For decades I have considered myself “Maine’s Captive Minnesotan.”

This state began to capture me when I first crossed the Route 1 bridge from Portsmouth to Kittery in 1971. The very welcome cognitive incarceration by the Pine Tree State ensued in earnest in 1974 when we crossed the now familiar I-95 bridge across that same broad river in a U-Haul truck. We were moving to Maine! A six-week old baby boy, two 10-speed bikes, skis and other household items of less importance were aboard that orange and white box truck.

I love this state, as most residents do. I can’t claim native status, nor could that 6-week baby boy. He was born in North Carolina. Our second baby boy was born in Portland. He can claim semi-native status in Maine… falling about nine generations short of bona-fide nativehood.

Nonetheless, Maine is truly home, and has been for most of the ensuing years since ’74. However, there remains a good dose of Minnesotan inside this Mainer. That dose is an abiding fondness for the quirkiness of the Land of 10,000 Lakes, competing on a daily basis with an overwhelming fondness for Maine’s charms, natural environment and its own brand of coastal and upcountry quirkiness harbored within its citizenry.

I am more fortunate than most who have come here from away, having had a direct auditory link to my central Minnesota roots piped into our house on a weekly basis for years by the nice people at Maine Public Radio.

I began thinking about this good fortune once again last Sunday while patching some cracks in the concrete floor of our garage. I started out patching and concurrently fuming about why I had to be patching in the first place; the shoddy job by a local concrete contractor a few years ago. When I complained about early evidence that there were problems, I recalled again that he replied that they only insure their work against fire and theft. Ha-ha-ha. That was him laughing at his own joke, not me. I suspect that he has had to use that response a number of times, thus honing his comic delivery.

It, of course, is not healthy to get worked up and angry. Fortunately, in short order I remembered that the Sunday afternoon replay of Saturday night’s live performance of A Prairie Home Companion was being broadcast at that moment. I turned on the garage radio, always tuned to MPBN’s 90.1 FM frequency. There it was… my blood pressure instantly dropped 30 points, and I’m sure a knowing smile began to emerge on my face, for Garrison Keillor’s signature News From Lake Wobegon was just beginning during the show’s second hour.

Much of my youth in a very small town in central Minnesota is captured in so many ways in Keillor’s account of this fictional little Minnesota town set on the shore of one of the state’s beloved 10,000 or more lakes. Fortunately for millions of fans all over the country, these accounts resonate with thoughtful city-dwellers and those with small-town roots alike. A good sense of humor and irony is required.

A bit of history regarding Keillor’s popular and enduring live radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, is in order:

In 1970, recently minted University of Minnesota English major, Garrison Keillor, found himself living in rural central Minnesota for a couple of years. Having lived his entire life growing up and going to college in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, Keillor found the lives of people living in the nearby small towns of Holdingford, Albany and Freeport a fascinating study. 1970, by the way, was the year the U.S. Army sent me a very disconcerting letter that quickly, and against my will, shifted my state of residence to Kentucky and later Massachusetts… fortunately just a short drive from southern Maine.

In 1974, young Mr. Keillor, was on assignment for the New Yorker magazine to write a story about the Grand Ole Opry, the live country music radio show broadcast every Saturday night from Nashville. He was fascinated by the concept and soon convinced Minnesota Public Radio to back his idea to create a distinctly Minnesotaflavored version of the live “Opry” show. 1974, by the way, was the year that, after getting out of the Army and finishing a couple of years of graduate school in North Carolina, my lovely wife and I moved, along with the first of our two sons, to the Portland area… having previously agreed that Maine was the place of choice to live, work and raise a family.

Now, on to what I shall call (for lack of anything better) my Keillorian Connections:

Garrison’s earliest shows were often broadcast from college campuses across the state, most often Macalester College in St. Paul. Among the campuses most far afield, was Concordia College in northwestern Minnesota. That is where I spent four years before graduating in 1968. Three of those four years I lived with three roommates in a very snug off-campus apartment. The quickest way to make it to campus for those mandatory 8 a.m. classes when running late as usual was for us to cut across the grounds of The Prairie Home Cemetery resting quietly across Highway 75 from good ‘ol Concordia. It was while broadcasting from the school in 1974 that Keillor saw the old iconic wrought-iron sign over the gate to the cemetery and decided to name his live radio show A Prairie Home Companion. I am not making this up.

For the first few years in Maine, beginning in 1974, we were busy with work, community and raising two young sons near Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth… and it probably was a few years before Maine Public Radio began carrying this increasingly popular show from Minnesota. I recall becoming a regular listener in about 1980, enjoying Keillor’s spot-on capture of the rural Minnesota mindset. A hearty belly-laugh or two was assured in our house each time the News from Lake Wobegon was narrated from Garrison’s studied imagination and broadcast live to radio listeners across the country.

Over the next 20 years or so, I often returned to Minnesota to visit my mother, and other relatives and friends in my hometown of Carlos (population 320, as its sign fairly accurately stated). Carlos was about 30 miles from the mythical location of Lake Wobegon based on the three little towns named earlier.

En route northwest a hundred miles or so from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, I made it an absolute to stop a half hour from my destination, at Charlie’s Café in Freeport, Minn. (any resemblance to Freeport, Maine is absolutely restricted to name only). Charlie’s was known for its signature, and huge, hot and sticky cinnamon buns… that seemed almost as huge as the massive yellow and red sign at the front of the café. I almost always turned off I-94 into Freeport for a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun… but mainly to sit and listen to the local farmers wearing their John Deere, or perhaps Funk’s Hybrid Seeds, caps as they clustered in the booths talking about the weather, the current market price of oats or soybeans, or whatever else was on their minds. It was priceless. I found out in 2000 that I wasn’t the only person to mine the Charlie’s Café culture.

I have subscribed to National Geographic Magazine since the early ‘70s. In the year 2000 I opened a recently arrived issue to find a wonderful essay by Garrison Keillor, complete with some very insightful black and white photos by a talented Minnesota-based photographer. The essay/article was titled “In Search of the Real Lake Wobegon.” It was priceless in my view, in part because of one of the photos and Garrison’s description thereof. There it was… a great shot of two booths filled with farmers enjoying morning conversation and coffee in Charlie’s Café… with Keillor’s narrative about the rich and distinctively rural Minnesotan, banter that is guaranteed.

Last October, while returning to Concordia College for my 40th reunion of the Class of ’68, I turned off of I-94 into Freeport once again, to have a cup of coffee and a huge sticky cinnamon bun at Charlie’s. Before turning off, I noticed one of those large brown interstate highway informational signs that said: “Next Exit the Lake Wobegon Trail” I had never seen this sign before.

Sure enough, there in front of Charlie’s Café was a segment of the old Great Northern Railway (the railway that my dad worked for in Montana after WWII, by the way) running past the grain elevators of sleepy downtown Freeport that had been paved into a popular railtrail. I took a picture to document this unique project that is based on fiction… a fiction that, believe me, is truly based on fact… the very real conversations in Charlie’s Café and other gathering places in central Minnesota.

By the way, the sticky buns and conversations were both as delicious and authentic as ever.

I am blessed. Blessed with a wonderful state to live in…and a wonderful, quirky state to remember with fondness… “Where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average.” Thanks to my Gopher State soul mate, Garrison Keillor.

“We need to write, otherwise nobody will know who we are,” Garrison Keillor.

Per usual, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Jot them down and attach them to a “How to Prepare Norwegian Lutefisk” recipe from any central Minnesota Lutheran Church cookbook and place it inside the log door on our mudroom on the west shore of Gull Pond… or simply send an email to allenwicken@yahoo.com.