I walked the length of the westbound Lake Shore Limited Amtraktrain as it left Albany Sunday -- with six crowded coaches -- andcounted three Twitterers and a couple of phone texters, sixlaptoppers (two were watching movies), four video gamers and 27people reading books. Books made of paper! Turning the pages withtheir fingers one by one, reading the lines left to right, just aspeople have done for hundreds of years. Ain't that something?
I didn't lean down for a close look at the books they werereading -- I was not brought up to do that -- so perhaps bodiceswere being ripped and stalkers were stalking and meteorites wereheading straight for Earth. But, no matter: Books were being read!
Along with live theater, monogamy and the bald eagle, the bookhas been despaired over and its demise freely predicted. Yet, amongpeople heading west, it seems to be the diversion of choice. SoCharles Dickens and Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor are not deadyet.
And the bald eagle is coming back, along with the gray wolf andthe Yellowstone grizzly, though less attractive endangered speciessuch as the glassy-eyed smelt and the orangefoot pimpleback musseland various arachnids are still in doubt. Theater seems as alluringas ever, judging by the number of young New York waiters with largepersonalities. And as for monogamy, it's there, waiting to berediscovered.
So, let me speak up for an endangered menu item this Fourth ofJuly, and that is homemade potato salad.
When the family meets this weekend to hobnob and burn burgers,the family member assigned to bring the potato salad is likely goingto walk in with a couple of plastic buckets of yellowish muck boughtat a convenience store, the price stickers still on them, and setthem down with no apology whatsoever.
Or, if they have more disposable income, they'll bring papercontainers full of brownish muck from the natural, organic,sustainable, united, empathetic co-op.
If you bring garbage to share with your family, the least you cando is tell a lie and say, "I couldn't make the potato salad myselfbecause I am bipolar and my lover left me and my dog has leukemiaand I have an oozing leprous sore on my mixing hand."
It is not that hard to make potato salad, people.
Take half an hour away from your Facebook page and do the jobright. Boil some eggs, chop the celery and chives and green onions,boil the potatoes, make your mayonnaise, maybe toss in a little sourcream, use plenty of dill, and sprinkle paprika on top. The eerie,yellow, store-bought stuff in the tubs was manufactured atAmalgamated Salad in Houston by undocumented 12-year-olds from thehills of Michoacan. Worse, it is teaching our children thataccomplishment doesn't matter.
A child served yellow slop from a bucket is being told that it'sOK to plagiarize a term paper off the Internet, so long as it'spoorly written.
What if Thomas Jefferson had been too busy hobnobbing to writethe Declaration of Independence. So, he just downloaded a bunch ofstuff he found Googling "independence" and came up with stuff aboutindolence, pendants, incontinence. But hey, close enough, and hepasted it together and they all signed it and went out to a movie?Not good.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for onepeople to dissolve the potato salad that has connected them withanother, they will do it, believe me, so why insult us? Just becausewe're polite, do you think we can't tell the difference? Are wedemented? Does this not seem self-evident to you?
Attend to the details. Teach your children manners. Write cogentparagraphs. Drive carefully. And make a good potato salad, one withsome crunch, maybe accompanied by a fried drumstick with cracklyskin -- the humble potato and the stupid chicken, ennobled bydiligent cooking. Is this not the meaning of our beautiful country,to take what is common and enable it to become beautiful?
All our beautiful young people -- so diligent and focused andpowered by hope -- you can't tell me those kids didn't have parentswho took time to chop the celery and onions and experiment with theratio of mayo to mustard to achieve a potato salad that is worthy ofour Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heardSaturdays on public radio stations. Write to him at Tribune MediaService, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Buffalo, N.Y. 14207. E-mail:oldscout@prairiehome.us.
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