The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic by Kinky Friedman

Author:Kinky Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307422064
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHARLES WHITMAN

We like to think that everything’s bigger in Texas. This, of course, includes mass murder sprees. I graduated from the University of Texas in Austin in 1965, majoring in a highly advanced liberal arts program known as Plan II. The program was mainly distinguished by the fact that every kid had some form or other of facial tic. The really bright ones are probably sleeping under bridges today, but then again, genius is its own reward.

Charles Whitman was not a Plan II student, but you can’t have everything. He made straight A’s, he was studying to be an architect, he was a former Marine sharp-shooter, and he was also an Eagle Scout. To put it on a bumper sticker, he was an all-American asshole. One day, in the summer of 1966, he climbed the Texas Tower with his trusty hunting rifle and shot forty-five people. I wrote a song about him, and in just a minute I’m going to hum a few bars.

But first let’s take an analytical look at why Charles climbed the tower and I wrote the song instead of the other way around, with me climbing the tower and Charlie writing the song. Because I believe it could very well have been the other way around. All of us have a little bit of Anne Frank and a little bit of Hitler deep down in our souls, and whether you live in Austin or Boston, you’ve got to be careful how you adjust your carburetor. I’m just saying we’ve got to kind of watch it because there’s a little bit of Charlie in us all. It helps, of course, if you’re not an Eagle Scout.

Why is this important? Well, it’s probably not. Probably nothing’s important. But what I was trying to say before I began hearing voices in my head is that I believe there is something in the mindset of the Eagle Scout that provides an excellent breeding ground for the future mass murderers of America. Maybe it’s just that while the rest of us were desperately trying to extricate ourselves from a turbulent and troubling adolescence, the Eagle Scout was assiduously applying himself to the narrow, maddening craft of knot-tying. It’s my theory that in a universe of Eagle Scouts, you’ll find an extremely high proportion of psychopaths. I can’t prove my theory or establish a statistical link between Eagle Scouts and mass murderers because I don’t have a computer. Nor am I likely ever to have one. I think computers are the work of Satan.

Of course, I’m wary of more than just Eagle Scouts and computers. Another pet theory of mine deals with people who have the name “Wayne.” I believe we should keep an eye on these folks. Most of them are up to no good. The problem, I contend, begins at birth when the father, invariably a fan of John Wayne’s, blithely borrows the name for his son. The son obviously cannot live up to the John Wayne lifestyle, and this causes a deep guilt to fester in the young little booger and one day he swerves to hit a school bus.

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