GaryOsberg.com

Good morning from Collegeville,

“You just need to find your authentic swing!” Bagger Vance, a character in the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, released in 2000, directed by Robert Redford. Doing well at the game of golf is akin to doing well at the game of life. I am here doing what I do, loving what I do, to a large degree because of luck. Being in the right place at the right time. I had no idea what I was “going to be when I grew up”. I once signed up for the “Phillips Gas Station Management Program”. Those of us in the program wore company uniforms but I don’t remember having to wear “the cap”. They taught us how to properly check the oil and wash the windshield while keeping an eye on the gas pump.

One day my sister’s boy friend Barry Larson asked me if I had any skill with “drafting”. He had a side job that he needed help with. I was living with my mother recovering from a back operation and I told a fib, but I got the job. When he came to pick up the finished work, he was not happy. “Don’t you know the difference between an object line and a dimension line?” Clearly I did not. I bought an instruction book and did the work over again. I ended up as an Engineer Aid on the Polaris project at Honeywell and designed a part for the gyro for the missile . I own a tie clasp with a submarine on the face. I probably still have that instruction book in the basement of the Parsonage. When I left that job to go back to college they gave me a very nice compass set and a briefcase to carry my books. Twenty jobs, in three different industries, later I landed a job with Minnesota Public Radio.

The A Prairie Home Companion show this week is a live broadcast from The Fitzgerald Theater. Our host is back at the helm, fresh from burning off a few vacations days he had built up over 40 years. Special guests include sizzling vocalist and songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, singer and fiddler Emily Miller, and old-time juke-joint band, The Steel City Jug Slammers. The Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott and Fred Newman will team up with Rich Dworsky with The Exchange Street Quartet. Enjoy the show on the radio or online at prairiehome.org.

“We make first our habits, and then our habits make us.” John Dryden