thank you for being an american legend

I am not a fan of political candidates, as a rule. I supported John Kerry in the last election, but if the entire population of the United States stood before me and I had to pick someone out of the group to run for President, John Kerry probably would not have been my choice. When it became a choice between him and the current President, however, he was definitely the best man for the job, in my humble opinion. Today, I found out there was someone running for public office whom I would have no trouble supporting, but, as fate would have it, I will not be able to vote for him.

Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas. I am not a Texan, so I will not be voting for Kinky. Kinky is not a professional politician. His website quotes him as saying “The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.” Granted, Kinky is somewhat of a nut, but I can think of another nut who was elected Governor of Texas. I have been a fan of Kinky for decades. The story begins when I was just a mere child…

One Friday evening, a friend of mine named Charles and I went to our local convenience store and I purchased a copy of Playboy magazine. When I was a young man, I enjoyed the publication, especially the articles. It was in Playboy magazine I was first introduced to the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, my personal idol and the man I want to be like when I grow up. But, I digress. That particular evening, I was reading the music reviews and I was intrigued by the review of the Kinky Friedman album, “Sold American.” I went to my local mall the next day, bought the record and played it all day. That evening, Charles and I were listening to the radio and it was announced that Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys (a play on the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) were going to be in concert in about two hours at a local college. Charles had been with me when I played the album and he enjoyed it, too, so we jumped into his car and we booked it (that was a popular phrase of the day meaning to go someplace). When we arrived at the small college, we found that the concert was going to be in a small chapel on campus. We bought our tickets and went inside. There were a couple of hippy-types in the front pew, so we sat down in the second row, on the aisle. By the time the concert started, there were only a hundred or so people there. The Jewboys came out and took up their instruments and an announcer came out and said something like:

“Ladies and gentlemen, from deep in the heart of Texas, the original wolly-bully from Austin, Mr. Kinky Friedman.”

Kinky strolled out on stage and said, “Thank you for being an American. It‘s a financial pleasure.”

I remember he did a number of his songs from “Sold American,” including the title song and “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in bed,” “Western Union wire,” and “Silver Eagle express.” I particularly liked the following lines from the latter.

And I ride the Silver Eagle to the last town on the line
Railroad ties are not, my friend, the only ties that bind.

I remember, when they sang the song, "High on Jesus," the hippies in the front row were up on their feet and dancing around. At the time I wore my coiffure somewhat longer than I do today. Actually, my hair was almost down to my shoulders, as was the style at the time. The hippies had sort of hopped down to the end of their pew and I was about ten feet from Kinky and we had a direct line of sight. I remember he looked right at me as he sang:

A long-haired youth said, c’mon man,
The spirit of America has died.
Now I don’t get my kicks
Startin’ fires and throwin’ bricks…

To this day, I tell people that Kinky was singing directly to me. He probably wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter, as long as I think he was.

It’s kind of funny how one’s mind sort of anticipates something happening. I started thinking about Kinky last week because my girlfriend has Saturday Night Live set up on the TiVo season pass, which means every time it is on it is recorded. A couple of stations, Comedy Central and a local station show old Saturday Night Live programs, so we record it about ten times a week. We delete most of them without watching, but I have been previewing all of them to see if they show the episode where Kinky performs the song “Dear Abby.” My recollection was that Abigail Van Buren sued Kinky over the song, but it is actually a song about someone wondering whatever happened to the 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman.

I also recall that Kinky never had any top forty hits and he sort of faded from the public scene for a number of years only to show up later as a mystery writer. I’m a big fan of his novels. I’m sure that literary critics would disagree, but he’s one of my three favorite mystery writers, the other two being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler. Wait a minute. I was once a literary critic, so I just contradicted myself. Whereas Doyle’s detective was Sherlock Holmes and Chandler’s was Phillip Marlowe, Kinky’s detective is himself. Friedman’s quirky detective has a desk with twin telephones, a bust of William Shakespeare and an Imus in the morning coffee mug. He has a wooden puppet head with a parachute and a key to the door that sits on his refrigerator. When guests arrive and announce themselves, Kinky throws the puppet head out the window and it glides down with the key to the street below.

Now you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how does being a nut and a songwriter qualify one to be a southern governor? Where is the precedent?”

Well, Jimmie Davis, former governor of Louisiana co-wrote “You are my sunshine,” along with many other songs. Huey P. Long, also governor of Louisiana wrote “Every man a king.”

So, unless the Texas voters reach back into the archives to Kinky Friedman’s song “We reserve the right to refuse service to you,“ and echo the following lines, we may be entertained by Mr. Friedman for the next year or so.

Our quota’s filled up this year for singing Texas Jews
We reserve the right to refuse service to you.

Well, hell, they voted Bush into the governorship. We’ll just have to see what happens.

In Jimbo’s world sometimes we like just to sit back and watch.