Book Review: The Adventures of Slim and Howdy

A Fair Trade Book



Title: The Adventures of Slim and Howdy

Authors: Kix Brooks, Ronnie Dunn, and Bill Fitzhugh

Authors' web site: https://brooksanddunn.wordpress.com/

Date: 2008

Publisher: Hachette

ISBN: 978-1-931722-82-7

Length: 275 pages

Quote: “You bet the truck?” “Yeah.” “Which half?”

Two young musicians, admittedly “like” Brooks and Dunn but not yet the authors of a hit song like “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” drive through Texas to sing in local bars. Strangers when they agree to share a truck, they soon discover mutual friends and interests, though the story ends before they try singing together.

For now they’re bonding by drinking, gambling, getting themselves into trouble, and getting each other out. Slim spots the trick by which Howdy lost the truck in a card game; Howdy wins the right to beat up Slim before another young idjit does, then postpones the beatings indefinitely. Then things get livelier when one of their employers is kidnapped for ransom, making this novel a trifecta: comedy, western, and mystery. (Readers are led to suspect two possible kidnappers; Slim and Howdy suspect two others; who really dunnit...)

Meeting the requirements for a western novel, lots of people get shot in this story, but mostly in the feet. Gross-outs involve the sale of venomous reptiles as pets, the making of a kinky porn movie that wins an art film contest, and a lot of offstage but unmistakable drunken promiscuity. While in Texas the characters speak English and their bad language is tersely summarized as bad language. When the action crosses the Mexican border they speak Spanish, and use a lot of words that probably aren’t in your dictionary, that just might get you expelled from Spanish class for asking the teacher to explain.

At a certain stage I think teenage girls should read this book. The plot is romance-free but not sex-free. This is what happens when women think it’s “liberated” to throw themselves at men, trying to do what makes babies while spending their own money on pills and gadgets that they hope will keep the babies away. Slim, Howdy, and the guys they meet are emotionally immature, man-sized little boys, who have left a lot of emotionally immature, woman-sized little girls behind, and meet a few more in this book. Some of the gals are the sort any reasonable person wants to avoid; the worst pair demand that Slim and Howdy help them rob someone’s house even before they flop into bed. Others are the type who end up embittered and miserable because, surprise, flopping into bed with a young idjit does not magically turn him into a husband-and-father. As a result there seem to be only two women characters in this book: The Barfly, cloned at several stages on the way down into being the stoned, demented hooker the guys observe in a police station, and one full-grown woman (she was married to a real man, apparently, but he died) whom the guys like and respect as a sort of aunt-substitute. A woman who respects herself, at any age, will probably be treated by this kind of idjits as a sort of aunt-substitute, so a teenager feeling her hormones can use a good close look at the alternative. There is only the one alternative, and she just goes on and on and gets worse and worse, in however many bodies Slim and Howdy meet her.

There is an alternative to being a secular nun or ending up mindlessly, hopelessly offering your no-longer-wanted body at fellow drunk-and-disorderlies until somebody arrives with the money to “put this thing,” meaning you, “back to work.” It sounds like this: “Safe sex only until my husband is in a position to support the baby and me.” Repeat as necessary, and never imagine that pills or gadgets make sex safe. If the Marilyns and Briannas and Slims and Howdys of this world are all in agreement that nothing they do is ever going to “lead to” baby-making, they can all have fun, even while sober. But it only takes one moment of confusion for one of them to spoil all the fun for everyone.

I suspect Brooks, Dunn, and Fitzhugh wrote this book with the intention that it be something their aunts would not have liked. Hah. I got my copy of this book from someone’s grandmother. I laughed out loud, several times. So, very likely, will you. Fitzhugh has a reputation for comedy, and Brooks & Dunn knew their local-bars-with-live-music. But you probably won’t want to have it around the house when the grandchildren come to visit. Read it fast (that’s unlikely to be a problem), laugh over it, and then quickly pass it on to a single friend.

This web site would never deprive anyone of the fun of surfing the’Net and compiling their own soundtrack of classic country songs mentioned in the book, but since The Adventures of Slim and Howdy is old enough to be a Fair Trade Book, this web site will suggest a few songs that fit the mood, here.

To buy it here, send $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment as explained at the Payment Information Page. Four books of this size will fit into one package.