I did a Christmas show last year in St. Paul and ended with the audience singing Silent Night, three verses,

a cappella, the infant, tender and mild, the quaking shepherds, the radiant beams.

And minutes later, who should come backstage, but my cousin Phyllis and her family, which made me very happy.

Her mother was my Aunt Jean, who was very funny, and she had a big heart.

And when I was a toddler and dad went into the army, Aunt Jean took my mother and us three little kids into her big house in St. Paul,

and I still remember how welcome we were.

I go back home now and then, and people walk up to me in the Hotel St. Paul,

who remember me as a friendly radio voice, and some of them were apparently quite attached to that voice.

I met a young woman the other week who gasped as if I were a ghost,

and she said, we listen to you every Saturday at five o'clock, and I still miss you. I'd feel that way

if I ran into A.J. Liebling, I would be stunned and tell him how I loved

his writing when I was in the eighth grade at Anoka High School. I read the sweet science

and the road back to Paris, but he's been dead since 1963.

I miss St. Paul, which is still my home, but not because I'm admired there.

I love it for the same reason my wife loves New York. She came to New York from Minnesota as a teenager to study violin and become a musician.

And so she went through hard times.

She experienced poverty.

She stayed true to her vocation.

And when she got the blues, she found relief by taking long walks around Manhattan.

She was proud, she never asked for help, and that makes Manhattan her true home, the place where she

gained independence. I did my hard times in St. Paul. I was

broke there. I lived for years with no savings or insurance. I once had to live in my in-laws'

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