Exile On Main Street

By Garrison Keillor

I was in Chicago recently, in front of a big crowd, and gave the folks the chance to sing a song (to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic), and they went for it like it was free beer.

It's time for working people to rise up and defeat The brokers and the bankers and the media elite And all the educated bums in paneled office suites And throw them in the street.

People sang this with great gusto, even the swells down front in the $60 seats. They sang verses denouncing the East Coast liberal aristocracy (which rhymes with Washington, D.C.) and "We'll take them out of first class and with a mighty cheer/ We'll send them to the rear" and a verse about Bush and Gore ("We'll make them work the night shift in a 7-Eleven store/ And let them clean the toilets and let them scrub the floor") and another verse against "the media, those mighty millionaires/ Who weave their little fictions sitting on their derrieres" and the chorus, of course, about truth marching on. The rabble got highly aroused, and some people could hardly contain their joy as they sang:

Let's reverse the social order-- oh, wouldn't it be cool? Down with management and let the secretaries rule. Let the cleaning ladies sit around the swimming pool, Send the bosses back to school.

Of course it was only in fun, but there was real heat in the crowd, good old populism blowing off steam, and after the concert, when the limo took me back to the hotel, I slumped down in the seat lest I be seen.

Everyone knows that in this country, if you have nothing, nobody wants to have anything to do with you, and if you have everything you could possibly want, people can't do enough for you. The rich are showered with lovely gifts; the poor scrape hard for bus fare. A Park Avenue divorce case is fought by platoons of talented lawyers; a man up for murder in Texas is represented by a clown in a green polyester suit. The hemorrhoids of the wealthy are treated like diamonds, while the poor lie gasping in hospital hallways. The guiding principle of American life is: don't dare not have money.

On the other hand, populist though you be, you don't entrust your life savings to a friendly guy named Bud whom you met this morning at the bus depot. You prefer men named Calvin who work in buildings with pillars.

Years ago, I did a publicity tour for a book that started creeping up the best-seller list, and as it crept higher, my accommodations got nicer and nicer until I was staying in stately hotels with real art on the walls and towels as big as blankets and where the answer to every question is, "Yes, sir. My pleasure, sir. Right away, sir." Black Lincolns waited at the curb, maitre d's whisked me to secluded corners, and I never saw a bill. Everything was handled quietly, out of sight. I went around for a week with $40 in my pocket, unspent.

After the tour, I went to a friend's house at a famous ski resort in Utah for a weekend, a half-million-dollar house with timbered ceilings and high windows with views of snowy peaks and tall pines. And here, alone on a chill March afternoon, I discovered what it's like at the bottom. A simple tale. After lunch, I took off all my clothes and went out to the hot tub, and the door closed behind me and locked. I sat in the hot water for an hour or so, thinking that Santa might drop in, or the Lone Ranger, or St. Jude, and when they didn't, I wrapped myself in a blue plastic tarp off the woodpile and trudged (barefoot) down the road (gravel) and knocked on doors and pleaded for help.

A naked man wrapped in blue plastic does not win friends easily. I knocked on the doors of five homes with lights on and cars in the driveway, and nobody showed his face. What Mark Twain said is true: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. I waved in an urgent way to three men driving by in a pickup, and they managed not to make eye contact and drove on. At the fifth house, a woman came to the door and opened it a crack. She agreed to call my friend's office. She didn't invite me in, though I was shivering, or offer tea or a lift back to the hot-tub house. I'd been schmoozing on national TV the week before, and now I was a pariah in Utah.

I hiked half a mile back to the hot tub and was rescued an hour later, and that was the parable of the naked man in the blue plastic. The moral is: Have mercy when you're riding high; things have a way of changing suddenly. Ever since then, I have braked for the naked.