Posted by permission of the author by Mixon:
A long time ago in Fredericksburg, Texas, they held the Luckenbach
World’s Fair, the brainchild of Hondo Crouch and Guich Koock, who
bought the little town in the Texas Hill Country. They made it a
favorite hangout for Waylon and Willie and the boys, and lots of lawng-
hurred country folks from Austin and other parts. Later they sold the
whole thang again. Why was the fair held in Fredericksburg? Well,
Luckenbach was charmin’ to visit, but not big enough to hold a couple
of thousand beer drunks all at once, and Fredericksburg had a stadium
for rent
I thank it wuz June 1975. I went thur from Lubbock on the weekend out
of boredom, just to git away from my grad stoodent studies at Texas
Tech. I mean, how many millipede gonopods can you measure while
staring through a microscope? I was goin’ cross-eyed, and my wife
wasn’t much interested in going, so I went. Had I a friend who hadda
been interested I woulda taken him along. That reminds me of this
example of Texanese that my Dad used to quote, “Well, if I’d a knowd
you’d a goed, I’d a let you a’rode, leastwise I’d seen you had a way
to went.” That was how I felt about it too.
So, I drove my old Chevy 4x4 down there and when I arrived I
immediately bumped into cavers from Austin—Charlie Loving, Gil Ediger,
Don Broussard, and lots of others. We wandered around, drank beer, and
sampled the food at the booths on the grounds. Eventually I moseyed up
into the bleachers, which wuz shady.
They wuz hostin’ various events, and pretty soon they announced a
Laughing Contest. A no-holds-barred-make-it-up-as-you-go Laughing
Contest, with some vague trophy being offered. By this time I was half
full of beer and feelin’ pretty jovial, so I joined up. I went down
front to the stage, where they had notables like Slim Pickens, Hondo,
Guich, and Frank X. Tolbert as judges. Also Sarah somebody, a famous
Texas politician whose last name I can’t recall, but she was good-
lookin’.
I asked about rules, and they didn’t have any. So, the first man gets
up to the mike and he tells some cornball joke and slaps his thigh and
laughs. The crowd sort of laughs, and we’re off to a start. Then the
second man takes the mike and tells some long windy joke and they sort
of laugh, but not too much. I’m thinkin’, “Man, this is pretty lame. I
can do better than this.” I think I was third, or maybe fifth—I didn’t
really care at this point. So, I decided to do something unusual.
There I was already sort of lookin’ weird. I had lawng hurr stickin’
out all around from my dark blue denim engineer’s cap, a big mustash,
jeans, cowboy boots, and a t-shirt that said, “Lucky Me! I live in
Lubbock!” with a cartoon of a dood clingin’ to a road sign while a
tornado has him blowed out sideways with his pants comin’ off.
I stepped up to the mike, which was on a stand and connected to a big
sound system. I said real low, “lucky me…I live in Lubbock.” Then I
started to laugh in a real low register, then I went up the scale
gradually in a sustained crescendo, culminating in a foghorn, hootin’,
exhalin’, inhalin’ drug-crazed ape virtuoso hollerin’ extravaganza,
while I staggered about the stage draggin’ the mike stand with me. It
was almost scary. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know I
had it in me. Gawd, the crowd went wild!
OK, so maybe one or two more performed, but they were a mere shadow to
my virtuoso hootin’ performance. The judges huddled together, then
they said the crowd wanted me to do it again. So, I did it all again,
but even longer and better this time. I thank the laugh I did reached
mebbe 100 decibels, and that’s just at the mike. In the bleachers all
them beer drunks musta heard it louder, and they all went apeshit at
my apeshit laugh. They cheered and stomped and jumped up and down, and
I was awarded the grand prize. It was a trophy made by Charlie Loving
out of a copper toilet float, glued to a little basket with sticks and
strings and mounted on a 2x4 to look like a hot-air balloon. And on
top it had a plastic Indian chief holdin’ a tomahawk, but his other
arm was bad, missin’ a hand. It was colorful, just like I felt and
everyone felt that day.
Later on Charlie came lookin’ for me, said that CBS News wanted to
talk to me. I never did see them. I camped out with my caver friends
that night, and next day I drove fast back to Lubbock, which we called
Buttock, the Hub, the new metro city of the south plains.
I have a Kodachrome slide of this event, showing Slim Pickens awarding
me my trophy. That’s for all you naysayers out there!
I had such fond memories of this event that I put it in my resumé, or
CV. There it remains today. The only trouble I ever had over that was
when I was testifying as an expert witness in a lawsuit in Austin. I
was recounting in court some technical work I did while employed at
the Texas Department of Health, sort of on behalf of the plaintiff,
who was injured working in the gas sterilizer area of a hospital. I
used to troubleshoot gas sterilizers and anesthesia equipment for the
health department using a special gas detector, a large infrared
spectrometer. The defendant’s lawyer, representing a big manufacturer
of hospital equipment, thought he had found a way to discredit me as
an expert witness. He said, “Well, MISTER Elliott,” (ignoring my Ph.D.
and my accomplishments), “I see here that you were the World Champion
Laugher at the 1975 Luckenbach World’s Fair! Would you like to tell us
about that?!” I just looked at the jury, and said, “Yes, Slim Pickens
awarded me that trophy. I am very proud of that!” I grinned, and the
jury all laughed—they loved it! And the big company lost the lawsuit,
I think based more on my technical work than my laughing contest
story. But who knows?
William R. “Bill” Elliott
Jefferson City, Missouri
13 June 2013
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Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.
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