Armadillos & Old Lace by Kinky Friedman Read Free Book Online Page A

of the city. Any city. I was about to play a song for the kids and Marcie was introducing me. The atmosphere backstage was quite relaxed, more so even than when I drank a very large amount of Jack Daniel’s at the Lone Star Café in New York and had to be rolled onstage on a gurney.
    Except for the few kids who always shine their flashlights in your face, it was a pretty good crowd. Some familiar faces, some new ones. Not your glitzy New York-L.A.-type audience. Just a large, cheerful group of young kids sitting on blankets in their bunkhouse groups, far away from home but close to the campfire. The ceiling was glittering with stars and the crickets provided a nice little rhythm section. It was a good room to work.
    I sang a song that was always quite popular at camp. I’d written it when I was just eleven years old, standing backstage rehearsing for my bar mitzmas with my little yamaha on my head. The lyrics went as follows:
    Or Ben Lucas Had a lot of mucus Cornin’ right out of his nose.
    He'd pick and pick 'Til it made you sick But back again it grows.
    When it's cotton-pickin' time in Texas Boys, it's booger-pickin' time for Ben.
    He'd raise that finger ; mean and hostile,
    Stick it in that waiting nostril
    Here he comes with a green one once again.
    Everybody sang the “01’ Ben Lucas” chorus several more times, then I ankled it out of there with Marcie shouting, “Let’s give Kinky a big 1-2-3 HOW!!!” The ranchers all joined in on the 1-2-3 HOW part, which was the equivalent of applause in the city, and they shouted it as loudly and as sharply as they could, an act that generated coundess echoes off the surrounding hills.
    I wasn’t as pumped up as James Brown after a show, but it did feel good hearing the echoes as I packed up my guitar and slipped off into the dark, beautiful, anonymous night. Every performer, no matter how great, is a ham at heart. Whether you’re playing Carnegie Hall or a campfire for kids, it’s still another show in your hip pocket.
    Part of my job at camp, along with the overwhelming responsibility of being hummingbird man and occasionally dropping off laundry in town, was security. Not that anyone expected six Islamic fundamentalists in a blue sedan to drive up to the flagpole. I was just supposed to walk around, turn on some of the lights at night, and, as Tom says, “maintain a presence.” It wasn’t very difficult. I’d been doing it most of my life.
    The ranch was eerily silent with the kids all out at the campfire. The cat was sitting on top of the trailer watching the horses grazing on the latest project by the Echo Hill Garden Club. The Echo Hill Garden Club didn’t usually have a lot of luck. If the horses didn’t eat their latest project, the deer invariably would. Not only did we not get the opportunity to reap what we sowed, we rarely got a chance to even see it.
    I’d put my guitar up and was just lighting a cigar and pouring a little shot when the phone rang.
    “Start talkin’,” I said.
    “This is Pat.” I didn’t have to ask, Pat who? I was currently a one-Pat man.
    “Yes, Pat,” I said patiently.
    “There’s been another one.”
    I took a couple of paternalistic puffs on the cigar.
    “Pat, there’s always going to be another one. These are little old ladies. Little old ladies are mortal. When their time comes they fall through the trapdoor just like everybody else, no matter how hard they’ve crammed for the final exam.”
    With the hand that wasn’t holding the blower, I lifted the shot of Jack Daniel’s from my faithful old bullhorn and discharged it into my mouth. The little judge was really starting to get up my sleeve. I poured another small shot.
    “She was murdered,” said Pat stubbornly.
    “How do you know that?” I fairly shouted. “Did she come back and appear to you in a seance and tell you that?”
    “She couldn’t have done that,” said the judge. “Her lips were sewn shut.”

CHAPTER 12

    As I entered the old courthouse