By Henry Passenger
October 21, 2009 - 10:28 a.m. EST

My daughter was fortunate enough a couple of weeks ago to win a pair of tickets to "An Evening With Garrison Keillor" at the Henry Ford in Dearborn. I was fortunate enough to accompany her.

For those not familiar with Keillor, he is a Minnesota story teller who has created the fictional town of Lake Wobegone, in the hinterlands of Minnesota, and populated by its unique cast. Woebegone’s activities are recounted for about 15 or 20 minutes of Keillor’s two-hour American Public Radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion."

His radio audience now runs in the millions.

My first brush with fame was an opportunity to talk to Keillor face-to-face before the dinner, during which we discussed briefly his recovery from a mini-stroke just three weeks earlier. He’s a very personable man, but he isn’t comfortable with idle chit-chatting with strangers. (I can relate to that; I don’t like that setting either).

I’ve long been a Keillor fan and that performance reinforced my view and appreciation of the man’s skill.

His stage at the Ford, which he shared with his St. Paul radio composer-keyboardist Rich Dworsky, was in front of a B-17 suspended from the ceiling. This triggered a side-splitting story about having to give up a first class air ticket to a fellow traveler, jamming him into the coach section between a pair of far-from-petite and very talkative fliers.

Just beyond the divider at the edge of the room was the museum’s auto display which included a white 1956 Cadillac. This led Keillor to lament the auto industry’s decision to replace the bench seats, so popular with the high school dating crowd of that era, with awkward bucket seats.

He spotted a fleur-de-lis logo which led to recollections of a Boy Scout 40-below campout and all its complications.

The sound system went out.

Keillor immediately noted Rosa Parks’ bus in a neighboring section of the museum and launched into a rendition of "We Shall Overcome," followed by his on-the-spot rewrite of the lyrics tying in the events of the evening (I wish I’d had the presence of mind to write them down.)

He has a quick mind and can spin an appropriate story at the drop of a hat.

My second brush with fame was a chance to talk to Dworsky afterward and ask him about rehearsals. There was hardly any way that Keillor could have known in advance about the Cadillac, the B-17, the Rosa Parks bus, the fleur-de-lis.

"I’ve heard a lot of it (the monologue) in bits and pieces," he said, "but I never know until he gets up there what the sequence is going to be."

"Is that hard?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "as long as I can keep up with him, it’s okay."

And Dworsky does keep up with him - a formidable task.

What did I bring back from this two-hour event?

An autographed copy of Keillor’s latest book, "Pilgrims"; memories of individual conversations with a pair of national personalities and two weeks of lingering pneumonia.

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Quips ‘n’ Quotes: The late comedian Groucho Marx once noted, "If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again."

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Henry Passenger’s column appears each Wednesday in the Tuscola County Advertiser. He can be reached at hbp35@sbcglobal.net