- The following program is a PBS Wisconsin
original production.
[footsteps brushing snow]
[closes trunk]
*
- Hit the road with Wisconsin's own Michael Perry.
- I've pretty much quadrupled the value of the tour van.
Put new tires on it last week.
So, we are rollin' in style!
- As he travels to Menomonie and Stoughton.
- Michael Perry: All this excitement about electric cars...
Yeah, I see your Tesla there, Spanky.
We've been plugging in our cars since about 1952 so...
[laughter, applause]
- Telling some of his favorite stories.
- But you live in Wisconsin.
And I say, "Yeah, and we have a open border agreement
with Minnesota." [laughter]
- And sharing passages from his books.
- At the earliest edges of my memory, my father is plowing,
and I'm running behind him.
That's one of the most important paragraphs,
to me, that I've ever written.
- Ride along with Mike as he muses about life.
- I do have some rules about coffee.
Number one, you don't put anything in it.
I don't want to hear about, "Do you want room for cream?"
[chuckles]
- It's Michael Perry: On the Road.
*
- Funding for this program
is provided by
Stanley J. Cottrill Fund,
the A.C.V. and Mary Elston Family,
the Eleanor and Thomas Wildrick Family,
Wooden Nickel Fund,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
*
[applause]
- Audience: Whoo!
Whoo!
- Audience Member: Hi, Mike! [laughter]
- How's she going there? [laughter]
I'm going to begin this evening with a reading.
In what I have come to count as my earliest memory,
I am backing away from a dog.
It is a short-haired dog,
a herding dog,
and it has backed me down the dark end of a barn.
The dog is likely just curious,
but her eyes are steadfast,
and she advances with her nose extended stiffly.
There is no sound but the flat-footed scrape of my heels
as I edge them behind me like curb feelers.
Far away up the concrete walk,
the barn door is an open rectangle of light,
but the dog is yielding nothing.
The dog moves in, chesty and intent.
I edge back again,
and this time, there's nothing beneath my heels.
I tumble backward into the gutter.
The dog spooks at the sudden movement,
dipping her haunches and flaring to one side,
but shortly, her nose is poking along the gutter edge above me.
I can see whitewashed rafters.
The manure is mud-bath soft, and blackstrap dark.
[laughter]
Above all, it smells sweet.
It is not so deep that I am in any danger,
but I am well over three-quarters marinated.
[laughter]
I don't remember any panic or fear.
Perhaps because I had broken the spell of the dog,
but I must have called out
because my father appeared and pulled me from the muck.
I was soon stripped of my togs
and shivering under the garden hose.
I assume the smell tarried well into the week.
[laughter]
I have a buddy who has watched his farm become a suburb.
He gets hassled now when he runs his manure spreader.
People object to the smell.
Things change.
I'm not going to get elegiac.
But I'm glad cow manure
is one of the trace elements of my existence.
It inoculated me against everything to follow.
Gave me an organic sense of calibration.
Wherever I am, whatever I face,
I think of me looking up and that dog looking down.
[laughter]
What a delightful place to start.
[laughter and applause]
*
I love the road;
I always have.
I was lucky.
I grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin,
but I had a grandfather who took us traveling.
Even my father,
he took me on my first real trip out west to Wyoming,
and we drove out there.
Was 16 years old; just got my license.
And I really got hooked on
the road and movement and motion.
I kind of am split between two worlds.
I love being home
in my quiet little room on our little farm
and not seeing anybody,
but I also love the wide-open road.
It's a freedom thing; there's no question.
When you reach my level, you have a dedicated tour van.
In this case, a 2002 Toyota Sienna
that used to be the family minivan,
and then it got demoted.
So, I took the seats out of the back,
and I put a cargo net behind me
so that I don't get killed by my own books,
which would be ironical.
[ignition catches]
This is pretty much it,
whether it's the band or the books--
and usually, it's both--
I just throw it all in the back of this van, and off we go.
So, I come from a little place just north here
called New Auburn, unless you grew up there.
Then, it's called "Nobbern."
[laughter]
And I always say,
no matter where I'm standing when I say it,
I am grateful to be of and from New Auburn.
I wouldn't be here
if it wasn't for a book called Population 485, and...
[cheers and applause]
Population 485 is that old "Can you go home again?" book.
It's been written many, many times
by many different people many different ways.
In my case, I wrote about going back
to my hometown of New Auburn
after being away for 12 years.
Since that book has come out,
I've received numerous emails and letters
and right up to the present.
Just got one last week.
And they invariably follow a certain pattern.
They say, you know, we read your book
about life in the small town, and we loved it.
We loved it so much that we've sold everything
and we're moving to a small town.
[laughter]
And I always say, "Well, hang on there, Spanky.
"'Cuz small towns have long memories.
"You can be 50 years old trying to live down
something that happened when you was 15...
in the gravel pit."
[laughter]
And even me, when I moved back, I was--
I was a little uncertain because I'd been away for 12 years.
I didn't know how I was gonna fit in
'cause, like, what I like to say is that
when I left New Auburn,
I was a good student,
a fair defensive end,
and a farm boy.
I returned 12 years later a long-haired writer
with soft hands and a nursing degree.
[laughter]
So, there's a certain amount of street cred to recover
with some of my buddies in the deer-huntin' crowd.
[laughter]
I've since had to update the anecdote specifically
as it pertains to the long hair.
Ah...
For years, I had long hair, waist length.
There's two reasons I no longer have long hair.
And the first, sadly,
is just generalized crop failure.
[laughter]
Just got to the point where there was no point.
[laughter]
And the other reason is that it was still real long in back,
but it started to get very thin on top,
and I remember looking in the mirror one day, and I said,
"You know, you really ought to cut it off.
You're headed for the Ben Franklin look."
[laughter]
But I hadn't made the move yet.
And then, we got paged out to fight a grass fire
on the railroad track south of town.
Now, I was right up in the teeth of the flames
as a volunteer firefighter,
fighting from the black
as any well-trained wildland firefighter
will tell you that you must.
But I was right up in there.
And all of a sudden, one of the other firefighters
ran up and started patting me.
Now, normally, you don't get a lot of that.
[laughter]
So I said, "What are you doin'?"
And he said, "Man, your hair's on fire."
[laughter]
And indeed, it was crackling right along.
So, at that point, I thought, "You know,
if it ain't falling out, it's bursting into flames."
So, I just cut it all off.
But I wound up on the fire department
for a specific reason.
When I moved back, as I said, I was not the same guy
when I came back to New Auburn as I was when I left,
but I wanted to be part of the community.
Part of the problem there is that I'm pretty much a loner.
My happiest place in the world is alone in my room,
just writing,
And when I moved back to New Auburn,
I didn't belong to any of the local churches.
I don't drink, so I didn't go to any of the local taverns.
I don't bowl.
I don't play softball.
And I can't polka. [laughter]
So there really wasn't much left
except to join the local volunteer fire department.
Now, I work with a lot of folks on the coast,
mostly New York and the East Coast,
but also, occasionally, a few people from LA,
and they find out
that I'm still on the volunteer fire department,
and they say, "Oh, you must be very brave and noble,"
and I always say, "Eh...
not especially."
And then, I explain to them
that in a town like New Auburn,
a guy like me ends up on fire department
because I got the two things they're looking for:
a pulse and a valid driver's license.
[laughter]
Plus, I'm home a lot during the day, so...
[laughter]
But anyways, they're always, "Oh, yeah, you're so brave and noble."
And I, and I also, I also have to explain
that when I moved back to New Auburn,
my two brothers and my mom
were already on the fire department.
[laughter]
So, it's really just kind of a peer pressure situation.
I just didn't want to be the only one with no stories.
[laughter, acoustic guitar]
Somehow, I've developed this odd little career.
I don't really even know what to call it.
I mean, I'm certainly--
I'm not famous.
Now my name is recognizable in certain discreet circles,
um... often involving...
public radio tote bags.
[laughter]
But also, I'm happy and proud and grateful to say
also some... some feedbags.
I've shaken some nice calloused hands at these events.
But I am not famous.
I used to write about famous people.
I spend a lot of time in the company of famous people,
observing them, traveling with them.
I know famous; I am not famous.
When I walk into the Farm & Fleet,
I don't take security or nothing.
I just... [laughter]
I just walk right in there, man of the people.
[laughter]
And the thing is, if you do for even a moment,
at least in my experience,
let yourself think you are getting famous,
karma has a way of cutting you down to size almost immediately.
I have a couple of stories about that.
When Population 485 first came out,
it started doing better than anybody expected, including me,
and they just kept extending my book tour.
And it went from being a Midwestern book tour
to further and further or farther and farther--
we'll let the copy editor sort that out.
But anyways, they just kept adding on dates,
and I wound up in Nashville.
So, I drive into Nashville in my rental car.
I get to the bookstore in Nashville.
There's 35 people came to see me in Nashville.
That's a pretty big number
for an unknown writer from the Midwest.
So, that night, when I left Nashville,
headed for my next stop, Memphis.
When I left Nashville, I thought
35 people came out to see me in Nashville.
The 'Mike Train' is rollin'!
[laughter]
So, I was very excited to see what awaited me in Memphis.
This is back when publishers still had money,
and they actually put you on tour,
and they put me up in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.
Very famous hotel.
Very shishi.
I got there and very tired.
At that time, I had long scraggly hair.
I wasn't dressed as nice as I am tonight. [laughter]
And if you know about the Peabody Hotel,
the thing that makes them famous:
It's an ornate old hotel, but they have the ducks.
The ducks live on the roof in their little duck house.
And then, at some point during the day,
or maybe more than once a day, they come down the elevator,
and they roll out a red carpet,
and they waddle across the red carpet
into the fountain in the center of the hotel lobby there.
And it's a very world-famous thing,
and people gather to see them.
So I get in at three in the morning.
I had to get up at six or something for--
It was really early,
and then, I think I snuck back in for a nap.
The point is, at some point, I was checking out.
I grabbed my suitcase, my roller bag, and my backpack,
and I got my long hair,
and I look like I've only slept for three hours,
and drove in from Nashville the night before.
And I get on the... I get on the elevator.
And I'm thinking about Nashville, you know.
There's a lot of momentum building around this book,
and we get down to the first floor, and the doors open,
and there's just this explosion of cameras and people
and a red carpet, and I thought,
"Oprah called." [laughter]
And then, all the flashes just died down.
Everybody looked at me with great disappointment.
I realized I got on the duck elevator.
[laughter]
But my favorite story
about getting cut down to size fame-wise
is only about three weeks old.
So, my father-in-law's name is Brad.
My father-in-law owns some property adjacent to ours,
and he was, he was cutting trees.
He needs a new chainsaw.
So, he's a former executive.
So, he called me to say, "I need a new chainsaw.
What do you recommend?"
I said, "Well, you're talking to the wrong Perry boy.
But my brother Jed's a logger."
I said, "I'll call Jed, and I'll ask him what he recommends."
So, I call my brother Jed,
and he gives us all these great recommendations
very specific to what my father-in-law's looking for.
And then, at the end, my brother says,
and he goes, "If you really want good service
and a good guy take good care of you,"
he says, "Go on up there to...
"Go on up there to Bruce, Wisconsin
and go to Walt's Gun & Saw and ask for Brad."
So, I now have this beautiful story
where I'm going to send Brad up to talk to Brad
in Bruce at Walt's Gun & Saw.
[laughter]
Some of this stuff writes itself.
[laughter]
So, my father-in-law, my father-in-law, Brad,
goes up to Bruce to see Brad at Walt's Gun & Saw.
And Brad is very helpful to Brad,
and he gets him a wonderful chainsaw.
Gets him all set up.
He's all ready to go.
And Brad of Walt's Gun & Saw says to Brad, my father-in-law,
"Well, how'd you hear about us?"
And my father-in-law says, "Well,
my son-in-law's brother recommended you."
And Brad of the saw shop says, "Well, what's his name?"
And my father-in-law said, "Jed Perry."
[in a deep voice] "Oh, Jed, he's a good guy.
"Heck of a logger!
"Yah, he's a gem, that Jed.
Well, what's your son-in-law's name?"
"Mike Perry."
"Never heard of him."
[laughter]
I have a setlist.
A few sheets of paper with some notes
in case I need to refer to something,
but honestly, I've made a living
out of going off on tangents.
It's not really a set list.
It's a hint list.
So, at some point, I'll just be talking and telling stories,
and I'll check my phone to see what time it is and go,
"Hey, probably gotta wrap it up.
Yeah."
The story I'm going to tell now,
I don't have any smooth way to fit it in
except to say it's just a perfect example
of how grateful I am that I grew up in a place
that wasn't so perfect and smooth.
Now, in high school, I ran track.
Matter of fact, I think it was my senior year,
I was the track team. [laughter]
This is it!
And I ran the mile and the two-mile,
and it wasn't bad, and I was competitive.
And one of my main competitors
was a kid from Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin.
And he and I were always neck and neck.
And so, the story I'm going to tell
is that we had a track meet up in Weyerhaeuser.
And the Weyerhaeuser track coach,
he was not your prototypical distance athlete coach.
Some people in this room might have even known him.
He was a very kind man, very beloved, but he, well,
he had-- he wore the little satin track team jacket,
you know, but it kind of only came to here.
[laughter]
Plus, he burned a lot of heaters.
So, we go up to Weyerhaeuser for this track meet
and what I'm building up to here
is just one of my favorite quotes of all time.
We go up to Weyerhaeuser for the track meet.
Now, Weyerhaeuser doesn't have a track.
At least, they didn't then.
What they did is they sent the janitor out
with that, you know, a little cart that makes the white lines. [laughter]
He just made lanes around the football field.
So, the lines are kind of crooked.
Plus, he didn't so much have turns
as just, he just had corners.
[laughter]
So, like, you'd be running the mile, and then, you just--
[laughter]
So, honestly, I'm not make--
I can make fun of Weyerhaeuser.
New Auburn didn't even have a track either
until... I think it was my senior year,
they put in an asphalt track.
And I'd been training really hard,
and I was excited to see--
in the off-season, I'd been training--
I was excited to see if I'd made any progress.
And the first day of practice
on our brand-new track there in New Auburn,
the coach is timing my 400 splits,
and they're off the charts.
And I'm so happy because I worked so hard all summer.
And then, we figured out that when they made the track,
they did the math wrong.
[laughter]
The track was short,
but... [laughter]
It was exciting there for a while, man.
[laughter]
Thought I was going to the Olympics.
[laughter]
But anyways, one of my favorite quotes of all time was
we went to-- So, I'm up the Weyerhaeuser,
and I'm running the two-mile.
And me and my buddy from Weyerhaeuser,
we're neck and neck as usual,
and it's down to the last couple of laps.
And if you run distance at all, especially the two-mile,
once you're in the last two laps,
you'd do anything to make it stop.
You're just... you're in oxygen debt.
It just hurts.
You would love to just run off into the trees and disappear.
But we're competing, and we're running.
We're making those square corners.
[laughter]
And we come up to the second to last corner,
and we're both just digging for everything we've got.
And the Weyerhaeuser track coach standing there at the corner.
He's got a little jacket,
you know, * Fat guy in a little coat
And we run past him in a world of hurt,
and he just goes, [mock inhales on cigarette, exhales]
[in gravelly voice] "Come on, guys, pick it up!"
[laughter]
[strumming guitar]
Last night, I was at the Mabel Tainter Theater
in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
It's a lovely place.
I've played there many times.
One of my cousins got married there.
The way it's built, it's quite intimate.
The balcony is real steep and almost overhead,
and so, you really feel a closeness with the audience.
And, you know, I kind of had to give her that one. [laughter]
Last night was one of those nights
where it seemed like every little aside,
every little punchline
got a ten-time bigger laugh than normal.
[laughter, applause]
You feel,
within the first two, three minutes,
you get that vibe,
you hear that extra punch to the laughs,
and it really kind of frees you up.
You get that floating sensation,
and you feel free to say things you normally wouldn't say
and take little chances and get little extra laughs.
Last night just felt really nice,
and I think we were all ready to laugh, too.
I had won
what really can only be classified
as the highest literary achievement available
in the greater Chippewa County area.
And that is that I have submitted and had accepted
and read live on the air
several liners for 'Moose Country 106.7.'
[laughter, applause]
So has my brother. [laughter]
I'm about the fourth funniest person in the family.
I'm just the only one who couldn't fix stuff.
But anyways, if you're familiar, and apparently some of you are,
the liners on Moose is, it's always the premise,
"If you're something, then you're one of us."
- Audience: Yeah!
- "If your first date involved a two-for-one coupon,
[laughter]
"you're one of us.
"If you've ever lost your wedding ring in a parts washer,
you're one of us." [laughter]
I once lost my wedding ring in a sheep.
[laughter]
There's not enough time this evening.
[laughter]
"If you've ever used a hunk of firewood as an emergency brake,
[laughter] you're one of us."
"If you ever got caught taste testin' a salt block..."
[laughter]
Yeah!
[laughter]
I like them maroon ones, you know,
because they got mineral in them,
and... yah.
But they don't like it if you do it
right there in the Farm & Fleet.
[laughter]
"If you gotta start a grass fire to locate your lawn mower,
[laughter]
you're one of us."
And the last one for now,
and this one's a tad more esoteric.
It doesn't always get the biggest laugh,
but it gets the right kind of laugh
from the right kind of people.
"If all your finest silverware says,
"Compliments of Citizens Telephone Cooperative,
[laughter]
you're one of us."
[applause]
Is everything in these stories true?
I'm going to say 92% accuracy.
Now, that's not about truth.
I have no interest making up facts to get a laugh.
And I'm deadly serious about that.
'Cause if you can't be funny with a real story,
then you should, you know,
announce that you're doing fiction,
and then, go do funny fiction.
That's cool, too.
I can speak to the experience
of telling a story over and over
and it takes little turns over time
that you don't even realize it's taking.
[laughter]
If you grew up like I did,
and I know a lot of you did,
nothing's funnier than somebody getting hurt.
[laughter]
If your buddy gets hit in the head with a monkey wrench,
once you determine that he's still breathing
and probably going to be able to walk again,
well, then, nothing's funnier than
your buddy getting hit in the head with a monkey wrench. [laughter]
That's just how I grew up.
We had a neighbor.
Jerry, his name was, and he's a old farmer,
Eastern European immigrant farmer.
Very-- He was the walking definition of the word stolid:
very sturdy, very quiet, very hardworking,
very kind, very thoughtful, a wonderful neighbor...
But there was only one thing
that would really make him laugh,
and that was you getting hurt.
I remember I was filling silo with him one time.
We's hooking up the blower,
and I stood up underneath that downspout a little too quickly,
and I just rang it like a church bell.
And I'm standing there, kind of weaving around,
trying to get my bearings.
I look over, and there's old Jerry
with his thumbs hooked behind his overalls.
He's going... [slightly suppresses his laughter]
And, eventually, he just goes, "You going to be alright? [snickers]
[laughter]
And I said, "Oh, I think so,"
and he just fell apart laughing.
But then, I got my revenge on him.
'Cause Jerry had a herd of 35 beautiful Holstein milk cows,
and they were the love of his life
and the pride of his operation.
And, unfortunately,
there came a day when his very best milk cow took ill.
It was clear she was not going to get any better,
and furthermore, she was now in a bunch-- a lot of pain.
And so, he did what you do in those days.
He called my brother, and he said, "Can you come over,
bring your deer rifle, and put this cow out of her misery?"
And so, my brother comes over and with his deer rifle,
and he walks up into the manger, and he dispatches the cow.
And now, of course, you have to remove the dead cow
from the stanchion and the barn.
And so, my brother gets a tractor.
And he backs it up to the barn door,
and he hooks a cable to the back of the tractor,
and then, he runs it to the cow.
And he gets takes a hitch around one of the cow's hind legs,
and then, he gets back on the trailer or the tractor.
And very slowly, trying, honestly, to be respectful,
he just very slowly starts dragging this cow
out of the stanchion.
Meanwhile, poor Jerry is standing there,
thumbs behind his overalls,
looking down at his very best milk cow
as it is being dragged lifeless from the stanchion.
What Jerry doesn't notice
is that the cable has pulled
the cow's one hind leg that way,
the other hind leg has got hung up in the stanchion,
and it's being bent back like the arm on a giant catapult.
And when the hoof cleared the stanchion,
it whipped around and smashed him right in the kneecap.
[laughter]
So now, he's bouncing around on one leg,
tears streaming down his face,
and my brother stops the tractor,
and he says, "You gonna be alright?"
[laughter]
And Jerry says, "I think so."
And my brother says,
"'Cause I got one more shell."
[laughter]
[applause]
And I've told that story for 15 years.
And about 10 years into telling it,
I told it in front of my brother, who was there.
He went down a list when I got done.
He's like, "Well, the cow didn't kick him in the knee.
"It kicked him in the ankle.
"It wasn't a thirty aught six; It was a three oh eight."
You know, "It wasn't your brother.
It was me."
So, what was fascinating about that is
we both agree the story happened.
We both agree a dead cow kicked a guy.
It's a funny story; It's a true story.
But little details sometimes slip and slide.
I really, truly, I want you to know
that if I'm telling you a story that's funny,
it really happened,
and it was real people.
[click, beep]
[playful acoustic guitar]
[click]
I'm one of those coffee snobs you've heard about.
I don't mind admitting it.
That said, when you're on the road,
any coffee will do,
including bad gas station coffee
or bad truck stop coffee.
But one of the beautiful things
about the last 20 years being on the road
is that even certain gas station coffee
is pretty dang good at this point.
I tell you what,
I do have some rules about coffee,
and not everyone's going to agree with me here.
Number one, it's coffee.
Don't put anything in it.
I don't want to hear about, "Do you want room for cream?"
[chuckles]
Are you weak of character?
[chuckles] No, I want it dark, black, and un-mitigated.
I don't like travel mugs.
I don't like drinking out of a tiny little hole.
And I also don't like drinking anything out of plastic.
So, what I do is I get a...
Basically, a paper cup is fine.
That, that does not sully the taste
or interfere with the aroma or the aesthetic experience.
But I don't want to drink it through the cap.
So, of course, what I do is
I remove the cap as soon as possible,
and then, I just drink it straight,
which is why--
and I'm going to ask you not to actually film this--
the entire base of my van is covered with coffee stains
'cause, of course, I invariably spill it.
So, my one brother...
I don't know the number exactly.
I'll get it wrong, but let's just say
before the first one of us three brothers got married,
we had accumulated 102 years of shared bachelorhood.
And my middle brother,
we figured he'd never get married
'cause, as far as we knew, he hadn't been on a date.
Plus, he lived in a tiny little one-room log cabin
that he built himself.
When I say tiny, I'm not just speaking euphemistically.
If you step through the front door,
immediately to your left is a homemade wooden table.
If you then proceed
in a clockwise manner around the complex,
it's a homemade wooden table, stove, sink, refrigerator,
hot water heater, wood stove, chest of drawers,
washer, dryer, bathtub.
Sleeps in a little area up above the purlins.
You'll notice from what I said,
he has running water and electricity.
However, the bathroom
was located in a separate facility
about 40 yards out in the brush.
[laughter]
The other thing you should know about him
is that his only vehicle at the time was a dump truck.
If you invite him over to put a culvert in your driveway,
he will show up in his dump truck.
If you invite him over to play canasta and have hors d'oeuvres,
he will show up in his dump truck.
So, here he is,
living in a one-room log cabin with no indoor toilet,
and his only vehicle is a dump truck.
And yet, somehow,
he has failed to "hook up" on the local dating scene.
[laughter]
And then, one day, out of the blue, I get a call from my mom,
and she says, "We think your brother has a girlfriend."
And I said, "Well, how can this be?"
[laughter]
Because to me, this is like waking up one day
and finding a fifth face on Mount Rushmore.
And she says, "Well, as it turns out,
she has her own dump truck."
[laughter]
So, now, my brothers--
and I mentioned being Scandihoovian stoics--
we don't talk a lot about our feelings with each other.
If there's trouble, we are there for each other,
and we have proven that more than once,
but day to day, we stay out of each other's business.
And same with when-- so, he does indeed--
He starts dating this woman, and I don't ask any questions.
None of my business.
Met her a couple times.
Lovely lady, beautiful dump truck.
[laughter]
But none of my business.
And then, one day, I have to borrow a log chain.
So, I drive out to my brother's place out there in the country.
I go up the little path through the Jack Pines
to the one-room log cabin,
and I find him down on his hands and knees.
He's pouring footings for a tiny little addition,
and I said, "Whaddya doin'?"
And he says, "Uh... puttin' in a bathroom,"
[laughter]
and I thought, "Uh-ho!"
[laughter]
But still none of my business, so I don't ask.
But sure enough, a couple months later,
they announced that they are engaged to be married.
And it turns out that she has agreed to marry him.
She's agreed to move in to this tiny little log cabin,
but first, he must install an indoor toilet.
Now, as the brother
who had been in many relationships up to that point,
all of them train wrecks,
I took him aside and said,
"Well, you see, this is how it starts."
[laughter]
"First, she wants an indoor toilet.
Where does it end?"
[laughter]
But anyways, they--
Basically, she told him, "I'll marry you,
but you gotta put the toilet in first."
They got married at 10 AM on Saturday morning.
He finishes putting in the toilet at 4 PM on Friday.
He calls her to tell her, basically,
"The toilet is in; the wedding is on."
She's not home.
He gets her answering service.
He leaves her message as only my brother can.
He says, "Yeah, I got a message for you."
[laughter]
[roaring laughter]
He left her the ceremonial first flush.
[laughter]
[acoustic guitar]
I learned from my father.
My father was a farmer,
but he also logged, and he had sheep.
And so, he had the milk check, he had the logging check.
If it was a decent year,
he made just enough off the sheep and the wool and the lambs
to pay the property taxes.
Well, your big-wig corporate types
would refer to this as multiple income streams.
I realized that while my book career
has turned into more than I ever anticipated,
I also knew that it would be pretty tough
to make a living just on book royalties.
I couldn't, as a matter of fact.
And so, I just kept expanding it into performing,
telling stories, speaking,
even starting a band.
But none of it happens
if I don't sit down at the desk every day
and create new material and be a writer.
At the earliest edges of my memory,
my father is plowing,
and I'm running behind him.
I see my feet going pat-pat-pat over the soil.
I see my father, left hand on the wheel,
right forearm braced against the fender,
head turning back to check the depth of the plow,
then forward to gauge his progress.
The soil is red and sandy in the high spots
and dark and loamy in the low spots,
where it curls from the plowshares
like strips of licorice,
leaving me this square, shin-deep trough
in which to travel.
I trail the sound of the little tractor,
so close to ground
I can hear the soft plop of the overturned clods.
Now and then, the plow slices the soil so cleanly
that a chubby white grub drops into the furrow, unscathed.
The grubs are translucent white,
their black guts dimly visible
as if through rice paper.
Grackles and cowbirds flock the plow,
pecking through the new-turned dirt.
The grub will not last long.
There is my father on his underpowered Ford Ferguson,
and there is me trotting right behind him,
and there is God above, looking down
as I run the straight groove of the furrow,
my life laid out on a line drawn in the earth.
[cheers and applause]
That's from the book Coop.
That's one of the most important paragraphs, to me,
that I've ever written
because it's such a privilege
to A. have been raised by a loving father,
a stern and strict father
who had principles and expected you to live up to them,
but was always loving and always fair.
And I watched him work so hard.
And yet, I could see the beauty in that work
and that story I tell
about running behind him as he plows;
he's literally creating a line in the earth for me to follow.
The metaphors are just overflowing,
and it's evocative to me,
and I think to a lot of other people.
*
I talk sometimes about,
you know, how we're working hard,
and I got a kid in college, and a kid in braces, and...
But I don't want to pretend that things are--
We're doing fine.
Matter of fact, if you saw the van out there tonight,
we're up to having--
We got two out of four hubcaps,
so I feel like we're really gaining.
[laughter]
Plus, what I like about having two hubcaps:
I mount them both on the same side 'cause that way,
depending on the sort of image I'm trying to project,
[laughter]
If I'm feeling fancy, I might give you some hubcaps.
[laughter]
*
This wall is along the stairs that lead up to the stage,
and after you perform here, you are allowed to sign the wall.
Well, I recognize Steven Wright.
He's a comedian.
Off the sightline, I can see Gillian Welch
signed the wall in 2012.
I see Nanci Griffith, who is a singer-songwriter
that meant so much to me, especially in my early days
when I was first doing a lot of writing.
I would listen to her music over and over.
And then, if you scan around...
Oh!
Michael Perry.
I'm only ever Michael on my books,
when I sign the wall,
or when I'm in trouble with my mom.
A buddy of mine named Billy,
who was in my band for years and years, told me one time...
He goes, "No matter where you're playing,
"no matter what the show is,
"you're creating a moment for people that just exists in time,
and it echoes long after you're done with it."
And that's what I think of when I see all these names
is just that the echoes of all these performances
are still bouncing around in here, out in the world,
and that's what you're hoping for
when you get up on that stage.
Create some echoes that last.
[cheers and applause]
I have two daughters,
and...
So, I met my wife.
She was a single mom, and she had a three-year-old daughter.
And I've said before
that I don't care for the term 'stepdaughter.'
I don't find it offensive.
You won't hurt my feelings if you use it,
but I-- what I've always said about the term 'stepdaughter'
is that that word is perfectly sufficient
in conveying the situation.
It is utterly insufficient in conveying the heart.
And I was given the beautiful gift of a wonderful word by
a rough-neck backwoods-dwelling Vietnam vet poet friend of mine
when he said one day,
"She's not your stepdaughter;
She is your given daughter."
And I think that's a lovely way of putting it,
and that is how I feel about her.
[applause]
That said, she's dangerous.
[laughter] Um...
We had a family meeting a little while ago.
My wife calls family meetings.
I-- I try, I really.
I'm the last one there.
I come dragging in even after the kids.
I really don't want to go to the family meeting.
[laughter] Uh...
And there's always an agenda and stuff,
and we had a family meeting.
This is when my elder daughter was in her teens.
She had her driver's license.
She was driving already to work and to school,
and to volleyball practice.
And one of the things on the list that my wife brought up
is she said, "We need to do a better job of eating leftovers.
"Too many leftovers are just staying in the fridge,
"and that's wasteful.
"And we're not that kind of family,
and we need to make a better effort to eat leftovers."
So, the very next day, I was working in my little office
above the garage there, and it was lunchtime,
and I was pretty hungry.
I hadn't had breakfast.
So, I went in the house, like, "Leftovers.
You can do the right thing."
Open the fridge.
Start pulling out a few leftovers.
And then, I saw in there
one of the leftovers
was one of those little square plastic sandwich containers,
and there was a sandwich in it, and I opened it up.
It's a neatly made sandwich.
even cut, you know, the two triangles.
I thought, "Hmm, must have been something that, you know,
the kid made for school and didn't remember to take it.
So, I'll eat that.
So I go out to my office and eat my lunch in my old green chair.
It's the best place to eat lunch
because as soon as you're done,
you just set the dish down and fall asleep.
But I mean, I start that sandwich,
and something seemed a little off.
The bread was damp.
Not moist.
Damp.
And then, it didn't really taste like I expected.
It didn't taste rotten or bad or anything.
It just kind of tasted not what I expected,
and I even peeled the bread back and looked.
Like, I don't know.
The meat looked a little gray.
But I was really hungry so I just kept eating.
Well, later that afternoon, my wife comes home,
and I'm in the kitchen and, of course,
like all men who barely hit the bar
of doing what they should have done in the first place,
but still expecting a gold star,
I said to my wife, I said, "I ate leftovers for lunch,"
and she's like, "Oh, good."
And I said, "That sandwich tasted kind of funny.
What kind of meat was that?"
She said, "You didn't eat that."
[laughter]
And I said, "Well, yeah, I did.
It was in there with all the other leftovers."
She said, "Oh..."
She goes, "Your daughter, the teenager,
"Brought that home from school the other day, didn't eat it,
"left it out on the counter,
"and it's been there for two days.
"And I only put it in the fridge so that I'd be reminded
to tell her, 'We don't waste food in this family.'"
So now, I started going, "Oh... hmm."
So, for the next couple hours, I just kind of waiting,
but nothing really happens.
Later that evening, my teenager comes home, and I go,
"Now it's time for me to be dad.
It's time to deliver a sermon."
So, we're standing in the kitchen.
She's standing at the door.
I'm standing by the sink, and I said,
"I just wanted to let you know
"that mom wants to talk to you
about that sandwich."
[laughter]
"You left out on the counter for two days.
So then, it's kind of spoiled," I said.
And I could see her turn white,
and I thought, "Well, this is good.
My sermon's having the desired effect."
And she just went, "You ate that?!"
And I said, "Yeah."
She said, "Dad, that's been in my car for two months."
[groans, laughter]
[applause]
[acoustic guitar]
So, sometimes I just gotta 'splain
to them people in New York
that things aren't so smooth out here.
Uh...
But I also like to educate them.
Like, one of my favorite phrases is
I occasionally have to remind those folks out there
that out here in the Midwest,
sometimes we think things up all by ourselves.
- Audience: Whoo! [laughter]
- They're kind.
They mean-- they've changed my life.
They're hardworking folks.
The people I've worked with are great, but again,
just occasionally, you gotta set 'em straight.
One of my favorite stories about that
is most of my book tours is just me and that van.
But occasionally,
if I do a book tour with one of the bigger publishers
and it's a national tour,
they actually fly me around the country,
and it's great.
They do a great--
It's impossibly difficult to put together the logistics
of a book tour, and I'm grateful to them for that.
That said, twice,
two different publicists,
two different book tours,
I've had the exact same experience
and the exact same quote.
They call me up, and they say, "Well, Mr. Perry,
"we have your book tour all organized.
"It's all ready to go.
Your flight leaves Milwaukee at 10 AM on Tuesday morning."
And I say, "Well, hold it right there.
"Go ahead and make your hand into a map of Wisconsin.
[laughter]
"Don't forget Door County.
[laughter]
"This right here, this,
"this is the New Auburn/Fall Creek area.
"Drive five and a half hours, depending on traffic,
"Milwaukee Airport.
"Go on back up to the New Auburn/ Fall Creek area.
"Drive an hour and a half due west.
"Minneapolis, Saint Paul.
"They have an airport there
with airplanes that go all over the world."
[laughter]
And twice, I've gotten the exact same comment
from two different publicists.
There's this little pause, and then they said,
"But, but you live in Wisconsin."
[laughter]
And I say, "Yeah, and we have a open border agreement
with Minnesota."
[laughter]
I've been able to say this almost since the age of 25.
If I get hit by a truck tonight when I step out the back door,
I won.
* [cheerful whistling]
I can't believe what I've been allowed
to do and experience and create,
what I've had the freedom to do.
It's overwhelming when I think of it.
[laughter]
When I look back
at the hundreds of stories I've been allowed to write,
thousands of people I've been allowed to meet,
the places I've traveled,
the behind-the-scenes things that I've been privy to...
I grew up cleaning calf pens in the town of Sampson
in Chippewa County, Wisconsin.
If it ended today, I--
That's important, you know.
So, if it does end today, make sure you tell them,
"It's alright.
It was a good run, man!" [chuckles]
This is a cold-based story,
and, of course, we love the cold here.
We like to complain about it,
but we love the cold
'cause it feeds that most Midwestern of traits,
stoic martyrdom. [laughter]
It's like Grandma with her arthritis, like,
[in grandma voice] "Oh, no, no, I'm fine.
Don't worry about me," you know,
"But worry about me." [laughter]
And we're the same with the cold.
We love to complain about it, but, you know,
there's a lot of folks moving in the area now, and I have to,
when I have a opportunity, I educate them,
'specially if they're not from a warm area.
If you're going to brag about the cold,
which we all do around here.
I said, "There's a dance to it.
You gotta know the dance."
I said, "If you walk into the café one morning
"and your neighbor says, 'Hey, how cold is it out by you?'
"Sounds like he cares.
Doesn't; That's a trap."
[laughter]
Never go first.
[laughter]
'Cause you're going to say, "Oh, it's 15 below."
He's going to say, "Oh, yeah, 17 below by us."
[laughter]
And, of course, that's on the milk house thermometer.
It always reads a couple degrees high.
[laughter]
I tell people who aren't from this area
that when summer ends,
we don't take our beach towels and fold them up,
and put them away in the closet.
We roll 'em up and put 'em down there
along the bottom of the kitchen door.
[laughter, applause]
You must live in the same house I do. [chuckles]
[laughter]
I also take some-- one of them that's left over,
and I roll that up, and I put it on the window sill
right above the head of the bed
where that draft comes through
and kind of catches you on the bald spot.
And it's hard to keep a rolled up towel
balanced on a window sill,
but by January, it's just froze right to the glass,
[laughter]
and you're pretty much good to go 'til spring.
You just see things differently if you understand cold.
For instance, where I'm from Up North, there,
if we see a guy drinking every can of Leinie's
in a twenty-four pack,
we don't see a guy with a drinking problem.
We see a guy who's going to take that empty carton,
stomp it flat,
and then, zip-tie it to the grill of his pickup truck.
[laughter]
That's just heater enhancement
is what that is right there.
Which also reminds me,
all this excitement about electric cars,
like, "Yeah, I see your Tesla there, Spanky,
but we've been plugging in our cars since about 1952, so..."
[laughter]
[applause]
Some of the friends that I have from warmer climates,
I worry about 'em, you know.
What if they wind up here in the winter?
We could lose 'em.
[laughter]
And so, I try to give them helpful advice.
I give them the one--
And, you'll excuse me,
this is a little bit crude.
This is as crude as I'll get.
But I teach them the old chestnut,
you know, "Don't eat yellow snow."
Everybody knows that one.
But I tell 'em,
"But don't eat the green snow neither
"'cause [clears throat] that's antifreeze,
[laughter]
"and that'll kill 'ya. [laughter]
"They'll find you several hours later,
"dead in a snowbank.
You'll be dead, but flexible."
[laughter]
[louder laughter]
That's a conceptual joke, and I'm unduly proud of it.
[laughter]
Don't eat the maroon snow neither
because that is hydraulic fluid
and that stuff just shoots right through you.
[laughter] Um...
[applause, gentle acoustic guitar]
Folks, I'm so grateful that you came out tonight.
I got one more story I'll tell, and then, we'll head out.
Just grateful for you being here.
I think I needed a laugh as much as anybody,
so thank you for letting me have one
with a whole living room full of friends.
Um...
I take none of this for granted.
It's all very odd and asymmetrical and unplanned,
but here we are.
You know, I joked today about my brothers and all their talents,
but I mean that.
That's my background.
My background is blue-collar,
and I'm so grateful that I get up in the morning,
and the first thing I want to do is write.
I've somehow found a way to make a livin' writing,
and I would hope to be doing that when I tip over.
But I'm also glad that my background
is just boots on the ground.
I think we're all going to fall eventually,
and I'd like to fall from a very low height.
[laughter]
So, thank you so much for coming out tonight.
I have a website and social media platforms and all that,
and if you just go to, [inhales]
I'm old enough that I say the W-W-W
dot Sneezing Cow dot com,
which, of course, never stand behind a sneezing cow.
Don't have to explain that to this crowd.
but when I'm out there on the West Coast, you know,
sometimes I gotta break out charts and everything.
[laughter]
I just tell them, basically, it's a situation
involving several of the properties of physics,
like contents under pressure, ballistics, [laughter]
and the path of least resistance, [laughter]
and, of course, inertia, although in this case,
you might refer to it as "manure-tia."
[laughter]
I don't know if it's ever happened to you.
It has happened to me growing up on the farm.
It is a jaw-dropping experience.
[laughter]
Although that would not be your best move.
[laughter]
[loud laughter, applause]
- Audience: Whoo, whoo!
- Thanks so much.
Thanks for coming out.
A special thank you to the folks running the cameras.
People got here early to set up sound.
There are folks working in the soundboard.
There's a whole bunch of people
who came here long before I did tonight
to make it so that all I had to do
is show up and be fabulous. [laughter]
So, thank you so much.
[cheers and applause]
[acoustic guitar]
It's like putting on a pair of old jeans
to come back to Wisconsin.
*
[tire and engine noise]
I also think of it in terms of
how I feel about my hometown of New Auburn.
I always say, no matter where I'm standing when I say it,
I am forever grateful to be of and from New Auburn, Wisconsin.
*
None of us knows what the future holds.
I have relatives in Panama.
I love it in Panama.
Maybe I'll move to Panama; I don't know.
But I will always be of and from Wisconsin.
And even more specifically, New Auburn, Wisconsin.
Manure, by the way.
PBS, one time, they made me say "ma-newer."
That's the biggest regret of my professional career
that I succumbed to that.
It's "ma-NERR."
I remember one time a publicist said to someone else, like,
"Well, you know, he-- he's on the fire department.
He has a pickup truck and his own deer rifle."
And I wanted to say,
"Yeah, just like my mom."
[laughter]
They're following me around
with a bunch of cameras here tonight.
I think they're just trying to figure out
how I've managed to make a living all these years.
[laughter]
I'll tell you my secret.
Too dumb to know when to quit.
[laughter]
Thanks so much.
I will not say goodbye.
I will say what we always say where I'm from,
which is, "Wwweeellllll,
"I s'pose.
Forward."
[applause]
- Funding for Michael Perry: On the Road
is provided by
Stanley J. Cottrill Fund,
the A.C.V. and Mary Elston Family,
the Eleanor and Thomas Wildrick Family,
Wooden Nickel Fund,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
*