Kinky Friedman - The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic. A Walk in Austin

T HE G REAT
P SYCHEDELIC
A RMADILLO P ICNIC

Kinky Friedman is the author of twenty books, founder of the band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, and co-founder of Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch (www.utopiarescue.com), a never-kill sanctuary for stray and abused animals. The Kinkster lives on a ranch in Texas Hill Country with five dogs, a pet armadillo and a typewriter. With any luck, he claims, he will be the next governor of Texas.

ALSO BY KINKY FRIEDMAN

Armadillos & Old Lace

Blast from the Past

A Case of Lone Star

Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola

Frequent Flyer

God Bless John Wayne

Greenwich Killing Time

Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned

The Kinky Friedman Crime Club

Kinky Friedmans Guide to Texas Etiquette

The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

The Mile High Club

Musical Chairs

The Prisoner of Vandam Street

Roadkill

Spanking Watson

Steppin on a Rainbow

When the Cats Away

Curse of the Missing Puppethead

Kinky Friedman

A Walk in Austin

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Epub ISBN 9781407053738

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Published by Vintage 2005

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Copyright Kinky Friedman 2004

Kinky Friedman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Portions of this work previously appreared in Texas Monthly.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in 2004 by Crown Journeys, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Vintage

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Dedicated to all the people over the past forty years
who told me I couldnt write this masterpiece.

T IME, THEY SAY, CHANGES THE RIVER . T IME CHANGES the city, too. Over the years, many people have helped Austin to shine in the spotlight, bask in the limelight, and skinny-dip in the moonlight. Theres Mirabeau B. Lamar, Sam Houston, and Stephen F. Austin. Theres J. Frank Dobie, John Henry Faulk, and Doug Sahm. Theres Liz Carpenter, Molly Ivins, and Ann Richards. Theres George W., Lance Armstrong, and Barbara Jordan. Then theres the next governor of the state, yours truly, Kinky Friedman (if Im elected the first Jewish governor of Texas, Ill reduce the speed limits to $54.95!).

Austin is a city nurtured by generations of musicians, politicians, and beauticians. With her countless clubs, bars, and dance halls, Austin is a whore with a heart of gold flaunting her gaudy neon necklace in the Texas night. In Austin they say when you die, you go to Willie Nelsons house. I cant swear this is true but I do know if you come here youll find that the music is great, the beer is cold, and the natives are friendly. If youre lucky enough to hang around awhile, youll discover for yourself that the spirit of Austin is a puff of Willie, a riff of Stevie Ray, and a little piece of Janiss heart.

L IKE MOST OTHER BUSY CITIES THESE DAYS , A USTIN is not very effectively traversed by foot. Indeed, if youre crazy enough to try, you might very well find yourself getting T-boned by a shuttle bus. There are places you can walk, jog, loiter, or hop around angrily in a circle, and we will get to these momentarily. But you must understand that a walk in Austin is primarily a spiritual sort of thing. Youre going to need a four-wheeled penis of some kind. If you want to fit in perfectly, Id recommend a pickup truck with a God Bless John Wayne bumper sticker.

As long as were on the subject, what, exactly is Austin? If you were to round up a flock of random Austinites from around the city and present them with that question, you would get such answers as home of the University of Texas; the live music capital of the world; birthplace of Dell Computers. Oddly enough, it is unlikely that any of those Austinites would say that Austin is the capital of Texas, or that Austin used to be a settlement named Waterloo, or that a man with the unlikely name of Mirabeau B. Lamar led the fight to make Austin the Capital of the Republic of Texas over Waco and Houston. See, we Austinites dont know enough about the background of our fair city, but you, dear visitor, will not be so impaired. Read on for the barenaked essentials of Austin, intended to give you a bit of background on the town O. Henry nicknamed The Violet Crown.

O NCE UPON A TIME , when relations between cowboys and Indians were only slightly better than the level of violence in a modern American city, a man drank an entire bottle of mescal, ate the worm at the bottom, and got so high he needed a stepladder to scratch his ass. The man was named Mirabeau B. Lamar. The year was 1836. It was a good year for mescal. It was also a good year for Austin, in spite of the fact that it wasnt there yet.

Texas had just won her independence from Mexico. Eighty-four years later the future first female governor of Texas, Ma Ferguson, would say, If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, its good enough for Texas!

The new nation was christened the Republic of Texas, and with open arms she welcomed settlers to her ample bosom. In an area roughly located at the nipple of this bosom, a camp town named Waterloo grew. Among Waterloos new citizens was former Georgian Mirabeau B. Lamar. Despite being from Georgia, Lamar was a true renaissance man who excelled at horseback riding and fencing, wrote poetry, painted in oils, read voraciously, and collected matchbooks from many restaurants. He became a senator for Georgia by the time he was thirty-one, and his career in Georgia politics looked promising until his wife, Tabitha, stricken with tuberculosis, was bugled to Jesus in 1830. Mirabeau was devastated by her death, and like any poet worth his iambic pentameter, he used his grief to write several of his best-known poems (among them