Jackson: Getting a Kinky Christmas gift

No, this is not about the Mrs. Santa Claus outfit advertised in “Costumes for all occasions.”

This is about what my 22-year old son gave me for Christmas.

A little background.

After a pretty uneventful boyhood (knocked-out teeth, broken arm, emergency surgery when he was at camp, that sorta thing), my son settled into his teenage years and took up residence in a basement room he called his “Man Cave.”

To make the place more “homey,” his mother bought him a “dorm room refrigerator” in which he could keep bottled water and soft drinks to enjoy while he was studying.

At least that was his mother’s plan.

One evening I wanted a bottle of water and since his ‘fridge was handy I naturally went there.

And I found it full of beer.

(You saw that coming didn’t you?)

His mother was aghast.

I, on the other hand, did the only thing a loving father could do. I took each can, poured the beer down the drain, and returned the empty to where it was once full.

A short time later he discovered what had happened.

His excuse–the beer belonged to one of his buddies. Knowing his buddies, that was possible. Nevertheless, the beer was gone and punished boy was beerless.

Although I suspected that the lesson he learned was that next time he should hide it better, his mother saw it as a parental victory.

I was more circumspect. It was the sort of thing I would have done at his age.  

But I did not tell his mother so, for that would only confirm what she already feared–that he was on the slippery slope to degeneracy.  

But he wasn’t.  

Happily he seems to be turning out OK, despite the fact that from time to time he shows evidence that he is indeed my son.

As he did this past Christmas when he presented me the perfect gift–a talking Kinky Friedman doll.

That’s the “Kinky” I’m writing about. Get your mind out of the gutter.

If you don’t know about Kinky, Google him up.  

Of all of the serious satirists of the past century, Kinky Friedman is surely the most outrageous, irreverent and funny. After a stint in the Peace Corps, Kinky returned to Texas where, back in the 1970s and 1980s, he gained fame as the leader of a country-rock-satire band called “Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.” The name alone says it all. Or at least most of it. Or at least some of it.

Featuring songs like “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” (an anti-feminist plea that won him the National Organization for Women’s “Male Chauvinist of the Year” award in 1974), “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Any More” (which puts racist goat-ropers in their place), and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Services To You” (a shot at the religiously intolerant), Kinky and the Boys became a big hit among folks with a sense of humor, a sense of irony and little sense of discretion.  

As you can imagine, I took to him right away.

My son discovered my affection for “the Kinkster” one day back in 2006, when he noticed on the bulletin board in my office a bumper sticker urging the people of Texas to elect “Kinky for Governor.” His rationale was simply “Why The Hell Not?”

And when the boy asked just who that was that Texans should be electing, I told him.

It was one of those bonding moments that fathers treasure.

So when he saw the talking Kinky Friedman doll in a Nashville boutique/beer joint, he knew he had found the perfect Christmas gift for his Old Man.

He was right.

Push the button on the back and, as the box promises, “Kinky Speaks!”

And the things he says.

Giving more substance to why Texans should vote for him he intones, “I can’t screw things up any worse than they are already.”

As for reforms, he promised. “I’m gonna de-wussify Texas, if I gotta do it one wuss at a time.”

Not afraid to take on sensitive subjects, when asked about gay marriage he responded that he was for it because “I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of  us.”

Kinky has never been married.

Unfortunately having alienated the powerful wuss-vote Friedman lost, and Rick Perry won.  So Kinky went to writing murder mystery novels and overseeing the Utopian Animal Rescue Ranch which he established to care for stray, abused and aging animals. According to his bio, the ranch has saved over 1,000 dogs from euthanasia.

So I am proud to own a talking Kinky Friedman doll and proud to have a son who would buy me one.

With that, let me close with the words of Kinky himself.

“May the God of your choice bless you.”

Harvey H. (“Hardy”) Jackson is Professor Emeritus of History at Jacksonville State University. He can be reached at [email protected].