Armadillos & Old Lace by Kinky Friedman Read Free Book Online

dam that Earl Buckelew had built over fifty years ago, and on down to Big Foot Falls, also of course, named after Big Foot Wallace.
    As I sat there, a great sense of peace and calm invaded my somewhat weatherbeaten spirit. The travails of New York City, the urgent scrawlings of Judge Knox, my own private loneliness of heart, began to float away on the currents of the little sunlit stream. It seemed almost to be murmuring to me, and I thought of the old camp song my mother had always liked: “Peace I ask of thee, O river, / Peace, peace, peace.”
    The next thing I knew the bell was ringing and the quiet of siesta was over. What appeared to be at least three bunkhouses of ranchers began boisterously descending upon the green trailer and the little stream beyond for their shallow-water swimming tests. The cat, a black and white cartoon character, shot off the table and into the bowels of the trailer like a missile seeking peace. But peace, as so many children of the world have learned, is harder to find than tits on a mule.

CHAPTER 11

    The first few days of camp went by like a scorpion skittering across a bunkhouse floor. The troubled outside world disappeared and was replaced, for all practical purposes, by cookouts, water fights, horseback riding, softball games, and isolated spates of homesickness that soon gave way to unbridled fun. The gray, desperate adult world all but vanished in the world of sunshine and childhood at Echo Hill.
    As for me, the specter of murder and mayhem had been pushed to a dark corner table of my mind and the cruelty and suffering that grown-ups routinely inflicted upon other grown-ups was simply not on the menu. The most serious altercation I’d allowed myself to become involved in was one night when I entered the Bronco Busters bunkhouse and broke up a pillow fight. My universe was demarcated by a circle of hills; the only things that mattered were the ones that occurred within that little green valley.
    “It’s so peaceful,” I said to Pam as I stood by the window of the Crafts Corral. “Makes you want to just resign from the human race. Maybe I’ll retire.”
    “What is it you’d retire from?” she said.
    “That’s a good question. I see you’re ignorant of my talents.”
    “Totally,” said Pam, but she smiled a quick, mischievous smile to mollify what she imagined to be my wounded ego. She didn’t realize that I’d left it on a curb in New York many years ago.
    “Had a country band once. In the early seventies. Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. We toured the country and irritated a lot of Americans. Now I sing mostly at campfires, whorehouses, the occasional bar mitzvah.”
    “The only thing I remember about the seventies,” said Pam, “was getting my first tricycle for Christmas.” She turned her back to me for a moment and bent down to select some paint from a cabinet. I almost swallowed my cigar.
    “It stands to reason you never heard of me,” I said. “You were jumping rope in the schoolyard when I was ordering room service. Also, Oklahoma isn’t the bar mitzvah capital of the world.”
    “Not like Texas?”
    “There’s a lot of Jews in Texas, actually. I’m just the oldest living one who doesn’t own any real estate.
    But I’m glad you never heard of me. I’ve had my share of groupies.”
    “I don’t think you’ll have to worry,” she said.
    I had her right where I wanted her, I thought, as I wandered away in the direction of the Nature Shack. She probably didn’t realize that, after a few more weeks of isolation from the outside, Echo Hill took on almost the sexual ambience of a bar at closing time. All I had to do was play my cards right. I didn’t know of anyone who’d really done that yet, but there was always a first time. In life, they don’t always remember to cut the deck.
    That night I stood in the shadows of the campfire and watched the children watching the fire. Their eyes reflected a bright hope you didn’t see much on the streets