Every time
I see Judy Henske, she sits down and has two glasses of
beer and
tells me that what I should really do is marry her and we
should
go back and live quietly in Wisconsin where we really belong.
Now, Judy
Henske is a lovely girl but if she really wants me to marry
her there
are some things she will have to do immediately.
First of
all, she will have to stop singing those loud, throat gravelly
songs
like Oh
You Engineer and You've Been a Good Old Wagon
But You
Done Broke Down, which would not go over too big in
Wisconsin,
and start singing nice, sweet feminine, petite songs
like Barbie
Allen or Greensleeves or Who Is Going to Shoe Your
Pretty
Little Feet?
Secondly,
if she expects me to shoe her pretty little feet, she will have
to start
wearing low heeled shoes and walk around a little bit stooped
over as
tall girls are very unpopular in Wisconsin. Also, she will have
to stop
wearing those plunging neckline dresses on stage and start wearing maybe
a nice little two-piece suit with a high neckline and
long sleeves
that would go over much better in Wisconsin. Or maybe
blue jeans
and a checkered blouse; that would go over great in
Wisconsin.
She will
also have to get herself another manager instead of Herbie
Cohen
who really belongs managing a fighter instead of a folksinger.
She will
also have to agree to stop hanging around the Dugout late
at night
crying into her Chivas and starting fights with other folk
singers
and hitting people with her beads. She will also have to find
a new
accompanist instead of John Forsha, maybe a guy who can
play soft
cocktail piano with a nice smile and a blue tuxedo jacket.
Also,
she will have to stop telling all those rotten stories on stage
about
unemployed prostitutes and women dropping their boyfriends
into wells
and all this other stuff that I know she cannot possibly
really
feel deep down in her heart of hearts but only uses to appeal
to the
hard hip hearts of today's hard hip hearted folk audiences.
Another
thing she will have to do is not let everyone walk in and out
of her
dressing room while she is sitting around in her slip as this encourages
sex perverts and invites crank phone calls late at night.
She will
also have to associate herself with a more respectable record label which
could further her career and forget about Jac Holzman who would sooner
fly airplanes anyway. She will also have to stop being
seen in
public with tall red-headed guys, because when I go to work
in the
morning down at the bowling alley, I don't want the guys at the
gas station
to start telling me "Hey, I saw your wife last night running around with
a tall red-headed guy" or "Hey, how come your wife is neglecting her housework
and running around, while your kids are starving and ragged and they all
have unwiped noses while she spends
all the
food money on guitar strings and low-cut dresses and long strings of beads
and Danish beer, which she can drink all night, and gets into arguments
with people and calls them a son-of-a-bitch and sings all
those
loud, rotten, dirty songs, and tells all those dirty stories and
keeps
getting arrested and falls down the stairs and gets picked up
in bars
by travelling dress salesmen from Des Moines and runs away
with an
oil truck driver and is never heard from again, except for vague reports
which drift back that she is losing weight and not looking too
well and
wants to come home and be given one more chance." But I'll
be damned
if I'll take her back after all that tramp stuff she pulled, not that I
mind so much for myself but she could have realized what she
was doing
to the kids, especially the baby who misses her very much
and cries
for her every night and has pneumonia. No, Judy. Enough is enough. We Wisconsin
people may be simple but we are not stupid. You have made a mockery of
marriage and motherhood. I wish you luck and happiness, and hope in years
to come you find that your "career"
was worth
it!
Shel
Silverstein
New
York City / Kenosha, Wisconsin
September
20, 1963