Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (19 page)
Read Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman Online
Authors: Hunter S. Thompson
But I'll keep you informed: the immediate future will be anything but dull.
Until then, I remain, optimistically and lecherously yours,
Hunter
TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON
:
December 28, 1957
110 Morningside Dr.
New York City
Dear Mom,
Having received no reply from my last effort, I thought it best to get off another short letter, just to assure you that I'm still very much alive and kicking. I have yet to get any mail at this address, and I'm beginning to wonder just what has happened to all my mail, packages, weekly checks,
inheritances, and so forth. I shall check with both the postman and the building superintendent on Monday. All the mail going to Jersey Shore was supposed to have been re-routed to Louisville: so if things begin to pile up there, please send them on.
As for my situation here, it could best be described as “flexible.” At present, I am staying in Jerry Hawke's apartment with two other Columbia law students. Jerry and his brother are staying at homeâRockville Centre, Long Islandâduring the holidays, and I'll be here until at least the sixth of January when school starts again. By that time, I'll either have a job or be fairly certain of not having one.
For the past few days, I've been making a detailed study of the sports-writing style employed by each of the New York papers. I intend to take a representative story from each one, re-write it to the best of my ability, and then make the rounds of the various papers with my portfolio of stories. If this yields nothing, I shall then investigate the possibility of working in some other field. Actually, there are numerous jobs advertised in the
Times
every day: no really desirable ones for a lad of my limited qualifications, of course, but at any rate, I probably won't starve in the event I fail to crack the newspaper job market. I should have a pretty good line on all this by the end of next week.
If and when I do get a job, I naturally intend to move into some sort of lodging of my own. But that too will have to wait until things begin to take shape.
And, incidentally, I hate to bring up the question of money, but there is something I will have to know about in the almost immediate future. To be brief and to the point, I would like to know if there is any possibility of Memo donating to the “get Hunter into college fund.” You mentioned this, you remember, in connection with the almost dead certainty of Davison getting a “free ride.” The reason I have to know pretty soon is that I'll have to apply within the next month or six weeks, if I intend to go anywhere other than U of L [University of Louisville]. And then too, the possibility of going to school next fall will have a definite influence on what I decide to do until then. So, if you can let me know a little something on this in your next letter, it will be a big help.
Just as soon as I get a job, I'll send you a belated birthday present. But until I have an income, it would probably be much wiser to hold onto every cent I can. Up to this point, I've been doing exactly that. Fortunately, I've been able to see
Don Giovanni
at the Met Opera, and one session of the Holiday Basketball tournament since I've been here, without parting with any money for tickets. The boys I live with have several deals like that, and it's been a big help knowing a few people. John Clancyâone of the boys living hereâand I have “dates” of a sort tonight, with an eye toward getting me
a companion for New Year's Eve. But, in case you get the impression that I'm blowing my meager fortune on wine, women, and song â¦Â fear not. So far, I've managed my funds very well. New York is actually not at all expensive if you know what you're doing. As a matter of fact, I've found that almost everything costs less here than it did in either Florida or Jersey Shore.
But this is the end of the paper, so I'll close without further ado.
Hunter
1
. Chip Johnson was a Louisville friend of Thompson's who joined the Air Force.
2
. Identifying details about Reed have been changed for publication.
3
. A friend of Tyrrell's who wanted to join the armed forces.
4
. Bob Colgan was a high school friend of Thompson's; Dave Ethridge was the son of Louisville
Courier-Journal
editor Mark Ethridge. They both visited Thompson in Fort Walton Beach.
5
. Owl Creek was a country club in Anchorage, a Louisville suburb, where Thompson and Haselden used to “sneak swim” on sultry evenings.
6
. Banks Shepherd was the base contracting officer.
7
. Charlie was a Louisville man Haselden occasionally dated.
8
. Mildred “Babe” Didrickson Zaharias, tennis champion.
9
. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell was Thompson's mentor at Eglin Air Force Base in charge of the Office of Information Services. A former
Boston Globe
reporter, he was responsible for Thompson's work at the
Command Courier.
10
. Memo was Thompson's maternal grandmother, Lucille Ray. Jim was his youngest brother.
11
. Patrick O'Dea was a Louisville dilettante and social figure who introduced Thompson to a number of women.
12
. Thompson now used this nom de plume at
Playground News,
in addition to Thorne Stockton.
13
. Robert Rosan was an ROTC from Syracuse Journalism School who was in charge of laying out the
Command Courier.
Thompson loathed him.
14
. Pug was Colonel W. S. Evans's nickname. As chief of the Office of Information Services, Evans was Thompson's immediate superior officer at Eglin.
15
. Renowned U.S. nuclear scientists.
16
. Thompson used to berate Edenfield because he had reenlisted in the armed forces.
17
. Thompson was greatly influenced by sociologist Mills's groundbreaking theories about America's power structure.
18
. Thompson is referring to the famous merry-go-round at Louisville's amusement park.
19
. Thompson is referring to his date with the daughter of a
Jersey Shore Herald
writer, which is detailed in his January 2, 1958, letter to Fred Fulkerson.
DOWN AND OUT IN MANHATTAN â¦Â NO ROOM AT THE YMCA â¦Â LIFE AT THE INTERRACIAL HOTEL â¦Â MIDNIGHT SINS OF HST â¦Â FEEDING OFF HENRY LUCE â¦Â WHOSE MOVIE IS THIS?â¦
New Year's Eve in Manhattan. A freezing rain blows through the dark street. Above the city, far up in the misted rain, long beams of yellow light sweep in great circles through the black air. They are anchored to the Empire State Buildingâthat great phallic symbol, a monument to the proud dream of potency that is the spirit of New York. And below, in the damp neon labyrinth of the city itself, people hurry: somewhere â¦Â everywhere â¦Â nowhere â¦
âHunter S. Thompson, “Prince Jellyfish” (unpublished novel)
Â
Â
TO FRED FULKERSON
:
Although jobless, Thompson was having fun in Manhattan, reading Henry Miller's
Tropic of Cancer
and searching for gainful employment. The city looked all the better after Jersey Shore. Meanwhile, at Eglin, Fulkerson had taken over Thompson's job as sports editor of the
Command Courier.
January 2, 1958
110 Morningside Drive
New York, New York
Dear Fred,
Well, I suppose I'd better warn you to get a gripâbecause I have a bitch of a tale to tell: a tale of terror and agony, shame and grief, poverty and perversion.â¦
On Christmas Eve, I voluntarily and under the influence of drink confessed to four heinously cruel homosexual offenses in a Chicago suburb, and was subsequently sentenced on New Year's Day to 73 years in Joliet prison. Upon hearing the sentence, I mercilessly slew a juror and three guards and fled into the night. I am now working as a pimp on New York's Upper West Side, in the heart of the Puerto Rican section. In the short space of three weeks, I've become addicted to morphine, cheddar cheese extract, and three more forms of sexual perversion. I need moral aidâsend money and a Gideon Bible to Emanuel Hunteros Nama, no Morningside Drive, Apt. 53, New York, New York. [â¦]
Seriously, things have come to a horrible pass. I've been crazy drunk for 10 straight days, my money disappears at a rapid rate, the police put at least one ticket on my car every day, and it's beginning to look like I'm actually going to have to work for a living. The outlook is grizzly indeed.
I got here on Christmas Eve: needless to say, I couldn't stand that goddamn place in Pennsylvaniaâand I've been drinking almost continuously ever since. My departure from Pennsylvania was hastened a bit, after a wild debauch with the young daughter of one of the staff writers. She left for Chicago on the same day I left for New York. On the Friday night before
Christmas, we stayed out all night, drove her fathers car into a mud bog on a deserted road, tore the front bumper off trying to drag the car onto the road with a tractor, and both became raving drunk on Ram's Head Ale. Naturally, the scandal caused a little hard feeling here and there, and made it necessary for me to flee town immediately in order to avoid being tarred and feathered by a puritanical mob.
1
I had already enraged a goodly portion of the populace by several sarcastic articles on the sorry state of Pennsylvania high school basketball, and this romp with the young woman would have been all the excuse the Quaker bastards needed to emasculate me. [â¦]
It's pretty difficult to begin one's sportswriting career in the employment of
The New York Times,
though, and I imagine I'll be forced to find work elsewhere for the time being, I'm going to have to save some money between now and next September, and if I can't find a suitable and rewarding job in Manhattan, I'm thinking seriously of trying to get a position laboring on some ship. Right now, though, I'm concentrating on enjoying all the sinful pleasures of the metropolis. I have enough money for about two more weeks of degeneracy, and then I'll have to get serious about some sort of work.