Book Read Free

Proud Highway

Page 84

by Hunter S. Thompson


  Actually, I don’t think it makes much difference. Johnson looks ready to take us all over the brink in a fit of stupid rage and frustration. He fucks up every time he turns around, but he still has the main clout. I wrote Eugene McCarthy and said I’d help if he thought he needed any, but that looks pretty bleak, too. Right now I should be writing my new “column” in Ramparts, but I can’t get up the zap for it. We’re into a very evil bag. I want to get my new passport arranged and get a fat advance for some non-existent book, so I can leave the country on 24 hours’ notice. The bastard is looking for a reason to declare war officially, and all hell will break loose when that happens. I see a Nixon-Johnson election coming up, and that’s too much for my head. Maybe the dope freaks are right.

  No word from Kennedy in months. I don’t know what it means. McGarr has turned devious and fuck crazy, jumping from one bad scene to another, hanging me up with friends, etc. I don’t even know what to make of it, but I guess he’ll eventually calm down. […]

  Off to bed now, almost dawn here. 4–5–6 inches of snow on the ground, cold as hell, probably as good a place as any to hide right now. The last address I had for Noonan was AmExpress, Paris. If you’re heading south try that, but I think he’s in Spain by now. I gave him your Amsterdam address. Sandy is pregnant again. Sow and ye shall reap.…

  Hunter

  Hunter and Juan Thompson.

  (PHOTO BY DAVID PIERCE; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)

  1. Paul Krassner was the editor of The Realist, a Los Angeles-based counterculture magazine.

  2. Elsie was Barger’s “old lady” at the time. She died in a motorcycle crash, leaving behind a young son.

  3. CBC was supposed to pay Thompson for appearing on their television talk show.

  4. Skip Werkman, a Hell’s Angel, was a surprise guest on the Toronto (CBC) talk show.

  5. Thompson had agreed to give the Hell’s Angels all free books, an offer he reneged 011 after the stomping.

  6. A San Francisco Hell’s Angel.

  7. Thompson had appeared on Irv Kup’s eponymous TV show.

  8. Paul Cunningham was a news reporter on the Today show.

  9. West was a progressive magazine in Los Angeles.

  10. Another literary agent, who would represent Thompson in later years.

  11. II. Lawrence Lack, publisher of the Los Angeles Free Press.

  12. Stanley Owsley, the legendary LSD chemist.

  13. A well-known dealer of psychedelics.

  14. Ginzburg had been an editor at Esquire and Eros and was now an editor at Fact magazine.

  15. Kerista was a loosely formed cult-like tribe at the time. It evolved into a well-known commune several years later.

  16. Julian Hart was the press officer at the embassy in Rio. His wife helped the U.S. press corps get access to officials.

  17. Jim Jensen, a CBS reporter, was working on a story about motorcycle gangs.

  18. Peter Dominick was a Republican senator from Colorado.

  19. Pope Dau, a charismatic cult leader, wanted Thompson to write about his messianic powers.

  20. Dink Stover was the hero in a series of upbeat stories for teenagers.

  21. Thompson was writing a Nevada-based story for The New York Times.

  22. Hinckle had a spider monkey in his office, which Thompson despised.

  23. Dave Pierce was the mayor of Richmond. California.

  24. Thompson’s lawyer. His name has been changed here.

  25. The brand of rifle purportedly used to kill JFK.

  26. Eric Hoffer was a popular Bay Area socialist writer.

  27. Thompson had recorded the La Honda party/meeting between the Hell’s Angels and Merry Pranksters on cassettes and had promised to send them to Wolfe, who would later use them in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York, 1968).

  28. Berry had presented Thompson with an official police badge to use if he found himself in a legal jam.

  EPILOGUE

  “MIDNIGHT ON THE COAST HIGHWAY”

  San Francisco, 1960

  All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

  –Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem

  Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine–four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet, and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit … my insurance had already been canceled and my driver’s license was hanging by a thread.

  So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head, but in a matter of minutes I’d be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz … not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

  There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

  Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out … thirty-five, forty-five … then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these–and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything–then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

  Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly–zaapppp–going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

  The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil slick … instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway 1.”

  Indeed … but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there’s no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

  But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right … and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get back to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it,… howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica … letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge … The Edge.… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others–the living–are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
<
br />   But the edge is still Out There. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definition.

  THE PROUD HIGHWAY HONOR ROLL

  David Amram

  Joan Baez

  Bob Braudis

  Douglas Brinkley

  William Burroughs

  Johnny Depp

  Donna Dowling

  Wayne Ewing

  Stacey Hadash

  Hal Haddon

  Laura Heymann

  Abe Hutt

  Don Johnson

  William Kennedy

  Lee Levert

  Annie McClanahan

  P. J. O’Rourke

  Julie Oppenheimer

  Beth Pearson

  Curtis Robinson

  David Rosenthal

  Shelby Sadler

  Madeline Sloan

  Juan Thompson

  Virginia Thompson

  George Tobia, Jr.

  Oliver Treibeck

  Gerald “Ching” Tyrell

  Townes Van Zandt

  Jennifer Webb

  Jane Wenner

  Jann Wenner

  Lawson Wills

  Jennifer Winkel

  Molly Wright

  Warren Zevon

  CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF LETTERS

  1955

  “Open Letter to the Youth of Our Nation”

  “Security”

  “Night-watch”

  1956

  September 22 To Gerald “Ching” Tyrrell

  September 29 To Virginia Thompson

  October 18 To Elizabeth Ray

  October 24 To Jack Thompson

  October 25 To Ralph Peterson

  November 3 To Henry Stites

  November 10 To Sergeant Ted Stephens

  November 11 To Gerald “Ching” Tyrrell

  November 18 To Judy Stellings

  December 1 To Porter Bibb III

  December 12 To Rutledge Lilly

  1957

  February 3 To Judy Stellings

  February 5 To Virginia Thompson

  February 6 To Porter Bibb III

  March 3 To Judy Stellings

  March 10 To Gerald “Ching” Tyrrell

  March 17 To the Athenaeum Literary Association

  April 11 To Virginia Thompson

  May 3 To the Chamber Music Society

  May 11 To Kay Menyers

  June 6 To Chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) Robert Rutan

  June 26 To L. J. Dale, National Association of Schools and Publishers, Inc.

  June 29 To Susan Haselden

  July 13 To Susan Haselden

  August 5 To Susan Haselden

  August 23 From Colonel W. S. Evans, Chief, Office of Information Services, U.S. Air Force

  August 25 To Susan Haselden

  August 28 To Virginia Thompson

  October 17 To Kraig Juenger

  October 24 To Joe Bell

  October 30 To Larry Callen

  November 4 To Kraig Juenger

  November 8 From Hunter S. Thompson, News Release (regarding his honorable discharge)

  November 29 To Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell

  November 29 To Virginia Thompson

  December 12 To Larry Callen

  December 14 To George Logan

  December 14 To Mrs. Spencer, Automobile Association of America

  December 15 To Joe Bell

  December 23 To Kraig Juenger

  December 27 To Susan Haselden

  December 28 To Virginia Thompson

  1958

  January 2 To Fred Fulkerson

  January 6 To Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell

  January 9 To Henry Eichelburger

  January 15 To Carol Overdorf

  January 17 To Sally Williams

  January 23 To Virginia Thompson

  January 28 To Captain K. Feltham

  January 29 To Arch Gerhart

  February 17 To Susan Haselden

  March 17 To Kay Menyers

  March 18 To Susan Haselden

  March 18 To Kraig Juenger

  March 31 To down beat magazine

  April 2 To Sally Williams (including “Debt Letter”)

  April 13 To Susan Haselden

  April 22 To Hume Logan

  April 29 To The New York Times

  May 1 To Susan Haselden

  May 19 To The Village Voice

  June 4 To Ann Frick

  June 6 To Larry Callen

  July 4 To Larry Callen

  July 4 To Kraig Juenger

  July 14 To Larry Callen

  August 29 To Ann Frick

  September 5 To Ann Frick

  September 26 To Paul Semonin

  October 1 To Jack Scott, Vancouver Sun

  November 12 To Susan Haselden

  November 22 To Kraig Juenger

  December 7 To Editor & Publisher

  December 19 To Ann Frick

  1959

  January 7 To Ann Frick

  January 23 To Ann Frick

  January 31 To Virginia Thompson

  February 21 To Ann Frick

  March 1 To The New York Times

  March 3 To Ann Frick [not mailed]

  March 25 To Ann Frick

  March 27 To Judy Booth

  March 30 To William Faulkner

  June 3 To Roger Richards

  June 7 To Larry Callen

  June 8 To Ann Frick

  June 12 To Ed Fancher, The Village Voice (including press release)

  June 17 To Robert D. Ballou, Viking Press

  June 20 To Rust Hills, Esquire

  June 25 To Rust Hills, Esquire

  June 26 To Ann Frick

  August 9 To William J. Dorvillier, San Juan Star

  August 9 To Virginia Thompson

  August 10 To the New York Department of Labor

  August 25 From William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  August 30 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  September 4 To William Styron

  September 5 To Jack Benson, Viking Press

  September 8 From William J. Kennedy

  September 10 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  September 12 To Elizabeth McKee

  October 1 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  October 20 To Whom It May Concern

  October 22 From William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  October 29 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  November 6 To the Municipal Court Magistrate

  November 8 To Elizabeth McKee

  November 25 To Puerto Rico Bowling News

  December 14 To Philip Kramer, Puerto Rico Bowling News

  December 14 To Robert Bone

  December 28 To Mark Ethridge, Louisville Courier-Journal

  1960

  January 14 To Home (Virginia Thompson)

  January 15 To Distribution Manager, Brown-Williamson Tobacco Company

  January 26 To Sandy Conklin

  March 22 To Angus Cameron, Alfred A. Knopf

  March 22 To Ann Schoelkopf

  April 7 To Sandy Conklin

  April 13 To Davison Thompson

  April 17 To Sandy Conklin

  May 25 To Laurie Hosford

  July 2 To Home (Virginia Thompson)

  July 16 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  July 24 To Editor, Grove Press

  August 9 To Virginia Thompson

  August 10 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  August 17 To Eleanor McGarr

  August 26 To Eugene W. McGarr

  August 28 To Eleanor McGarr

  September 11 To The New York Times

  October 1 To Sandy Conklin

  October 3 To Sandy Conklin

  October 19 To Eugene W. McGarr

  October 22 To Editor, Time

  October 25 To Mr. Dooley, San Francisco Examiner

  October 25 To Abe Mellinkoff, San Francisco Chronicle

  “Down and Ou
t in San Francisco”

  October 28 To Sandy Conklin

  November 15 To Laurie Hosford

  December 8 To J. P. Donleavy

  December 15 To Abe Mellinkoff, San Francisco Chronicle

  December 23 To Ann Schoelkopf

  1961

  January 6 To Paul Semonin

  January 9 To Mrs. V. A. Murphy

  January 11 To John Macauley Smith

  January 16 To Mrs. V. A. Murphy

  February 1 To Norman Mailer

  March 7 To Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell

  March 18 To Virginia Thompson

  April 26 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  June 2 To Banks Shepherd

  June 15 To Sterling Lord

  June 26 To Sterling Lord

  June 26 To Frank M. Robinson, Rogue

  “Big Sur: The Garden of Agony”

  July 21 To William J. Kennedy, San Juan Star

  August 4 To Ann Schoelkopf

  August 13 To Mrs. V. A. Murphy

  August 14 To Frank Robinson, Rogue

  August 20 To William J. Kennedy

  September 29 To Mrs. Chapman

  October 13 To Virginia Thompson

  October 14 To Alfred Kazin

  October 19 To Eugene W. McGarr

  October 21 To William J. Kennedy

  November 10 To Eleanor McGarr

  November 21 To Articles Editor, Atlantic Monthly

  December 8 To Mike Murphy

  December 11 To News Editor, Louisville Times

  December 21 To Mr. M. L. Sharpley

  December 22 To Frank Robinson, Rogue

  “New York Bluegrass”

  1962

  January 21 To Paul Semonin

  January 25 To the National Rifle Association

  February 2 To Eugene W. McGarr

  February 7 To Paul Semonin

  February 15 To Candida Donadio

  February 16 To Lionel Olay

  February 26 To James Zanutto, Features Editor, Pop Photo

  February 28 To Eugene W. McGarr

  March 13 To Daryl Murphy

  March 14 To William J. Kennedy

  April 17 To Jim Thompson

  April 17 To Lionel Olay

  April 20 To Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Baumgartner

  May 5 To Paul Semonin

 

‹ Prev