Free WLT by Garrison Keillor Page A

Orchestra over a bottle of Rock’n Rye, and Sister Nell and Brother Reuben slouched by in full hillbilly regalia, sunflower bonnet and bib overalls and all— Why do they bother? it’s only radio —and script girls, engineers, the children of sponsors, the cleaning ladies, and The Shepherd Boys Quartet. He could tell they were gospel singers by their deadly cologne and their fatuous smiles. “Morning, Mr. Soderberg,” said Wendell —or was it Elmer? or Rudy? He almost genuflected as Ray hurried past, looking for the exit. That was the problem with paying your employees so little—the dreadful bootlicking and brown-nosing, the ingratiating smiles, the cringing and groveling.
    â€œWhere The Door Is Always Open,” the motto of WLT, appeared on the elevator doors, with the smiling face tipping the hat, and the point was not lost on the employees: no matter what, you were always welcome to leave.
    The tenth anniversary came, April, 1936, and when Roy Jr. proposed a celebration, Ray said, “Celebrate what?” He didn’t intend to hobnob with the help and pat their backs and make a speech about how wonderful it all was, because it wasn’t. So Roy Jr. bought a big chocolate cake and set it out in the Green Room, and by noon it was all eaten.

CHAPTER 8
    Patsy
    W LT kept growing and growing, and one day Ray spotted a door marked “Artists Bureau.” He had never heard of such a thing. He opened the door and there were six women around a table typing like blazes and a man in a green silk vest jabbering on the phone. “What do you do?” asked Ray. The man told him the Bureau had been in operation for six months, booking WLT artists on tours of the Midwest. “Last month, we did more than $8,000 worth of business,” he said. Slim Jim and His Bunkhouse Gang with Miss Ginny and Her Radio Cowgirls were the No. 1 draw. “They’re packing them in like sliced bread,” he said. Ray had never heard of Slim or the Cowgirls. “Oh, yes,” the man said, “they’re hotter than biscuits.”
    WLT’s quarters were so spacious that Ray heard rumors that musicians lived on the premises undetected, sleeping on couches, bathing in the men’s room, cooking their meals on hot plates they kept in desk drawers, hanging their damp undies on radiators to dry, and Ethel told Ray that one of the Radio Cowgirls and the fiddle player in the Rise and Shine Band had moved into Studio B and lived there for six weeks, conducting wild parties where gospel singers high on benzedrine played strip poker and naked ladies waltzed through Accounting at midnight. The Radio Cowgirls, she said, wore short skirts and a lot of fringe and tassels, telltale signs of prostitution, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the gospel singers. The Shepherd Boys could kill a quart like it was lemonade and then they would jump in the sack with anything in high heels, hop out and sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” and feel so good, they’d jump right back in.
    â€œI don’t want you to lose a moment’s sleep over this,” Ray told Ethel. “I will handle it.”
    So Ray got to know the Cowgirls, Patsy Konopka in particular. She was slender and lovely and sang alto and favored silk blouses and wore her hair tossed in a short bob. In the Cowgirl photographs, it was her face that your eyes rested on, her vibrancy, the light in her face—he asked her to dinner and invited her up to the sixth floor for a drink.
    â€œYou have a look in your eyes that no woman I ever knew ever had,” he observed, edging closer to her on the couch, and she explained that the light in her eyes was due to theosophy and positivism. She had been a theosophist for more than eight months and studied with a Gnostic master in Sioux Falls who could telepathically open a can of coffee. She had learned there the secret of The Oval of Life and the Four Powers (Ability, Capacity,