Sarah E. Moffett

Kinky Friedman. If you read his most recent column for Texas Monthly, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, he would be your hero too. That is, of course, if you stumbled across him after having just finished another trial, were struggling with writer’s block, were being “haunted by the waters” of Norman Maclean’s masterpiece A River Runs Through It, and otherwise suffering from TWSD—This Writer Sucks Disorder. This would be especially true if the standard fallbacks were painfully failing you—i.e. running or drinking or closet Harry Potter book tape listening.

But then there was Kinky.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child and, believe it or not, I smoked as a child. At the tender age of eighteen months, when my mother’s back was turned, a prescient if somewhat perverse uncle surreptitiously substituted a cigar for my pacifier. I don’t know if I should thank Uncle Eli, but 61 and a half years later I’m not only still smoking—I’ve started my own cigar company. I named it Kinky Friedman Cigars, or, as it’s become increasingly known throughout Texas and the world, KFC… After a lifetime of smoking I have only one or two taste buds left, but I can assure you, those little buds are having one hell of a party.”

Funny, insightful, witty, and disturbing. Just the way I like my writers.

This is hardly a “new discovery.” Kinky, who is also described in Wikipedia “singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician,” etc., carved up America for 40 plus years. After all, the world must take notice of someone that describes himself as the “last of the Jewish Cowboys,” a name that carried through his 1970’s band, dubbed “Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys,” which came with band members named Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs. And in case you’re wondering, his music was no joke. He toured with Bob Dylan.

When he wasn’t crooning, he was writing. And I think even Mark Twain would’ve even taken a moment to flip open Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned or The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic. Then there’s my personal favorite, Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette: Or How To Get To Heaven Or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth. Enough said.

“We’re turning our beautiful country into nothing more than a condo association. Rules, regulations, and political correctness are strangling the best things America has to offer: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom to be who you are . . . Misguided zealots behind draconian smoking laws often fall back on the argument ‘It’s for your health.’ They haven’t noticed, apparently, that whenever you see a ninety-year-old geezer, most of the time he’s still puffing a stogie. But you almost never see a ninety-year-old smoking a cigarette. This is because we cigar smokers religiously follow the wise example of Bill Clinton: We don’t inhale.”

Anyway, thanks to Kinky and his writing, I have solved my recent life problems by reaching a simple answer. I’m going to Belize. To go sea kayaking and to learn Spanish. Because anything, absolutely anything has to be easier than conveying my thoughts in English. (And the sea kayaking, well, that’s a bonus.) Or as the great Kinky Friedman said, “What I want these people to put in their pipes is this: Spain, Israel, Japan, Italy, France, and Greece all have more smokers per capita than the U.S. They also have longer life expectancies than we do. What can we conclude from this? Speaking English is killing us!”

So is writing it, unless you’re as good as Kinky Friedman.

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