How To Get to Heaven or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth is the alternative title for Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette, an anthropological study meets comedic satire on, you guessed it, Texans. This jewel of an airplane ride read includes things you would never hear a real Texan say, final meal requests from Texas death row inmates, and everybody is somebody in Luckenbach.
What else can you expect from a book whose opening page reads “What some people have said about the Kinkster” and the first listing is from President George W. Bush? (He is “a Texas legend.”) It is worth noting the next comment is from New York Times Book Review, which calls Kinky “the world’s funniest, bawdies, and most politically incorrect country singer turned mystery writer . . . . the humor gleams as brightly as Kinky’s brontosaurus foreskin cowboy boots.” And yes, within the book Kinky instructs all wannabe Texans to promptly procure a pair of aforementioned boots. Immediately.
This book is a priceless guide to anyone who knows a “real Texan.” After all, without Kinky, how would one know that a real Texan would never say the “I think that song nees more French horn,” “the tires on that truck are too big,” or “duct tape will not fix that”? And when it’s not making you laugh out loud in public, it is imparting oddly serious stories with a shockingly sarcastic bent about history, life, love, and loss in the lone Republic state while introducing readers to the raw, western Cowpokes of Ace Reid.
I pass this gem along in the tradition in which it was give, as a gift, and with the instructions provided upon receipt. READ IT.
