"…where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average." We went to Arizona by way of Lake Wobegone, a most delightful detour. I first visited there in the late 80’s I suppose it was. We lived in Dayton, Ohio far from our hometown, a ways east of the Minnesota border. Our own little town back home had only one radio station, two if you factor in that they broadcast on AM and FM. The FM station played country favorites.  The AM station had ‘pop music’ and local news, the market reports – that would be the ag market not Wall Street. My favorite thing about moving to the city was finding NPR. We were on a tight budget and the internet wasn’t a household word. Discovering classical music and what struck me as very high-brow talk shows streaming for free was thrilling.

My favorite treat as a young mom was slipping out in the evenings, here and there, to Books and Company. We had no big chain bookstores and Books and Company’s overstuffed chairs and ambient music were intoxicating to me. I read and read and when it was closing time I drove home in the dark listening to Garrison Keillor on NPR. His tales of rural Minnesota were such a comfort to a small town girl so far from home.

Just before our trip to Arizona I picked up several cassettes of A Prairie Home Companion at the thrift store for all of fifty cents. Since our van only has a cassette player I figured it would keep us busy. Allen had somehow never heard the ‘news from Lake Wobegone’ and he drove along chuckling, rewinding,and replaying the parts I missed when I dozed off. The funniest thing was realizing Garrison Keillor had an accent. How did I miss that before? ; )  I think the first time I realized people from the upper midwest had an accent was many many years after leaving the region. I had called Lands’ End to place an order and stalled so I could hear the lady talk a few more minutes. I was so homesick I could cry.

Lake Wobegone did not make me cry this time though. As the host affirms, there is something wonderful about knowing where you belong. I no longer feel like a gypsy and home is with Allen. Still, the world of Wobegone is fading from most of our collective memories and that is so very sad. We can recapture snippets of those wonderyears thanks to the free podcasts on NPR. Years worth of episodes are archived there. I think I must own an IPod after all……