WLT by Garrison Keillor Page A

your bed and hold your hand.
    BECKY: Oh, and there was a nice lady who said to say hello to you. Her name was Benson too. Florence Benson.
    DAD: Mom!
    He rang up the Home and found out Mom had passed peacefully from this life a few minutes before. The first person to come bearing condolences was Miss Judy, who brought a pan of fresh banana bread and Becky’s geography lesson (South America) and fixed a pot of coffee and told Dad that he should always feel free to count on her.

    WLT got a ton of letters, and Patsy got a note from Ray: “You win, but no more deathbeds for awhile. I’m not as young as I used to be.” And Ray got a note from Katherine Doud (Mom) who was angry that her character had dropped dead and told Ray that Dad had promised her that Mom would stay in the Home until she, Katherine, was off the bottle. “He is a dirty rotten liar and a cheat and maybe it’s time you know that he is having an affair with Faith Snelling, Dale’s wife,” she wrote. Dad? In the sack with Jo? Ray sent Katherine some money and told her that when she got on the wagon for good she could return for one episode as Becky’s New York mom, visiting Elmville to take the wretched child home. He would pay her handsomely for it.
    If the fans loved Little Becky before, they were even crazier about her after her terrible illness. They baked pies and cakes for her by the hundreds, enough to keep the oldsters at the Ebenezer Home stuffed for weeks, and they wrote her bags and bags of mail.
    Most of the letters expressed thanks to God, advised her to dress warmly, and said that she was their favorite radio performer, but a different letter arrived one day from Mindren, North Dakota. It said:
    August 16, 1939
    Dear Becky,
    My name is Francis With, I am almost eleven years of age, and I reside in Mindren with my mother and daddy, my sister Jodie, and my Grampa. We all listen to your program every day while we have our lunch and we think that it is quite agreeable. My uncle Art works for WLT. Perhaps you have made his acquaintance. His name is Art Finn.
    I think it would be remarkable if you and Dad made a trip to New York City and spent a week there. You could have a delightful time, and it would be elucidating for the rest of us. I hear that New York is a thrilling location.
    My Grampa is Danish, born in Aalborg, and if Mr. Benson wished to relate the story of Grampa’s journey here and how he met my grandmother (dead now, alas) on the program, I would be pleased to send you the story. Please let me or Mr. Art Finn know if this would be suitable. (It’s a good story.)
    Yours very sincerely,
Francis With
    The letter arrived at WLT in the pocket of the writer. It was his first trip to Minneapolis, his first trip anywhere alone, and he wore a blue jacket and a red tie in honor of the occasion, and a tie tack with a rhinestone. Uncle Art and Aunt Clare met him at the Great Northern Depot and took him home with them, and the next day he and Art went to the top of the Foshay Tower, thirty-one stories high, and stood on the observation deck buffeted by winds and gazed out over the green wooded city to Lakes Calhoun and Harriet and Nokomis and beyond to the farms of Hopkins and Richfield, and then they came to WLT.
    â€œHere’s my radio station here, Franny. That’s where I work. I run that. That’s what I do,” Art said, wheeling into the parking lot behind the Hotel Ogden, waving to the attendant.
    â€œI know,” said Francis.
    They took the back stairs up past the Ballroom, the big log stage empty, a thousand empty seats, and up to the third floor to watch Friendly Neighbor from the control room.
    â€œDon’t be too shocked,” Art said. “Little Becky ain’t so little.”
    But Francis was dazzled by everything— This was where it all came from —the engineers at the control board, three of them, one to man the big black volume knobs, one to run the turntables