The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic by Kinky Friedman Page A

Angel Spoons nicknamed “Bad Hee-Haw” due to its penchant for biting and kicking its herdmates. Bad Hee-Haw has since reformed and now goes by the name “Little Jewford”). I have never actually been to Eeyore’s Birthday Party, but I have always liked the gloomy donkey because of a passage I read in the book when I was a child, which embodied my philosophy of life at the time. It went like this:
    â€œWhat did you say it was?” he asked.

“Ah!” said Eeyore.

“He’s just come,” explained Piglet.

“Ah!” said Eeyore again.

He thought for a long time and then said: “When is he

going?”
    Â 
    Austin’s celebration of Eeyore’s Birthday Party began in 1964, when University of Texas student Lloyd W. Birdwell Jr. and his friends decided to honor the arrival of spring as they imagined Christopher Robin might have. Locals and visitors have continued this tradition every spring; the birthday party’s activities include maypole dancing, a Hippie Queen pageant, beer, turkey legs, snow cones, and other fare.
    Bad Hee-Haw/Little Jewford and I plan to stay at the ranch this year (as every year) because we prefer kicking and biting to maypole dancing and turkey legs. After all, in the words of our friend Eeyore, “One can’t complain. I have my friends. Someone spoke to me only yesterday.”
    THE TEXAS BOOK FESTIVAL
    People say that us Texans have a lot of wide-open spaces between our ears, but that doesn’t always apply to folks in Austin. We even have our own annual book festival here every November, started by First Librarian Laura Bush back when George W. was governor. Back then he was just thinking of running for president and I was just thinking of having another shot of Jose Cuervo Especial. Today they tell me I’m one of George’s favorite writers. Of course, he’s not that voracious a reader.
    But that was when I first met him. At the book festival.
    Authors had come from all over the world, and that night there was a big party given for us by the Bushes at the governor’s mansion. I’d had a few drinks and was fairly well walking on my knuckles by the time I got there. I was dressed Texas casual, with black cowboy hat, long black preachin’ coat, and brontosaurus-foreskin boots. And, of course, I was smoking a Cuban cigar. I saw Larry McMurtry’s name tag in the little basket on the front portico of the governor’s mansion. Obviously he hadn’t shown up. So I picked up his name tag and slapped it on my preachin’ coat.
    Austin is widely regarded as the most progressive city in Texas, and that is not an oxymoron. The place was packed with authors, highbrow literary types, and wealthy patrons of the arts. The mansion itself was a perfect locus for this gathering of luminaries, as much of Texas’s rich history is reflected upon its walls. Texas, of course, has had some pretty colorful governors, including Pappy Lee O’Daniel, who had a band called the Light Crust Dough-boys. I had a band called the Texas Jewboys. Pappy Lee’s campaign slogan was “Pass the biscuits, Pappy!” One of my most requested songs is “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven [and Your Buns in the Bed].” The parallels are uncanny.
    You can’t list colorful governors without mentioning our first and probably greatest governor, Sam Houston, who was, of course, drunk and sleeping under a bridge with the Indians when they found him and persuaded him to take the office. And then there was George W., whom I hadn’t yet met.
    It wasn’t long before people began coming up to me and saying, “Mr. McMurtry, you have done
so
much for Texas.” They were so sincere that I didn’t have the heart to tell them I wasn’t Larry McMurtry. So I just shook their hands and smiled and said, “Thank you kindly.” Other people came over and they shook hands with me and they said, “I