Away On A Far-out Father's Day Fantasy

Women say, "Why don't you talk to me anymore? I wish you'd tell me what's going on with you!" so I start talking (like now) and they say, "How can you say that?" This is our dilemma.

It's like the time I tried to celebrate the Fourth of July in Copenhagen. I invited 50 friends to a BBQ. Took me two days to find a butcher shop that sells pork ribs. Danes don't eat ribs. But Chinese Danes do, and I found a Chinese butcher shop near Trepkasgade and bought all the ribs in his freezer. Then I had to find Tabasco sauce. I whomped up the ribs, the Danes came and scarfed them all down and got a little drunk, and we sent a few dozen rockets flying over the beach, and then in the spirit of the Glorious Fourth I said something mean about Queen Margrethe (You Don't Do That There) and they blanched and pretended I was invisible.

So that's why I'm heading out to the territories. I'm going to join up with the gang out near Yellow Gulch, saddle up and go. I want to be with people who know the words to the same songs I know and those songs are "Freight Train" and "Me and Bobby McGee" and "Hobo's Lullaby" and "This World Is Not My Home (I'm Only Passing Through)," songs about hearing the lonesome whistle blow, high-tailing it out of here, feeling the wind in your face, driving through little farm towns and not stopping and seeing the envy in their eyes. The journey is the reward and don't you ever stop.

Back on Monday.

Garrison Keillor's column appears regularly in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is [e-mail].