons. I hope he gets to read it and enjoy it as much as I have done.
(Lake Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor. Penguin Books, 1985)