Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (53 page)

You know the rest—train to Chicago, Agar & crate in baggage car, 10-hour layover, which I used to protest editing of my work (
Chicago Tribune
) and trace a lost story (
Playboy
)—also to see
La Dolce Vita
, which I recommend. Then sleep to Lou.

Spent the past weekend in Nashville, went down with family for UK-Vandy [University of Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt] game and got drunk with Davison and a bunch of his head-knocking friends. Now back here to The Rum Diary and the ghosts. I have called nobody but [Hume] Logan and venture out of the house only to run Agar in the park. Pawned the rifle this morning & put $10 down on a Luger. The guns will be my undoing.

I have before me your last letter, written in Louisville. I tried to get it published, but it was rejected on the grounds that most of it was cribbed from Alfred Kazin and Scott Fitzgerald. Sorry. Try again, you know—and all that shit.

McGarr's letter came via Big Sur and, as usual, I cannot get hold of it. What the fuck is he doing with himself? Eating—I know that, he always mentions that. And drinking, of course. Aside from that, he mentions nothing except brochure-type descriptions of the landscape. He berates me, of course, something about my style this time—and my attitude—but all that is pretty old by now and, besides, I'm a little weary of being edited. Anyway, try to find out what he's up to, what he thinks he means, and send word.

As for me, I mean only what I say, and it's never quite right. I'll keep at it here until Xmas or so, then shove off. Where, I can't say. One of the main factors will be your report from Europe. McGarr has been there for more than a year now, and all I know about the place is what it looks like and how much it costs. I want to know if it has any balls—that's the main thing and you'll have to tip me off.

If not Europe, I may retreat to the West. If not Big Sur, then up to Idaho or maybe the north California coast. All this precludes the possibility that somebody might publish the book. If so, things will be different. Jo Hudson should finish the boat by June and may go out to Hawaii, then back to Vancouver for the shooting in those islands, bear and that sort of thing: caribou, elk. If the boat holds up, he wants to take it to Europe, which would be the right way to do it, I think. All this is leading up to the fact that I'm keeping an eye on him; if the boat works, I may hire on. The ever-present alternative is to hire myself out to whomever and wherever will pay me, and hang on till I'm fired. About the first of December I will start casting around. Until then, I'm buried here in this room.

Your comments on Big Sur and your stay made that week even better in retrospect than it was at the time. But it was a wadbuster, even then. Sorry I couldn't send the meat, but it would have had to go to Malaga, Am. Exp., and I didn't figure they'd be real happy to keep it until you showed up. It was damn good, by the way. When you get back we'll get another one—no rifles this time, only pistols and hobnail boots.

Send the word and tell McGarr I'll answer his letter as soon as I get drunk.

Hunter

Fascinated by right-wing politics, Thompson pitched a piece on the John Birch Society; the
Atlantic Monthly
was not interested
.

November 21, 1961
2437 Ransdell Ave.
Louisville 4, Kentucky

Dear Sir:

For the past week or so I've been mulling over an article idea that might interest you. It concerns the John Birch Society—not the obvious things like facts and figures, but the people and the reasons that prompted them to join.

I began thinking about this when I came back to Louisville after four years of living like a vagrant writer in New York, California and the Caribbean. This naturally altered my perspective a bit, and when I came back to the town where I spent the first 20 years of my life, most of my old friends appeared to be arch-reactionaries. Most of them seemed to have got that way almost by default; they didn't really want to talk about it, but if I pressed them they would invariably come up with the ancient and honorable Jeffersonian concepts that most of us were taught in high school. They were pretty frankly bored with the whole business and they wanted to talk about something else—maybe their new children, their jobs as bank trainees and salesmen, or the frightful possibility of their reserve units being activated.

So much for the majority. You will find them everywhere and quite enough has been written about them—the sluggish American, may he rest in peace.

But others were more vocal and far more interesting. One, in particular, is the fiery young turk of his local John Birch cell. His parents, whom I know and like, were incipient Birchers before anyone ever heard of either Birch or the Society. This threw me a little off balance, because I'd worked up an active distaste for what I considered a pack of neo-nazis and I was not sure how to take these people. I drove out to their home on the river, up the winding driveway to their house, and when I sat down in their living room with a glass of bourbon and one of their beagles gnawing on my foot it was hard to see them as nazis and rabid slanderers.

This is what I'd like to write about—John Birch at home, as it were. I've been to a meeting, but you don't learn much there; not about the people, anyway. Most of them don't say anything at all. They just sit there and listen to the few champions who tell them the score and what it means. Only when they relax at home can you find out why they went to the meeting, why they joined in the first place, their own ideas on where this is headed, their doubts, their occasional uncertainties (“Is Ike really a Red?”) and, in short, that vital third dimension that you never get in newspapers.

Because a “Bircher” is more than just that: he can be a father, an employer, a doctor, he usually has children and he worries about the kind of world they'll grow up in, he's certainly not sluggish and almost always articulate, and more often than not he's financially and socially secure. Yet he pays his dues, faithfully attends his cell meetings, and there's no telling what else he might do if he thought—or was convinced—that the need were dire enough.

As I look back over the first page of this letter, the language seems pretty stilted. So I'm enclosing a short thing I did recently for the
Chicago Tribune
. If nothing else, it is not stilted.

As for me, I'm a writer, a journalist, a photographer, a traveler, a seeker of some kind—and, generally, anything I have to be. If it occurs to you that I'm trying to sell you a slam at the “extreme right,” forget it. I'm not. Politics can be interesting, but I prefer people.

Anyway, if the article interests you, please let me know as soon as possible. I'm going to write it anyway, but it would help if I knew where to aim it. Also, please return the
Chicago Tribune
clipping.

Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson

When Thompson arrived in Louisville, a letter from Mike Murphy was waiting for him—demanding repayment of a debt. Thompson immediately paid up, and their friendship resumed in fine fashion
.

December 8, 1961
2437 Ransdell Ave.
Louisville 4, Kentucky

Dear Mike:

Maybe your humor is a bit too subtle for me, old man, because that second letter of yours struck me as an extremely hairy thing. Like finding a
toad in the mailbox. Also a hell of a way to wake up; here, as out there, I wake up just in time to catch the noon mail. No fun at breakfast that day.

Anyway, it was damn good to get your third, and if I weren't so damn sure I was right about that bill, I'd say something like, “Shucks, take a few records, Mike old boy.” As a matter of fact I finally had to threaten to do just that before Sandy would send me the 5 to send on to you. She ain't much with the figures. But this clears my conscience, and—with your last letter, plus finally getting Ed [the mailman] paid off—I can think of Big Sur and smile for a change. I don't mind being dunned by thieves and hustlers and horny-handed merchants, but it gives me the creeps when I start getting letters like that from friends. As you could probably see by my careful editing on the last letter, I pondered it long and hard. I couldn't figure out what had got into you. But, obviously, I missed the humor.

Needless to say, I retract the snaps and the snarls and the few snide digs I recall slipping in here and there. It was downright christian of you to bounce back like you did and the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow morning is go downtown and tear up that notice I posted in the Queer Bar. If … ah … if anybody shows up wanting the free drinks and the courtesy escort service to the baths, tell 'em … ah … just say it was a joke. Heh. Yeah, that notice was put up by some paranoid writer, some nut.

As for other things, they're all fine except the novel. It has to be totally revised and rewritten. I finished it last week and have spent this week just staring at it. On Monday I start over. It's a good life if you don't get the piles.

The beer is a big hit here and I am hard pressed to keep up with the demand. Doing a lot of shooting, mostly at rabbits, but the meat all comes from the grocery. Instead of that awful skinning after the hunt, I relax in front of a fire and drink whiskey and tell horrible lies about 600-lb. boars with 9-inch fangs, all of them charging and wounded and crazy for the kill, and me with only the big Magnum—which I carry around on my hip and even shoot the damn thing at rabbits. When I first appeared with it they just stared and said, “Gawd, Looka thet!” And every time I miss a rabbit I have to say very quickly: “God damn! Don't you people have any boar around here?” And they just shake their heads—all except for the guy who hit the rabbit with a 12-gauge shotgun; he walks over and picks it up, wiping his mouth with his glove so it doesn't look like he's grinning. And then we go back and drink and talk about old times.

Driving down to Renfro Valley this weekend to do a short piece for the
Chicago Tribune
and maybe get some photos for a magazine article. You and Mrs. Webb would love it there—it's the traditional Sat. night Kentucky barn dance down on the edge of the coal country where the life expectancy
of any sheriff is about 2 weeks. I am taking a pistol along with the camera—armpit holster and all. Barring a disaster, it should be a good drunk with the hillbillies.

Until the next hunt—HST

A month earlier two rival factions claiming to be the legitimate government of the Congo had been united after more than a year of civil war. It would, however, be another year before Katanga province's move toward secession was put down
.

December 11, 1961
2437 Ransdell Ave.
Louisville, Kentucky

News Editor (foreign)
Louisville Times

Dear Sir:

The column-one story on page 2 of today's
Times
(final home [edition]) is enough to make a man wonder what the hell you people are thinking about down there. Above the story is a 3-col photo of “rebellious Katangans and white mercenaries (offering) groundfire as UN planes attack the Elizabethville post office.…”

Then in col 3 of the story (“Tshombe Charges …”) we see: “Newsmen denied that UN planes had attacked Elizabethville post office yesterday, as was reported by a telephone operator in the E-ville exchange. Evidently the operator had been warned a UN bomber was overhead and took this to mean the place was under attack.”

I have a feeling that maybe that operator wasn't so stupid, after all. Who the hell are the abovementioned “newsmen” working for? This “end justifies the means” operation in the Katanga is tough enough to stomach as it is, without the added burden of muddled and half-blind press coverage.

Both items, story and photo, are from AP. Why don't you try the
Chicago Daily News
? Maybe Hempstone
²⁹
can figure it out. AP is not worth a damn on anything real—rely on them for coverage of ceremonies and anecdotes and that sort of thing.

Another meaty item comes from “Names in the News,” pg. 16, same edition. Obviously, Moral Re-Armament is blessed with a hardnose press agent. Their conference in Brazil sounds better than the Ed Sullivan
show. First we have Roy Rogers addressing the group—not including Moise Tshombe, who cancelled out—and then Nixon's mother shows up, a “surprise” visitor. Yeah. Next we'll get E. B. Williams, Joe Louis and Jimmy Hoffa in a no-holds-barred tag bout rounded out by Raul Castro. And to finish it off we have seven stooges apologizing to Mrs. Nixon for their part in the stoning of Blank Richard on his last guest shot in Peru.

I don't see how you people can report this crap with a straight face. Is daily journalism that deadening? Or was it just a bad day? I'd like to know.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

Preparing to travel abroad, Thompson was eager to find a proper home for his Doberman pinscher, Agar. Over the years Thompson would own a number of show-bred Dobermans
.

December 21, 1961
2437 Ransdell Ave.
Louisville 4, Kentucky

Mr. M. L. Sharpley
News Department
Louisville Times

Dear Mr. Sharpley:

Re: our conversation Thursday evening, concerning one Agar V. Estobarr, black male Doberman, whelped July 2, 1960; sire—Barrier Dobe's Estes; dam—Barrier Dobe's Donsie.

I bought Agar on July 1, 1961, from Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Baumgartner of Mundelein, Ill., somewhere outside Chicago. I located the Baumgartners through a Mr. Frank Grover of Carmel Valley, California. The Baumgartners were visiting Mr. Grover at the time.

I was living in Big Sur at the time and intended Agar to be the first of several Dobermans I wanted to own. When I bought the dog I expected to be in Big Sur indefinitely. I am a writer and make my living as a journalist and photographer. On December 1 or so I was offered a job in London and, after lengthy consideration, decided to give it a try. This led, naturally, to the prospect of giving up the dog.