We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor

(2:00—6:00 P.M.)—either “Mellow Yellow” by Donovan or “Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell. The song would be played and then the word “Skeezix.”
    Being an information officer meant that I knew a great deal, and having a popular radio show meant that I was in a position to sway minds, and so, in the event of enemy capture, I was prepared to take cyanide. On the golf course, I kept it hidden in a fake ball (I always used my dad’s Top-Flites, but one ball, which could be pried open to reveal the deadly white pill wound with string in the core, was marked “Top Flight”—a discrepancy a Russian would never notice), and in the radio station I kept the cyanide in a tiny slit cut in the foam rubber around the microphone. All I had to do was lean forward and bite. It wasn’t easy playing music knowing that death was always two inches from my lips, but I did it. And then one day the war was over. I was out of the Guard and in Congress.
    All of us knew that if the President had pursued an all-out strategy to win the war and had unleashed the ING against the Vietcong, the outcome would have been very different, but we were never allowed to go. We never blamed the President for it—his hands were tied by the press and the protesters—but the tragedy is that we never got the chance to get over there and get the job done.
    Twenty years later, millions of Indiana National Guardsmen suffer from postwar regret, waking up in the middle of the night with an urge to go out in the rain and hunker down in the mud, to hold a gun and use a walkie-talkie, and for a while I felt bad like that, too, and made a point of playing golf in extremely hot weather and not drinking enough liquids, deliberately pushing myself toward the edge. It was on a real scorcher of a day, playing the Gary Country Club, that I met Colonel Mills for the last time. He was dressed in regulation green and yellow, blasting out of a sand trap and up a steep hill to a small green sloping to the back and surrounded with boulders and accordion wire. He made a perfect shot and turned and saw me and we exchanged the traditional National Guard wink. (Russians do not wink and therefore would fail to comprehend this signal.)
    â€œHow’s civilian life treating you?” he asked. I told him how I felt and he stood there and gave me a dressing-down that I’ll always be grateful for.
    â€œYou should be proud, soldier,” he said. “You served honorably. You never went AWOL. You didn’t go to Canada. You didn’t burn the flag. You never embezzled money while on duty, never aimed a loaded gun at a crowd of innocent bystanders, never looted a town in a disaster area (though there were plenty of opportunities), never raped a helpless woman. No prosecutor ever returned an indictment against you. Accept the rewards of a grateful nation.” And he turned on his heel and went straight up and over the hill and I never saw him again. About three years after that, I actually did go to Canada for a weekend. It was my first time, a fact-finding trip. It was okay, but based on what I saw I was glad that I hadn’t gone there previously.

HOW THE SAVINGS AND LOANS WERE SAVED
    T HE PRESIDENT WAS playing badminton in Aspen the day vast hordes of barbaric Huns invaded Chicago, and a reporter whose aunt lives in Evanston shouted to him as he headed for the clubhouse, “The Huns are wreaking carnage in Chicago, Mr. President! Any comment?”
    Mr. Bush, though caught off guard by news of the invasion, said, “We’re following that whole Hun situation very closely, and right now it looks encouraging, but I’m hoping we can get back to you in a few hours with something more definite. ” The President appeared concerned but relaxed and definitely chins up and in charge.
    As he spoke, the good citizens of Chicago were fortifying the Loop and organizing scalding-oil brigades, but their caldrons