Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (89 page)

But what the hell am I getting at except another night of unprofitable work and a big postage bill with this heavy stationery? We both have several years to look forward to and I'm damned if I want to spend them hashing around with this sort of bullshit that we both know and knew a long time ago. As for realities, your best bet if you come back to this country is to stay in New York—that is the capital of HIP and I read tonight that Westport, Conn. is now the “communications capital” of the U.S. because all the media people live there and I damn well don't doubt it from what I see and hear in the media. You'll at least find sympathetic spirits there and probably enough money to keep on being a genteel loser in a long-lost cause that has finally become fashionable because it no longer seems to be real threatening. (I say “seems” because I think you're right in saying some real action is afoot in Africa & other non-American soil but unless De Gaulle manages to bust the Dollar sometime soon I think we are many moons away from seeing any real power shifts. On the other hand, this Vietnam thing could boil over any moment if Johnson really means to prod China into enough involvement to justify bombing their nuclear sites. That's the word from [Oregon senator] Wayne Morse. He says the Pentagon has decided we're bound to have a war with China eventually so we might as well hit them before they get a Bomb arsenal. What do you think?)

As for me, I half-heartedly mean to move to New York next fall, if only because that's where the money lives and at least I'll have some congenial company on the way down the tube. Out here is like Tulsa with a view. You ask for my monkey wrench and all I can swing on you at this stage of the game is a new version of an old meanness, and a much surer knowledge of what we face in the way of possibilities. I think this is what they mean by Maturity and all I can do is reject it. I suppose your suggestion would be that I paint a big sign and join some non-violent picket line; but no thanks again. That is for people who feel guilty and I don't. I feel like I've been leaned on for a long time by people who don't even have to know my name and should probably have their fucking heads blown off on general principle. I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling for Joe Hill and that Wobbly crowd who, if nothing else, had the right idea. But not the mechanics. I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept in American politics.

I spent this afternoon watching a karate class in action. In the past year it has suddenly dawned on me that people are goddamn dangerous. My good time badass fuckaround is going out of style; the general threat pressure of life in the country seems to be spawning its inevitable results—several “secret armies” in Calif., a tremendous upswing all over the country in crimes of pillage, robbery, and violence, cops with shotguns riding every subway in New York between 8 pm and 4 am—that's the truth—and an estimated 6 or 7 thousand working karate busters in the Bay Area alone. This last is a frightening thing when you consider they are a vengeful lot to begin with and that they leave each lesson with a secret yearning for somebody to say something pushy to them. I know because I went to a bar with two of them afterwards and had to keep one little guy from chopping up an old man who had no idea in hell what he was dealing with; another guy, on leaving my apartment tonight, kicked a chunk out of a telephone pole. So, when you get back to New York be careful who you snarl at in taverns—I think that's why coffee houses are so popular these days; they're generally safer. New York seems to be a peatbog of slow-heating violence, physical and otherwise. If and when I go back there I definitely mean to carry a small pistol and take my chances with the Sullivan Act. I think there is a terrible angst on the land, a sense that something ugly is about to happen, an hour-to-hour feeling of nervous anticipation. Whether it's the Bomb or a simple beating, you never know—but, in your terminology, there is a feeling of push coming to shove and what the hell of it? [ … ]

Ah, this fucking rotten machine. One more strike against those pig-fuckers. In closing I remain, increasingly savage and unreasonable—HST

Thompson reflected back to the late 1950s, when he saw Jack Kerouac at a tavern near Columbia University, and looked forward to writing about Ken Kesey's LSD-inspired antics in the Bay Area
.

April 28, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Dear Mr. McWilliams:

a axgghs;;;;llf ;mbvcbh  n  njwqk/  fB  Q
M      QAW    bmfddxxsxfr  zx s  bdfxse3rv
fx  zczsqw  ZAnmmm,

Well, that was a message from my year-old son, Juan, who just woke up and can't be kept away from this electric typewriter. I guess it shoots to hell Thurber's old theory that a bunch of apes set loose on typewriters will eventually turn out wisdom. Or maybe not, maybe there's something in the above declaration that neither of us can grip. He stares very carefully at the keys before making his choice, and who are we to call him incoherent? (That is, of course, the generic “we”; you and I are the exceptions, eh?)

And now to your letter of April 23. I am, of course, quite familiar with the “non-student” phenomenon, and have been since I was playing that role around Columbia in '58–'59. At that stage of the game I believe we were called “bums,” although “beatnik” quickly became popular. I recall one night in the West End Tavern, when hundreds of people gathered to watch Kerouac's first appearance on TV. It was the John Wingate show, and when Kerouac came slinking out of the wings a great cheer went up in the West End. He was, I suppose, the Bob Dylan of his day—and saying that makes me feel damned old.

Anyway, it sounds like a good idea for a piece and also for me, but I don't want to commit myself to it until I get hold of some people who can give me the real score. I've made a few calls and have a few names, but for the past few days I've been dealing with a different story, which may interest you.

Ken Kesey and 13 of his friends, including Neal Cassady (the Dean Moriarty of
On the Road
), were busted last week on a general charge of possessing marijuana. Kesey wants to make a real case out of it—a confrontation with the law, as it were—but his attorneys are inclined to fight it on an “illegal search and seizure” basis. I just got back from talking to Kesey and his attorneys and of course I'm all for the head-on confrontation. Probably I should warn you that I represented myself as “a writer for
The Nation
,” which is a hell of a lot more comfortable on a story like this than being from the
National Observer
, which is what my business cards say.

At any rate, I mean to follow the story, for good or ill, and regardless of whether I get any assignments on it or not. Kesey seems like a very decent guy and certainly nobody's hophead. If the attorneys lose control of the defendants, which I deem likely, some of them are capable of making a real case of this thing. The argument, which I presume you know, is that marijuana is not a narcotic but a psychedelic—a consciousness-expanding drug, rather than an addictive opiate, and in no way harmful except to the prejudices and opinions of the bourgeoisie. If it comes to this it will make a fine story, but if the lawyers have their way, it won't. Actually there is a story merely in Kesey's problems in explaining his position to a lawyer. One of the big arguments tonight concerned what manner of garb the defendants should wear at the arraignment May 10. Kesey and his people resent the suggestion that they should wear coats, ties and stockings.

This is not a “typical beatnik” case, in that Kesey and the others are constructive, creative and articulate, by any comparison to the stereotype—and certainly by comparison to the “typical middle-class American.” Of course all this must sound pretty hazy to you now, but if the idea interests you, let's keep it in mind. As far as I can see, there is no real time factor involved unless we want to make one. What concerns me in this thing are the questions of attitude and structural anachronisms that will be brought to bear on the case. Sooner or later the Law is going to have to face some of these “dangerous drug” questions, and this case may turn out to be a big step in that direction.

Ok for all that. Keep in mind that I'm already with this one and will stay with it for the duration. As for the non-student thing,
¹²
I'd like to do it and I think I could do it well, but I can't guarantee the performance until I see who I get in the way of informants and examples. Unless you have somebody else in mind, why not send the material along. By the time I get it I'll have found—or not found—the people I need for the story, and a look at your material should give me a good idea what you have in mind. I would only work on a story like this if I were sure we're both talking about the same thing. Otherwise, it would only be frustrating, and if I'm going to be frustrated I may as well work for
Life
or
Look
and get paid for it.

Once again, I'm not haggling over prices. If I thought you could pay $500 for an article I'd damn well demand it, but unless I'm totally misinformed, that's not the case. On the other hand, when I work a week or two for $100 I think I should have the luxury of being pleased with what appears in print. I liked the galley version of the Hell's Angels piece and I look forward to seeing it in the book. But until your last letter I had no real
idea whether I'd written the sort of thing you wanted, or not. On that front, I think we're both thinking along the same lines on this non-student thing. Either way, let me know. I'm inclined to do it, so unless you have another writer in mind, let's give it a whirl.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

Covering Kesey for
The Nation,
Thompson offered his first impression of La Honda and the Merry Pranksters
.

May 2, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Cooke—

Whether it's gratuitous or not I have to insist you read
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. Reading it gives a man faith that the Combine is still buying madmen's work, and if so, what do you think?

Along these lines I was down at Kesey's house in La Honda last night, bearing witness to one of the strangest scenes in all Christendom—a wild clanging on tin instruments on a redwood hillside, loons playing flutes in the darkness, mikes and speakers planted all over, mad flashing films on a giant trampoline screen; in all it was pretty depressing—that a man with such a high white sound should be so hung up in this strange campy kind of showbiz. He MC'd the whole bit, testing mikes and tuning flutes here and there as if one slip in any direction might send us all over the cliff in darkness. Like a kid's home circus, a Peter Pan kind of thing, but with sad music somewhere up in the trees above the kiddie carols. I drank twenty beers and left sadly sober, remembering Mailer going off that diving board in Las Vegas and all those guys in the press room laughing at the fat boy with the ping-pong snorkel and the fat hips that he tried to roll like Brando, but couldn't. Then halfway back to the city with Sandy asleep on my lap I suddenly went blind drunk and came twenty miles along cliffs in what they call the Devil's Slide area not knowing from one minute to the next when we might go off and down like a rock to the surf.

It's bad on the nerves to see a toughass in quicksand, and if you read the
Cuckoo
book you'll know what I mean. Here he was last night, the Kooky King of the Woodsy Beatniks, orange jacket and headphones and bossing it all while I kept waiting for him to grin and look sane for a minute but he never did. It reminded me of me in some of my worst hours, and the only
excuse I could make for him is the one I make for myself—why bother to make it right when nobody knows the difference anyway? But there's always some shithead around who does, like me last night, and you now and then when I get sloppy, and sometimes Sandy when she's wearing her glasses. Ah, if I could tell you about the girl I saw tonight, and she went off with a commercial artist from LA, a guy with a white rolled collar and a line like say baby, let's me and you etc..… christ I need a long hill and a cold morning sun to get myself tuned again. I wonder if this writing to get famous isn't probably like working to get rich, or all the other shit they tell you at Bauer's (Louisville) and P. J. Clarke's (New York) and the Buena Vista (San Francisco).
¹³
Maybe the only human way is to go off and chop your own score and just leave it somewhere and let whoever finds it figure it out. But that's a pretty tough way to go out, to win by a nose with nobody watching and no press around to tell the world by god here's a man who beat it and let's give him a hand and maybe a prize or two. I think that might take a third ball.

Yeah, and I weakened at the last moment yesterday and went roaring off to a good horse bar and watched the fucking Derby with all the other hard losers and, like I predicted, one of them even bought me a drink, and without me even having to tell him I was from there. A guy I talked to tonight said he'd lived in twenty-one towns for the first twenty years of his life and now when he got homesick he didn't know where to call home. I told him he didn't know how well off he was but he didn't know what I meant.

Ah, that girl, that fine beautiful little human package—from Warwick, New York, of all places, up by Semonin's old cabin where I nearly died one night when that scooter went down on a wet road. I still see those sparks when I think about it; all the while it was going over I kept telling myself no daddy this ain't happening to you just lean a little bit and pull it back up again, but we kept going over and the metal was grinding off with all those sparks and then zango, all black and no hurt at all. I think that's the way to go out, running the Big Sur highway on a big cycle with no lights and keep turning it over until the engine goes off in a wild scream and on one of the curves you keep going straight over, then turn on the headlight for the surf, and hold tight.