A thank you to Marjorie Johnson, State Fair baker

Marjorie Johnson died the other day at 106, presumably peacefully and no doubt having completed another round of championship baking in her custom-sized kitchen in Robbinsdale. Everything in the kitchen was built to accommodate Johnson’s height. In her prime, which was longer than it is for most people, Marjorie stood 4 feet, 8 inches tall and would have blown down the street in a good wind.

She might have kept herself in fighting trim just by talking, ceaselessly, enthusiastically, always with curiosity and with a particular vocal affectation where her voice sometimes trailed off making her sound like Floyd the barber on “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Johnson, of course, was Marjorie Johnson, the award-winning baker. She had a longer dynastic streak at the Minnesota State Fair than the Yankees could ever dream of, the Yankees knowing a little bit about dynasties. She won more than 1,000 blue ribbons at the State Fair, more than 2,500 ribbons in all and was still visiting the Fair as recently as three years ago. I still have one of her tins, which might have irritated her, for she always wrote her name on her tins on masking tape. She wanted them back.

Marjorie, I owe you a great thanks.

In 1993, I took the “Garage Logic” radio show to the Fair for the first time. If there were other guests that first show, I don’t recall. But our producer at the time arranged to have an award-winning baker show up, Marjorie. Never heard of her and I certainly didn’t know anything about baking. Once she began to speak, I was captivated. I could hardly get a word in. And she always held my arm, reflecting a kind of engagement that suggested, well, hilarity, because if I tried to pull away, she held on tighter. The crowd loved her. She was the best kind of funny because she wasn’t trying to be. It was her munchkin voice and her going on and on until it was impossible to remember what the question was in the first place.

She was a red-haired fairy princess in a red dress. It was easy to imagine her as the decoration on top of one of her own cakes.

“Will you join us to start next year’s Fair?”

“Oh yeah, sure, uhmmmmm.”

She did. She was always our first guest for the next 32 years (the last couple by phone), always with her long-silent husband Lee in the crowd, until he died years ago. In all those years, she wore only that red dress. I think she had a sneaky sense of the theater she created. Due solely to Marjorie, our State Fair shows became almost vaudevillian, a daily lineup of crop artists, hog farmers, people playing spoons, belly dancers, reptiles, barbershop quartets, honey bee queens, the Whacky Wheeler, jugglers, carnies and crooners, 4-H kids, a daily animal brought to us by our animal wrangler Doris Mold. Of course, I milked a cow, many times.

Marjorie made me think of how to do a State Fair show. You get State Fair people! Television soon enough discovered Marjorie. Not only did she become a regular on local programming, but she went big time with Jay Leno and Rosie O’Donnell, Kelly Clarkson and many others. Leno once had her be his correspondent for the NBA All-Star Game, all 4’8″ of her.

Marjorie once gave a map of “Garage Logic” to O’Donnell and tried to explain the show to her.

“I don’t know what you just said,” O’Donnell told her, “but I love it.”

One year, we had the two most opposite women on the planet on the stage at the same time. Marjorie was first, but because she was pressed for time, we also had Sharon Jones, as in Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Marjorie was in her chair. Out came Sharon, shimmying in a silver dress, smoky and soulful and Good Lord the real deal. We played “How Long Do I Have to Wait For You,” and Sharon sang along.