Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor

Early on Tuesday, a thick crowd clustered in front of the doors of McCormick Place’s Arie Crown Theater for a chance to hear perhaps the most anticipated speaker of the 2009 AAHSA Annual Meeting, National Public Radio star Garrison Keillor.

Keillor, a 67-year old fixture of public radio for more than 30 years on his nationally syndicated radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, did not disappoint. While speaking to both the merits and hardships of growing old, and doing so with dignity, Keillor spun one of the long, absurd yarns for which he is best known.

Keillor immediately connected with the crowd, beginning with a discussion of old age in the context of his own experience. The writer declared that he became older “about six weeks ago,”  recalling the minor stroke he suffered in early September.

He also got the crowd laughing heartily and often with biting one-liners, such as his take on his mother’s approach to old age.

“She still can be funny when she talks about her own dementia,” Keillor cracked, “and how it has released her from so many things she used to worry about.”

Nevertheless, while complaining that he’d rather avoid the troubles of aging, Keillor asserted that he believed in “the liberation of old age.” He went on to praise caregivers of the aged as performing “a sacred deed.”

“I stay young because my mother is still alive,” he said seriously,  “She’s 94, and that’s why I come to thank all of you.”

The heart of Keillor’s talk, however, came in his long, hilarious discussion of the inspiration he gained in how to grow old from his “Aunt Evelyn,” whose story Keillor fans might recognize from his 2007 novel, Pontoon. What followed was a wild story involving a liberated older woman (Evelyn) who dies, her eye-popping and scandalous will, a parasailing engineer, and a new-age love story gone woefully awry. It all comes together with some giant decorative ducks, a pontoon of Lutheran ministers, and a bowling ball that doubles as Aunt Evelyn’s urn.

The crowd was uproarious throughout, heartily welcoming a tale of old age that somehow was as familiar as it was unpredictable. In other words, it was vintage Garrison Keillor.