Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (43 page)

Friend from Louisville just called. He's working at the hungry i, making $200 a week and being kept by about five different women. Sex is very definitely a currency out here, and if it were not for you I could probably be living a fine and rotten life in no time at all. As it is however, I can hardly be civil to women, and told a girl last night that if I came home with her the only act I would perform would be that of throwing her child off the cliff and into the sea. This was at some foul gathering that Paul and I attended in the company of the above-mentioned friend.

Paul read your thing on the steel drum, thanks you, and seems just about as depressed as I am. His Colorado prospects are none too good and he will probably stay here it he can find a decent job. I still have no idea how long I'll be here, but if nothing decent turns up by October 15, I'll go somewhere and do something and probably shrink my stomach a bit in the process. (The camera is headed for the pawnshop in the immediate future.)

I don't mean to give you the idea that I'm wallowing in a fit of despair, and if it weren't for missing you so much, the situation here would be no worse than it has been many times before. But in a perverted sort of way, I actually enjoy missing you, and when I groan and grumble like this all I'm really doing is indulging myself.

Now I've run out of cigarettes so I shall take a pill and get into my sleeping bag until bright dawn sends me into the streets in search of work. Mira, mira. Write.

Love,
Hunter

McGarr was still trying to collect the $150 Thompson owed him
.

October 19, 1960
San Francisco

McGarr—

I have more energy than you think.

I have enough, for instance, to get down to the General Delivery window every day and look for my mail. For a while there, I would walk daily about 15 blocks, over massive hills, and find nothing for me but a letter
from you—demanding $150, and cursing me in every other breath. It was enervating, to say the least.

Your sea trip gave me a brief respite, during which I looked for work. In the past two weeks I have applied for jobs as: reporter, radio newswriter, TV newswriter, ad copywriter, publicist, floorman at the hungry i, gas station attendant, encyclopedia salesman, Fuller Brush man, yacht crewman, yacht maintenance man, carpenter, letter-sorter (post office), book salesman, dish-washer, layout artist, used car salesman, seaman (ordinary), film critic, photographer, bartender, male model, phone solicitor, ad salesman, construction worker, and made countless pitches of the “I'll do anything for money” variety.

Needless to say, I am still unemployed.

Also needless to say, your bitching and carping about that $150 has done neither of us a bit of good. It seems silly for me to have to tell you I would pay you immediately if I could. You're 100% right in saying I've “fucked up,” but a little ridiculous in implying that I'm welching. Yours is the first debt I shall settle just as soon as I can. In the meantime, however, rest assured that I'm not living high on the hog. I have not even had a mailing address since I've been here, I wake up each morning without more than a vague idea where I'll sleep that night, I am continually hungry, I have been arrested for shoplifting (a package of cheese—my only attempt at theft, so far), and, as far as I can see, I still have no prospects of a job.

As for your other point, I freely admit I was “foolish” to come out here. I was foolish to go to New York when I did, and foolish to go to the Caribbean. And not growing up to be a clean-living, debt-paying insurance salesman was probably the most foolish thing I ever did.

Your advice on this score is most welcome, for, as you know, I have often admired your wisdom. How I marveled, for instance, at your keen judgment in duping the Fulbright people so cleverly. Had I been in your position, I probably would have got myself in some foul and desperate situation. You, however, were wise and prudent enough to play it safe at all times. For the hundredth time I was overcome with awe at the spectacle of your life-plan functioning with such logic and precision.

I wrote you a letter that probably got to Malaga just after you left. My copy seems to have disappeared, so I can't send it on to replace the lost original. So be it.

I have just talked to Sandy and told her you made it to New York. We couldn't decide exactly what to tell you about the apartment, but this should do until we come up with something more concrete. As far as either of us can tell, we will be back there on or about Thanksgiving—no more than two days either way. There is a chance, however, that I shall stay out here for a while (if, by the grace of god's balls, I can find a job) and in
that case Sandy wants to come out, too. If this happens, you can probably stay in the apt. indefinitely.

This will be clear in the near future. If I don't get a job almost immediately, I'll either starve to death or be desperate enough to attempt the long trek back to New York. If I'm driven to this, I will almost certainly arrive there in such a mood that no one will be able to talk to me for at least two weeks. To cross the continent by thumb in the dead of winter is something I dread more than anything I can think of. But if the only alternative is a half-gainer off the Golden Gate bridge, I will probably prefer the thumb and the cold and the hunger and all the rest of the shit a man has to eat and wallow in if he wants to stay alive.

What is your score with the Army? Have you considered the 6-month deal? Clancy dons the uniform on November 6. He is now trying to sell encyclopedias. Don't consider coming West without a bag of money. My best to Eleanor. To speed payment of your $150, pray that I get a job.

Cheers,
Hunter

During the fall of 1960 America was riveted to the televised presidential debates between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy
.

October 22, 1960
c/o Henkel
3423 Fillmore St.
San Francisco 23

Dear Sir:

Immediately after election day, if not sooner, the nation's press will render its judgment on the greatest spectacle in the history of politics—the Nixon-Kennedy “Great Debates.” If the fifth encounter is as meatless as the first four have been, the judgment will in all probability be a harsh one.

Some of us will be surprised, however, if the blame falls where most of it belongs—on the shoulders of the press, itself.

Cub scouts could have asked more penetrating questions than the journalists have offered thus far, and no amount of grumbling about rules and regulations laid down by campaign managers and the television industry can obscure the fact that the representatives of the press have behaved like trained seals. The questions to the candidates have been, for the most part, nothing more than harmless cues, devoid of weight, meaning or perception. When you realize all the questions that could have been asked, all
the fraud, quackery and evasion that might have been held up to merciless inspection before 17 million viewers, it raises the question that perhaps the press is no longer capable of fulfilling or even recognizing its responsibility to the nation it serves.

Never before have two presidential candidates been placed in such a vulnerable position, and never before has the press had such a golden opportunity to hack away the sham and expose the basic issues. When the time comes, as it will, to belabor the television industry for staging a political batting-practice instead of a World Series, let the press remember who served up the soft floaters and the “fat ones” down the middle. It was a sad performance, and the sound of many snickers may be heard in the land when the pot starts calling the kettle black.

Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson hoped this letter would land him a reporting job at the
Examiner.
It didn't
.

October 25, 1960
c/o Henkel
3423 Fillmore Street
San Francisco 23

Mr. Dooley

San Francisco Examiner

Dear Sir:

A few days ago I talked to you about the possibility of a job on the
Examiner
, and you advised me to write you a letter on the subject of my qualifications. Here it is.

I came to your desk via the not-uncommon route of a military paper, weekly, small daily,
Time
magazine, a larger daily, and free-lancing in the Caribbean. This took about five years, and encompassed everything from writing editorials to actually composing my own pages in the tray. I haven't learned everything there is to know about journalism, but I've worked at it long enough to know I have more talent, originality and initiative than is common in the trade these days. If I didn't think this, I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to ask you for a job.

I got into journalism by lying. After a half-year of electronics school in the Air Force, I was ready to try almost anything. When the sports editor of the base newspaper went AWOL, I went to the major in charge of the paper and told him I'd majored in journalism in college. He smiled, and
put my name on the masthead as sports editor. Since I'd never written a word for a newspaper, much less tried to write a headline, I had to give myself one of the most intensive cram-courses in the history of self-taught journalism. I did it in the base library and the town newspaper, and, as far as I know, the major never found out I wasn't a school-trained ace.

After the Air Force, I worked for a year as sports editor and general reporter for a large Florida weekly, doing re-write, headlines, my own column, police court, business news, and just about everything else, including photography.

During the next two-and-a-half years I was sports editor of a small daily in Pennsylvania, editorial trainee for
Time
magazine, and general reporter for a medium-sized (20,000) daily in upstate New York. It would take too much space to list all the things I did and learned in this time, but, at the end of it, I figured my apprenticeship was over. I milked those years for all they were worth, I saw American journalism from both ends of the spectrum, and—to be completely candid—I was not encouraged. With rare exceptions, the press in this country is sluggish and short-sighted to the point of self-destruction.

So I decided to free-lance. For eight months, I lived in Puerto Rico, writing for a local sports magazine, the Louisville
Courier-Journal
, the New York
Herald Tribune
, and a San Juan public relations firm. I covered everything from politics to cock-fights; then, since I was doing pretty well, I decided to go to Europe and do even better.

I got a ride on a big sloop headed for Lisbon, but we broke a head-stay in Bermuda and I ran dangerously low on money while it was waiting to be fixed. A strategic retreat seemed in order, so I flew to New York, where, for some reason, I decided to try San Francisco.

Aside from my ever-increasing need for money, I have two reasons for asking you to give me at least a trial with the
Examiner
. One is the fact that I want to write and don't give a damn how much I get paid for it, as long as it's a living wage; and the other is your very obvious need for some live wires to help you compete with the
Chronicle's
feature line-up. You have a top-notch classified ad department, but when it comes to matching Caen and Hoppe and Brier and Beebe,
¹⁹
you're simply out-classed.

I'm not saying you should give me a column right off the bat, but I'm suggesting you could do yourself no harm by hiring a good writer with a sharp and lively head. You say you have no openings, but this is patently ridiculous. What if the
Toronto Star
had no openings when Ernest Hemingway applied for a job? What if
The New York Times
had felt adequately
staffed when James Reston wanted to work? Hearst
²⁰
is in trouble all over the country, and one of the main reasons may be that he “has no openings” for the kind of talent he needs. If this is a sensible approach to competitive journalism, I fail to see it. I think it has the makings of a fine epitaph, but it strikes me as being far from as dynamic as you can get.

That wraps it up on my end. This isn't a standard résumé, but I think it's a pretty fair letter. If you think you can make even temporary room for me—at whatever salary you deem fair—please get in touch with me as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson had sent his résumé to Abe Mellinkoff, city editor of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
When Mellinkoff failed to respond, Thompson sent him this proclamation, its title echoing George Orwell's
Down and Out in Paris and London.

“D
OWN AND
O
UT IN
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
”

October 25, 1960

San Francisco, Fillmore St., the bay a few blocks to my left, warm sun in the streets, sitting at a breakfast table two floors above the street, drinking ale, listening to the marvelous vitality of the Kingston Trio—three rummies lucky enough to laugh at the whole world for a half-million dollars a year. No wonder they laugh.

City of hills and fog and water, bankers and boobs—Republicans all. City of no jobs—“sorry, we have no openings here; be glad to talk to you, though”—city of no money except what you find at the General Delivery window, and somehow it's always enough—city, like all cities, of lonely women, lost souls, and people slowly going under. City of newspapers for Nixon (“careful now, don't upset the balance
of terror”), of neon bars and apartments full of people who can't pay rent or phone bills or even face the newspaper delivery boy when he comes around to collect. City of music and longshoremen and just enough sunshine to make you appreciate it. City of Alcatraz, where human beings rot in unimaginable isolation, a loneliness so complete and terrifying that only a man who has been in jail can know it, of Alcatraz just a pistol shot away from freedom and the Ramos fizz on Sunday morning, Alcatraz so close that you know they can hear the clang of a cable-car bell on a clear day, Alcatraz where men rot and die while the city dances across the bay.