Cousin Eddie was looking forward to spending another Christmas season in Denton. Like his namesake in 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, a mannequin dressed in a blue bathrobe and his signature trapper hat, holding a hose into a storm drain, is posted up near the corner of Thomas and Emery streets.
It isn’t hard to imagine Cousin Eddie’s classic line from the movie: “Merry Christmas! Sh---er was full!”
For nearly two years now, Jeff Wilson has been setting up this Cousin Eddie as part of his family’s Christmas decorations, which also include Hank Hill and his buddies from King of the Hill on a backyard fence and the iconic leg lamp from 1983’s A Christmas Story, which Wilson said his wife, Tamara, bought.
Late Friday afternoon, Wilson went with his family to celebrate his sister’s birthday at LSA Burger Co. on the Square, only to return and find that Cousin Eddie had vanished from the lawn.
Posts requesting Cousin Eddie’s return soon appeared in Denton Aroundtowners, a Facebook group with more than 80,000 members.
“OK, will you all bring Cousin Eddie back home!” Wilson wrote on Friday. “I can’t believe someone would take him from us.”
It became a Christmas mystery that turned into a Christmas miracle on Monday when Cousin Eddie returned in his bathrobe and trapper hat to continue dumping imaginary sewage into the storm drain.
“Everybody around town was, like, really pretty upset,” Wilson told the Denton Record-Chronicle on Monday evening.
Now, what happened to Cousin Eddie depends on who you ask.
In a Monday evening social media post, former City Council member Chris Watts, who’s also running for another term as mayor in the spring, wrote that he was the one to give Cousin Eddie a ride home. He said he learned Eddie had gone for a walk and gotten “lost due to all the detour signs and road construction.”
“I understand,” Watts said in the post. “I get lost, too!”
Wilson, however, shared a darker Christmas tale involving a local Grinch who nearly ruined the family’s tradition of 15 years.
Wilson’s family started putting out the Cousin Eddie display in Sanger before they moved to Denton two years ago. His wife, who’s a Christmas fan because her birthday falls a few days before, ordered the current mannequin for Cousin Eddie several years ago.
Over the years, Wilson said, Cousin Eddie has “taken some punishment,” so they’ve “doctored him up,” including adding a beard to help hide some of the cracks that have appeared.
“She was really kind of upset [about Cousin Eddie’s disappearance] because all the mannequins now are, like, faceless,” Wilson said. “They don’t have eyes or eyebrows.”
On Saturday, Wilson navigated all the detour signs and road construction and located the Denton Grinch’s home several blocks away.
To his surprise, there was Cousin Eddie in his bathrobe and trapper hat with the RV sewer dump hose outside somebody’s home.
“But my wife didn’t want to involve the police because she was like, ‘They have more important things to do,’” Wilson said.
Returning home empty-handed, Wilson was unsure what to do and no doubt made what some would call a Christmas wish.
That wish was answered Monday morning when some friends told him Watts wanted to talk with him.
Wilson said he called Watts, who told him he thought he saw Cousin Eddie at a rental property he owns with some partners. Wilson sent him a picture of Cousin Eddie and his address.
On Monday, the Denton Record-Chronicle contacted Watts, who didn’t offer too many details about what had transpired between him and the Denton Grinch.
Maybe it had to do with Watts’ nearly 15 years of public service, dealing with council members, staff members and community members who don’t always see eye to eye. Or maybe the Denton Grinch realized the errors of his ways after the public outcry that followed on social media, causing his tiny heart to grow three sizes.
A few hours later, Wilson said Watts sent him a photo of Cousin Eddie back at Wilson’s garage with a caption: “Cousin Eddie’s home. The road construction kept him away for a few days.”
Wilson thanked Watts in a post on the Denton Aroundtowners group.
As Wilson finished telling his Christmas story to the Record-Chronicle, a driver pulled up and stopped in front of Cousin Eddie to snap a photo.
“That’s what we love,” said Wilson.
Wilson said that since he started putting out Cousin Eddie for the Christmas holiday, he has noticed people stopping to check him out. He joked that his co-workers at Peterbilt get frustrated because they’re trying to hurry up and get to Ector Street to bypass the horrendous traffic on Bonnie Brae Street.
He was also surprised by the community’s response to Cousin Eddie’s misadventure.
“Obviously, he’s become a pretty dominant part of the city,” Wilson said. “It all worked out pretty good.”
CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-220-4299 and cmcphate@dentonrc.com.
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