I’ve recently discovered that this traveling with the team is quite a racket. We leave on Friday morning and return on Sunday night. I get three dollars a game for acting as official scorer, am exempt from the training restrictions imposed on the players, and have all but about 2 hours of the weekend to myself.
All in all, my whole setup here is almost too good to be true. I no longer am forced to pull that ghastly KP—or any other degrading work for that matter—I have no regular working hours, and considerable power. Actually, it’s no power, but a control of what gets into the sports section and what is junked. You’d be surprised at the things people will do in order to get their names or pictures into the paper.
Pause for dramatic description—it is now becoming dark outside, but it’s a different kind of dark than we see on the ground. I can look down and see that it must be quite dark below, but there are no clouds up here to blot out the last rays of the sun. The little green light on the wing-tip is blinking against a background of a combination of orange and grey. Looking out at the quivering wing, I expect it to break off at any moment and send us all hurtling to the ground. Needless to say, it would be quite a fall and this letter would undoubtedly not be delivered. Now it has suddenly become pitch black outside and I can see nothing but the little green light—ah well—it really wasn’t such a stirring sight after all.
As this letter probably won’t get to you until after Thanksgiving, there is no need in my saying that I won’t make it to New York for the Holidays. Instead of going to Bolling (in Washington) with the team, I’m going to spend a few days in Louisville; submerged in deep discussion with Joe and Noonan.15 From all appearances, they will be the only people who will make it home and not to New York. However, we’ll probably become liquified and drop in on Butler for a quiet sort of orgy. At any rate, it should be pleasant.
One last note before I go—I think we’re getting ready to land—I have a somewhat urgent desire for my Male ring. I have no idea whether you still have it or not; but I imagine—and hope—that you do. It would be awfully clever of you to bundle it up in a small package and send it down this way. In return for that kindness, I shall steal a very valuable model plane from the display case in the office, and make you a present of the thing. I’ll probably have to get all my Christmas presents out of that case, and there will undoubtedly be some sort of uproar concerning the disappearances. However, that is immaterial.
There is no more time to be had; we are bouncing around in preparation for a landing and I must finish here. Write again soon and I’ll try to give out with a better reply. Chances are that I won’t make it home for Christmas, although I’ll make a wild effort to pull some sort of string.
That’s all—
ears popping,
Hunter
TO PORTER BIBB III:
His status as sports editor of the Command Courier appealed to Thompson immensely. Suddenly his “voice” was being read by thousands. Enamored of the power of the printed word, he declared journalism his vocation.
December 1, 1956
Eglin AFB, Florida
Monsieur…
Yes … if you’ll forgive the repetitiousness of your own phrase, the “gap was rather gaping.” As a matter of fact, it has been almost seven or eight months since I’ve been favored with one of your unique examples of the much-slighted art of written communication. However, you hit a sore spot when you launched into this “you aren’t the only one” kick. For the past four months, I’ve made an intensive and amazingly successful effort to convince everyone around me that I’m Hunter S. Thompson, the Sports Editor of the Command Courier, and am definitely not to be included in any group. So far, I’ve individualized myself to the point that people don’t quite know what to make of me anymore. I wear blue button-down-collar shirts instead of Air Force shirts, I keep my own hours, I’ve turned one corner of the Courier office into my own private den—book shelf and radio-phono included—which makes night work quite pleasant, I pull no detail or KP, I’m Sergeant Thompson to any and all publicity seekers, and, in short, I’ve turned into a conceited, arrogant bastard! So you see that your including me in the mob, which has breathlessly awaited some word from one D. P. [Porter] Bibb, was more of an insult than soothing balm for an injured ego.
No more than an hour ago, I laid the framework for what—if it is successful—will be the most incredible of all the Thompson coups to date. For the price of two new footballs and weekly publicity—I will be made an honorary member of the Eglin NCO [Noncommissioned Officers’] club.16 Naturally, the publicity will be for said club. You’d have to be in the air force to actually understand the full meaning of such a triumph. At the moment, the only thing which would compare to it would be for the Hon. Mr. [Gamal Abdel] Nasser to be appointed to the Order of the Garter. It will mean that I will then enjoy almost all the privileges of a Master Sergeant, save pay. As sports editor, I already have far more prestige than any Master Sergeant cook, mechanic, clerk, or any other such lowly occupation.
The whole secret of this sort of thing seems to be tied up in the old saying, “one good turn deserves another.” And being in a top position on the staff of the only official publicity organ on the base puts me in the position of having a ready-made “good turn” at my constant disposal. Soon I’ll be so crooked that I’ll have to screw my pants on in the morning. Seriously though, some of these people around here would make Boss Tweed look like an amateur. This word “politics” damn sure applies to more than the presidential elections.
Right now, I’m just getting over an afternoon of drinking at the NCO club—at the entertainment manager’s expense. I’m trying to get into a productive mood and whip up a story or so for this week’s sports section, but I’ve become entranced with the possibilities of more Saturday afternoons of the same alcoholic nature and find it impossible to concentrate on the constant and miserable failures of the base basketball team.
Now that I’ve tooted my own horn in the best egotistical fashion for a full page, I’ll get around to what I started to say in the distant beginning.
In the first place, just what is this thing I saw in the Courier-Journal about you broadcasting the election returns four hours before all the major networks? Secondly, fill me in on your activities with the Yale Daily News. (I didn’t know that Eli had a daily, but that’s beside the point.) First I find out that [Joe] Bell is working for the Ring Tum Phi (school paper) at W & L [Washington & Lee University], and then it leaks out that you’re garnering experience on the News. This thing could have such momentous consequences that I shudder slightly when I think of it. […]
The T-day tippling you spoke of fell far short of my expectations, but oddly enough, I still had a very enjoyable visit. The weekend was marred by a somewhat shocking adventure on the part of one R. B. [Bob] Butler. Then too, I learned that Reed17 had been ousted from Stanford for cheating. These two revelations caused me to look below me to make sure my underpinnings were still in place. Two such omens in the space of two days came as quite a jolt. However, I think my aforementioned underpinnings are in my mind, rather than below me, and I feel better now than I did before.
I did manage to spend a somewhat sodden evening with [Billy] Noonan, but I fear the old “zip” is gone, for the evening left me with an uneasy feeling that the “dark and bloody ground” is presently populated with a rather stilted and pitifully false group of lads and lassies. Maybe it’s me, but something has certainly changed. I got the impression that I was watching a play which had run too long.
As for my return to normal, I think it was due to a fascinating sort of infatuation over in Tallahassee. Unfortunately, it seems to be altogether too expensive and has terrifying possibilities. I’m afraid that it was one of those all or nothing propositions which women seem so fond of. At present, I’m planning to get over to New Orleans and let Eichelburger get me good and drunk. I think that will cleanse my soul of this “good and simple life” idea.
Right now I’m going out to l
ook for someone to go into Pensacola and suck up a few with me at a smoky grotto called “Trader John’s.” So this will wind it up for the moment and I’ll sit back and wait for a reply.
I’ve applied for a leave, beginning on December 27 and extending through the 4th of January. However, I’ll make a desperate effort to tack four days onto this and have it start Xmas eve. It will undoubtedly be denied (I have only 2 days coming) but it will do no harm to try.
Until then,
au revoir—Hunty
P.S. it’s AB Wg, not A building.
TO RUTLEDGE LILLY:
Lilly was a friend of Thompson’s from the Athenaeum Literary Association. This letter was written to him at Princeton University, where he was now a student.
December 12, 1956
Eglin AFB
Fort Walton Beach, Florida
Dear Rut …
You displayed the epitome of gall, sir, when you went so far as to state that I “generally never write back.” Except in the case of ghastly tragedies, I never fail to write back almost immediately. I average at least 3 or 4 letters every night; some of them personal and some business. Naturally, I get hundreds of requests for autographed pictures, but most of these are answered by my secretary, a very intelligent female orangutan.
When I actually think about it though, I really have nothing of any particular interest to say. Oh, I could comment at length on the subject of your orgies in New York, but it seems all but unnecessary and my lack of skill with this machine forbids any lengthy commentary. So I’ll just say my oh my, hmmmm, well well, say now, really?, jesus christ, fiddlesticks, poop, lithernane!, sounds nice, zwitch, and several other trite expressions of wonder, envy and awe—and that will cover your adventures in New York.
One item, I think, deserves extra comment, and that’s the one about Curtis18 becoming “unrecognizably” drunk. Now I’ve seen drunks and drunks—tall drunks, short drunks, blind drunks, crawling drunks, slithering drunks, mumbling drunks, screeching drunks, crying drunks, sick drunks, dead drunks, speeding drunks, addled drunks, pitiful drunks, and just about any other type of drunk there is—but never have I seen a man who was unrecognizably drunk! The only explanation I can see for such a wonder, is that he must have shattered the “intoxication barrier” in an almost superhuman display of degeneration, dissipation, vice and drink.
Although I have no doubt that his head must have felt like one huge, infected tumor upon his shoulders when morning finally lifted its painful and ugly head; let him take consolation in the fact that he has established a new “intoxication level”—something for which you can all try for over the holidays; a proud and amazing feat indeed!
Ironically enough, even as I beat out an irregular tattoo on this machine, my head is swollen and painful from last night’s pleasures. I must strain my eyes to see what I am writing, and even then, I’m not quite sure that I’m saying what I mean to say.
Last night was the occasion of the annual football banquet, to which I was very naturally invited, for it is I who must write the story and get the pictures in the paper. My position has gone to my head recently and I became somewhat drunk very early in the evening last night. By the time the meal was over and the speakers had begun to prattle, I had become almost out of my mind. When it became obvious that I was not going to be recipient of any sort of award, I arose grandly from my seat in the midst of a harangue by the base commander, a man with whom I have had previous difficulty, and staggered out of the banquet room and into the bar. From that point on, things became hazy. I missed all the banquet except the meal and the drinks, and now have no story at all. I don’t know whether my photographer got any pictures or not, and all in all, I completely missed the banquet itself. Later, I was thrown out of the club for calling the night manager a crude, numbwit ass. As I was led down the walk by one of my friends, the manager stood on the porch in a white rage, as I sent a constant stream of insults and epithets over my shoulder in his direction. This morning, as I told him I was going to do, I hurled all the club publicity into Pensacola Bay. This will happen every week until I get a personal apology for his rudeness.
That was only the second time I’ve been drunk since July, so you probably won’t recognize me if I get home over the holidays. I plan to get home right around Christmas Eve, and stay until New Year’s Eve. This is tentative, and may change at any time. However, I’ll probably see you sometime during that week unless something drastic occurs before then.
Right now, I must wander off to the bed, for my head gives me untold pain and my eyes are orbs of fire in my chalk-white face. Until xmas, get a grip and stay away from brothels.
Cordially,
Hunter
The Spectator prowls the streets in search of an exposé.
(PHOTO BY GEORGE THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson’s first nongovernmental press pass.
(COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
1. Ann Frick, who was attending the University of Florida.
2. Airman Second Class Hunter S. Thompson became sports editor for the Eglin Air Force Base’s Command Courier on August 30; the September 6 edition carried his first column.
3. Henry “Ike” Eichelburger was a former Louisville classmate of Thompson’s who was studying biology-zoology at Tulane University.
4. David Porter Bibb III was a Louisville friend of Thompson’s and a colleague at the Athenaeum Literary Association. At this time he was a sophomore at Yale University.
5. Porter’s older brother.
6. The Castlewood Athletic Club, a neighborhood group for teenagers.
7. Davison Thompson, Hunter’s younger brother, was Louisville Male High School’s All-State linebacker. He won a football scholarship to Vanderbilt University.
8. The Eglin football team.
9. Tom Scaley, a native of Tallahassee, attended electronics school with Thompson at Scott Air Force Base. Assigned to Eglin, he was Thompson’s entrée to the world of Tallahassee debutantes.
10. Ann Frick.
11. The Broadcaster was the Scott Air Force Base newspaper.
12. AFSC stands for Air Force Security Classification. Thompson wanted to have his AFSC changed so he would be deemed a security risk and not sent to a war zone.
13. Bob Butler was a Louisville “rogue” friend of Thompson’s. Together they read aloud the Greek classics while drinking beer and raising Cain.
14. “Shoe” was a popular period term that meant “extremely Ivy League.”
15. Joe Bell was a Louisville high school friend and Athenaeum Literary Association colleague of Thompson’s who later went to forestry school. Billy Noonan was a Louisville native who was friends with Thompson’s brother Davison. He later ran for coroner on the 1970 “Freak Power” ticket when Thompson ran for sheriff in Pitkin County, Colorado.
16. Thompson also wrote for the NCO Club newsletter, under the pseudonym Cuubley Cohn, a takeoff on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”
17. Reed’s name and school have been changed for publication.
18. Curtis Moore was a Louisville friend of Thompson’s and a prominent member of the Athenaeum Literary Association. He graduated from Harvard University.
1957
BEATING THE SYSTEM … TRIUMPH OF THE WILD BOY … MENCKEN REVISITED … THE LOUISVILLE CONNECTION … THE LESSONS OF HEMINGWAY … THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION … NIGHTMARE IN JERSEY SHORE …
A thick blanket of grey fog hung over the West Gate early Saturday morning, as a green and white Chevrolet rolled past the little gatehouse for the last time. With a characteristic grin, the driver muttered a silent farewell to this Gulf Coast paradise and pointed the nose of the little car down the highway to Pensacola.
It was Gene “The Montana Ace” Espeland, his discharge papers on the seat beside him, heading back to Westby, Montana. Within a week or so, he’ll be back at Northern Montana State College, taking up where he left off four years ago.
One of the most colorful athletes ever to wear an Eglin uniform,
Gene was what they would call in France “un type.” Here, we call them “characters,” but they tend to be the same the world over, and without them, life would be intolerably dull.
—Hunter S. Thompson, Command Courier, September 28, 1957
TO JUDY STELLINGS:
In Orlando to cover Eglin’s basketball game against Pinecastle AFB for the Command Courier, Thompson found time to update Judy Stellings, his ex-girlfriend, who was attending the University of Kentucky but wanted to switch to Hollins College.
February 3, 1957
Pinecastle AFB
Orlando, Florida
Dear Judy,
Although I seem to remember you saying that you would write “immediately” as I wandered out of Cooke’s castle after an unusually sober New Year’s Eve, I now find myself with a few moments to spare and will attempt to bat out a few lines of greeting.
Actually, what prompted me to write was the sound of Bing Crosby’s voice, singing some of the songs which I used to listen to in your living room in the days which now seem almost a part of another lifetime, a past which was so completely different from the present that it seems impossible that it could be anything other than a dream.
Since early afternoon, I’ve been sitting at the typewriter in the office of the Airmen’s Club at Pinecastle AFB, just outside of Orlando. I came down with the team Friday morning and probably won’t get back to Eglin until sometime Wednesday. We are scheduled to leave for Montgomery, Alabama tomorrow morning for two more games with Moody AFB. I’ll probably have to telegraph all my stories in and send the pictures in by plane because my deadline is Wednesday morning and it doesn’t look like I’ll make it.
Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 Page 7