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Garrison Keillor's Podcast

THEY WERE SO YOUNG

Garrison Keillor's Podcast

Prairie Home Productions

Society & Culture, Fiction, Comedy Fiction, Improv, Comedy

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Monday is Memorial Day, a day that got lost when it was turned into a weekend, and someday we’ll turn it back into a day, which it was for a hundred years. Decoration Day. After the bloody Civil War, flowers were placed on the graves of the war dead. One of those times when the country is united. This is our observance of Memorial Day, a poem entitled “They Were So Young.”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's one thing I want to do before we pause for intermission and that's to mention that it is

0:08.0

Memorial Day this weekend, a day that we sort of lost when it became a weekend and maybe someday we will turn it back into a day again,

0:19.3

which it was for a century.

0:24.7

Decoration days came in after the bloody Civil War, both sides laying flowers on the graves of their war did.

0:35.0

One of those times when the country was even more divided than it is now,

0:40.0

but it was united on this one point.

0:45.6

This is our observation, observance of Memorial Day,

0:51.3

and it's a poem entitled,

0:54.0

They Were So Young.

0:57.0

Memorial Day and the old folks come and stand in the sun feeling sad and dumb. The boys in the ground, there are so many, they're 18, 19, maybe 20.

1:20.0

They just moved out of a boy's bedroom and went to war now they line a tomb

1:26.4

Old people come on Memorial Day

1:29.6

And people speak, but what's there to say?

1:33.6

The dead would trade it all for the chance

1:35.6

to find a girl and ask her to dance.

1:38.3

Tychondaroga, Hamburger Hill,

1:41.0

young men marching out to kill.

1:43.0

Manassus Shiloh, Chancellorsville,

1:46.0

they fell down and they lie there still.

1:49.0

World War I, they picked up their arms

1:52.0

and marched to Ibra in the Battle of the Barn.

1:56.3

Vimi Ridge, Askandala, the song.

...

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