Prairie Home Companion!

"Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and the children are above average".

Ash and I spent Saturday evening doing something that always brings us loads of joy. We went to Blossom Music Center to see A Prairie Home Companion.

Our family has been listening to PHC on Saturday nights since the girls were very little. My grandmother first told us about it (Thanks Grandmother!) and from the first time we heard the dulcet tones of Garrison Keillor we were hooked.

Ash and I loaded up our shortie lawn chairs, our deli sandwiches and brownies and our ponchos and drove down to Blossom which is about a 40 minutes south of our house. We like to get there early (the doors were just opening) so that we can find the perfect spot for some shade and people watching. This year our perfect spot was on the upper most portion of the lawn close to the walk way. That way we could watch all the people arriving.


We were done with dinner, we had spent time visiting with friends and it was getting on to time for the warm up to start. It was then that the weather decided to "ramp it up". We had been watching the clouds off to the west of us and the sky above us. The bad weather seemed to be holding off and passing us by but we were WRONG. About 5:30p we started to hear rumbles of thunder and see flashes of lightning.
Now, I love a good thunderstorm with lots of lightning but......I like it when I am inside in my nice DRY, SAFE house. Not when I am sitting on a metal chair surrounded by trees. Ash and I dug out the ponchos and packed everything else back into our waterproof bag and hoped for the best. A little rain wasn't going to be a problem for us and the show would go on despite the rain.

Ponchos are a lovely look don't you think? At any rate the warm up started at 5:45p just as the rain came. And it wasn't just a little drizzle, it was really raining and thundering and lightning. Great. We will be fried. We will die happy, thinking about Powdermilk Biscuits and Guy Noir Private Eye, The Lives of the Cowboys and Lake Wobegon but we will still be fried.

With about 5 minutes to go before the broadcast began officials from Blossom began to circulate through the crowd on the lawn letting us know that we could come and find seats in the Pavilion under the roof. Wow, that was a surprise. We aren't usually fools so we grabbed our stuff and ran through the rain, snagging seats in the last row. Excellent. About the time we sat down the heavens opened with full force as well as wind.

Ash and I still kept our ponchos on during the broadcast because our seats afforded us the ability to take advantage of the blowing rain but we were still under cover for which we were grateful. The thunder rumbled and at one point the pavilion lost power (for about 30 seconds) but we were treated to a wonderful PHC with special guests Jorma Kaukonen, Robin and Linda Williams, and The Wailin' Jennies (who happen to be a favorite of Ashley). We were treated to The Lives of the Cowboys and Guy Noir Private Eye as well as all the other funny things that one would expect from PHC. It was a good evening.