The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic (5 page)

O. HENRY: WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER

THE ROLLING STONE OF AUSTIN

Austin's unique music and independent film scene gave the city the nickname “The Third Coast.” Ex-con and famous writer William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, christened Austin “The City of the Violet Crown,” a nickname that is still used today. The tag first appeared in a political humor story titled “Tictocq: The Great French Detective, in Austin.” The short story originally appeared in O. Henry's locally published newspaper
The Rolling Stone
on October 27, 1894. The phrase is used in chapter 2: “The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which the delicate feet of the guests may tread. The occasion is the entrée into society of one of the fairest buds in the City of the Violet Crown.”

William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina and came to Austin in 1884. He held such varied jobs as clerk, bookkeeper, draftsman, and bank teller. He also acted in local theatrical productions. In 1894 he began publishing the aforementioned weekly newspaper,
The
Rolling Stone.
He also drank heavily and often missed deadlines due to his inebriated state.

Porter fled to the Honduras following embezzlement charges by his former bank employer. He returned to Austin in 1897 to be with his wife, who was fatally ill, but was promptly arrested and sent to prison for three years. It was during his incarceration in the penitentiary that he began writing short stories under the pseudonym O. Henry (according to some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a warden called Orrin Henry). His purpose for writing was to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. After he was released from prison, Porter moved to New York City, where he began to write prolifically (ten collections and more than six hundred short stories during his lifetime). He also began to drink prolifically. O. Henry's last years were dogged by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He rose to literary fame in nine short years, but died an alcoholic at age forty-eight in a New York hospital. At the time of his death, he had twenty-three cents in his pockets. Now that's a guy after the Kinkster's own heart.

Porter's former Austin residence now houses the O. Henry Museum. He lived in this 1886 Queen Anne–style cottage from 1893 to 1895. The home, at 409 East Fifth Street (phone 512-472-1903), has since been restored and now contains artifacts and memorabilia from his life in Austin. Visitors are welcome.

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. Examples of the Wayne Phenomenon are legion: John Wayne Gacy, Elmer Wayne Henley, John Wayne Nobles, Wayne Williams, Michael Wayne McGray, Christopher Wayne Lippard, Dennis Wayne Eaton, and Wayne Nance, merry mass murderers all.

John Wayne, of course, was not from Texas, but he acted like he was. Texas has always had a lot to brag about, and one area of which we're particularly proud is the many mass murderers who were born in the Lone Star State. There's Richard Speck, who killed eight nurses in Chicago (he was a sick chicken, then he took a turn for the nurse); Charles “Tex” Watson, Charlie Manson's executive butt-boy (never trust a guy named “Tex”); and Henry Lee Lucas, who killed about 400 million people but can't remember where he buried the bodies. Occasionally, Texans get a bit overzealous and we brag about murders that aren't even our own, so to speak.
The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre,
for example, is loosely based on an incident that took place in Wisconsin.

But Charles Whitman was definitely one of our boys. (Charles Whitman, Charles Watson, Charles Manson— might be something here.) Anyway, Charles Whitman was one of the world's first modern mass murderers. On the surface he was an ex-Marine, married to some kind of university sweetheart, I believe. I myself once dated the former Miss Texas 1987. I, of course,
was
Miss Texas 1967.

So one day Charlie just climbed the tower and killed all these people. As a Texas Tower guard once told me: “It'll happen to you.”

THE BALLAD OF CHARLES WHITMAN

by Kinky Friedman

He was sitting up there for more than an hour,
Way up there on the Texas Tower
Shooting from the twenty-seventh floor.
He didn't choke or slash or slit them,
Not our Charles Joseph Whitman
He won't be an architect no more.

 

Got up that morning calm and cool,
He picked up his guns and walked to school
All the while he smiled so sweetly,
Then he blew their minds completely,
They'd never seen an Eagle Scout so cruel.

 

Now won't you think for the shame and degradation
For the school's administration
He put on such a bold and brassy show.
The Chancellor said: “It's adolescent,
And of course it's most unpleasant
But I got to admit it was a lovely way to go.”

 

CHORUS
:
There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain.
He was sitting up there with his .36 Magnum,

 

Laughing wildly as he bagged 'em.
Who are we to say the boy's insane?
Now Charlie was awful disappointed,
Else he thought he was anointed
To do a deed so lowdown and so mean.
The students looked up from their classes,
Had to stop and rub their glasses,
Who'd believe he'd once been a Marine?

 

Now Charlie made the honor roll with ease,
Most all of his grades were A's and B's.
A real rip-snorting trigger-squeezer,
Charlie proved a big crowd-pleaser
Though he had been known to make a couple C's.

 

Some were dying, some were weeping,
Some were studying, some were sleeping,
Some were shouting “Texas Number 1!”
Some were running, some were falling,
Some were screaming, some were balling,
Some thought the revolution had begun.

 

The doctors tore his poor brain down,
But not a snitch of illness could be found.
Most folks couldn't figure just-a why he did it
And them that could would not admit it
There's still a lot of Eagle Scouts around.

 

CHORUS:
There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain.
He was sitting up there with his .36 Magnum,
Laughing wildly as he bagged 'em.
Who are we to say the boy's in—
Who are we to say the boy's in—
Who are we to say the boy's insane?

 

Although this chapter is about famous Austinites past and present, I would like to amend the category at the last moment because not all Austinites destined to be famous have achieved their fame yet. Some are merely en route, like this troop of Girl Scouts I met in Austin.

THE FIRST TIME I went to a charity car wash, Richard Nixon was president. I think some high school cheerleaders were trying to raise money to go to a cheerleading camp in Fat Chance, Arkansas. My vehicle was a dusty green 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible with a wolf-whistle and a Bermuda bell. I was hoping to have an overnight with a few of the cheerleaders myself. Of course, that never happened. Nixon would not have approved. Besides, I was a late-blooming serious.

There were a great many things back then, no doubt, of which Nixon and society in general would not have approved. But life was different in those days—or maybe it was exactly the same, only we didn't know it. It seemed, for instance, that none of my high school friends came from broken homes. Divorce was almost unheard of. Nobody knew what a single person was. And, certainly, no one I knew had a parent in prison. I don't really think I was sheltered. I just think I was out to lunch. The second charity car wash of my life was held recently in the parking lot of the Hotel San José in Austin. I was driving a silver 1999 Cadillac DeVille that had once belonged to my father and had the distinction of being one of the few Cadillacs in Texas with a Darwin fish emblem. The vehicles had changed, and I had changed—the last thing in the world I was interested in was a fifty-eight-year-old cheerleader. The game had changed too, in this tale of two car washes. Whether we like it or not, at some indefinable point in time, we all forsake our childhood games and become players in the game of life.

The girls at the second car wash were not high school cheerleaders. For one thing, most of them weren't old enough to be in high school. For another, in their brief lives, there hadn't been a hell of a lot to cheer about. Girl Scout cookie season was over for this particular troop. So were a few other things, like home, family, and childhood. That's because every girl in this troop has or has had a mother in prison. They are Troop 1500, otherwise known as the Enterprising Girl Scouts Beyond Bars, the Austin chapter of a national program that has served more than forty-five girls with incarcerated parents since its inception in 1998.

And they
are
enterprising. The car wash was a success, with the girls washing, soaping, and spraying fifteen cars, one bike, themselves, and several customers. And many of the girls are looking confidently to the future. One bright, witty thirteen-year-old, who was raped by an uncle while her mother was in prison for running a drug ring, reads at least one book a week, and when she grows up she wants to be a librarian. A fifteen-year-old whose mother is serving time for a gang-related murder wants to be a marine biologist. A fourteen-year-old whose mother, a heroin addict, stole and forged checks wants to be a social worker; judging by how devotedly she helps the younger girls, she may be well on her way. Then there's the pretty twelve-year-old whose mother is serving fifty years for murder. This girl's stated goals are to be a horseback-riding instructor and to work with the seals at Schlitterbahn. (There are, to my knowledge, no seals at Schlitterbahn. They may have them, of course, by the time her mother gets out.) And then there's the most soulful little nine-year-old in the world. She wears beautiful braids and has never been able to live with her mother, who's in for the usual things—prostitution, theft, and using and selling heroin and crack cocaine. And the kid? When she grows up, she wants to be a veterinarian.

Are any of them going to get there? You might be surprised. According to Julia Cuba, the program executive of the Lone Star Council, which oversees Girl Scout troops in eighteen counties in Texas and Oklahoma, 96 percent of the girls in Troop 1500 have stayed in school. Ninety-nine percent have avoided teen pregnancy. Ninety-eight percent have kept out of trouble with the legal system. These are remarkable numbers, especially considering that girls whose mothers are in prison are six times as likely as other high-risk groups to end up in prison.

In the United States there are approximately thirty Girl Scouts Beyond Bars programs, most of them limited to providing only one service: once-a-month visits to the prisons. The Austin chapter, led by Cuba and regularly evaluated by Darlene Grant of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, differs from the others in that it concerns itself with a girl's family, school, and social life and helps guide her mother's reentry into the free world. The program has been so successful, in fact, that the girls are the focus of an upcoming PBS documentary by award-winning filmmakers Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein (the girls are filming part of the documentary themselves).

After I dried off from the car wash, I went out to dinner with the girls. They are a smart, free-spirited, fun-loving bunch of kids. I'd never met them before, and from what I know of life, our paths may never cross again. I've always found it interesting how most of us seem to place our energies and efforts behind only those causes that directly affect our own lives or those of our families. In other words, there are better things to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon than drive a van full of kids out to Gatesville. I was reminded of a lady I once met whose only grandchild had died. She told me, “I used to say, ‘This is my grandson, and those are other people's kids.' Now I say, ‘Every child is my grandchild.'”

So why did I allow myself to get soaked to the bone at a Girl Scout car wash in the first place? Just lucky, I guess. And lucky is the right word for it. Most of us were born lucky. Lucky to have a home and a family. Lucky to have someone to provide hills to climb and stars to reach for. Lucky, when we fell, to have a catcher waiting in the rye. The girls at the car wash, of course, have known precious little of those things. Outside of Julia and Darlene, all they really have is each other. Maybe it will be enough. I certainly hope so. As we like to say in rock and roll, the kids are all right.