Free Generations and Other True Stories by Bryan Woolley Page A

spices. I was halfway through Armadillos and Old Lace when Cuddles went to Jesus. I kept her in the book. She’s in the next one, too, which will be called God Bless John Wayne.”
    Unintentionally, my question seems to have kicked us into a mood of general mourning. “I mourn the passing of the undecaffeinated era of country music,” the Kinkster says. “The cleverness has gone out of it. These young people in the business now, the thing they have in common is that they grew up on Dan Fogelberg. They hate Lefty Frizzell. They hate Hank Williams. They hate Ernest Tubb. They hate twang-twang. They’re kind of savvy enough to know the good stuff by Patsy Cline and George Jones and a few others, and that’s about it. That’s the extent of their emotional history. Garth Brooks is a cultural mayonnaise. His fans would just as soon be wearing mouse ears at Disneyland.”
    He pauses, grinning. “I’m trying to keep this light, or anything you say or I say will make us look like old geezers who are sucking sour grapes.”
    Kinky will turn fifty on November 1, “just a step away from the Shalom Rest Home,” he says. He’s puffing so fast and furiously on a fresh Honduran cigar that even the other folks in the smoking section are giving us the eye.
    â€œGarth Brooks is the Anti-Hank,” he announces. “I’m sure there are millions of lost country music fans out there, waiting for me to lead them into battle against the Anti-Hank. But I’m not going to. I thank the Lord that the Texas Jewboys were not a big financial success. Otherwise, I’d be playing Disneyland with the Pips.”
    I try to imagine a crowd of Disneyites in mouse hats gathered in front of the Magic Kingdom, swinging and swaying to Kinky’s rendition of They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore .
    â€œBeing able to write these novels twenty-four years later and have some success at it,” the Kinkster continues, “is my attempt to prove that there can be a second act in America, to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong about that. There can be a second act, and I’m living proof of it. My books are selling so well these days that I’m in danger of losing my coveted cult status.”
    While Lenore is driving hell-for-breakfast toward KRLD, I ask Kinky how he decided to write mysteries. He shoots me a dark, mysterious look. “I saw a rodeo in Bandera when I was a kid. It was a very seminal experience for the Kinkster. They had an act called ‘Shoshone the Magic Pony.’ It was this real old man with this horse that looked like two men dressed up in a horse suit. The horse did tricks, crossed its legs and stuff like that. At the end of the act, the old man took his outfit off, and he was a young girl. And she took the saddle and blanket off of Shoshone, and he was a real horse. That really stayed with me.
    â€œLater I refined what it meant to me—that nothing is what it appears to be. Now, if you get a story where nothing is what it appears to be, you’ve got yourself a great mystery, regardless of plot. Plots are for cemeteries, as George Bernard Shaw said.”
    At KRLD, he gets permission to ignore the This-Is-A-Smoke-Free-Building sign, shakes hands with talk-radio host Jody Dean, goes on the air and shouts in a falsetto squeak: “I like it here. Be kind to me, Jody.”
    He sings The Ballad of Ira Hayes , throws out one-liners like Mardi Gras beads, tells a story about eating monkey brains in Borneo when he was in the Peace Corps—“They taste a lot like chicken-fried steak,” he says—plugs his book, and suddenly we’re on our way to the Irving Public Library to tape a cable show called Conversations with Pam Lange.
    â€œIs there somebody who can give me a papal dispensation to smoke in here?” the Kinkster asks.
    â€œNo way. No way,” Pam says. “Just chew. Don’t inhale.”
    Several children