Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (95 page)

The moral of this story, I suppose, is “Never Lose Your Momentum.” But it is more specific than that. If this increasingly “illegal” tumult in Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area proves nothing else, it should at least explode the myth of California as a “progressive, enlightened state.” The truth is that there is a new and very resilient Conservatism booming here. The news value of a radical minority crowds political reality out of the headlines, and gives a false impression that dies all the harder on election day. The only reason Richard Nixon is not Governor of this state today is that he never learned the new Establishment vocabulary. But the saddest truth of all is that even if Nixon were Governor, hardly anyone would know the difference.

—Hunter S. Thompson

“C
OLLECT
T
ELEGRAM FROM A
M
AD
D
OG
”

Spider
magazine,
October 13, 1965

Not being a poet, and drunk as well,

leaning into the diner and dawn

and hearing a juke box mockery of some better

human sound

I wanted rhetoric

but could only howl the rotten truth

Norman Luboff

should have his nuts ripped off with a plastic fork.

Then howled around like a man with the

final angst,

not knowing what I wanted there

Probably the waitress, bend her double

like a safety pin,

Deposit the mad seed before they

tie off my tubes
or run me down with Dingo dogs

for not voting

at all.

Suddenly a man with wild eyes rushed

out from the wooden toilet

Specifically Luboff and the big mongers,

the slumfeeders, the perverts

and the pious.

The legal man agreed

We had a case and indeed a duty to

Right these Wrongs, as it were

The Price would be four thousand in front and

ten for the nut.

I wrote him a check on the Sawtooth

National Bank,

but he hooted at it

While rubbing a special oil on

his palms

To keep the chancres from itching

beyond endurance

On this Sabbath,

McConn broke his face with a running

Cambodian chop, then we

drank his gin, ate his blintzes

But failed to find anyone

to rape

and went back to the Mariners' Tavern

to drink in the sun.

Later, from jail

I sent a brace of telegrams

to the right people,

explaining my position.

Working around the clock on
Hell's Angels,
Thompson touched base with Blackburn about “The Rum Diary.” With the $1,500 he'd received on signing the contract for the Ballantine paperback edition of
Hell's Angels,
he purchased a red BS A 650 Lightning—the fastest bike available—so he could ride with the Hell's Angels
.

October 22, 1965

Dear Sara—

The bike has not actually blown up, but three mechanics say it's going to any minute—for three different reasons—so I took it back with a minor tuneup and am now driving the hell out of it, and damn the consequences. If I was done out of a grand I'm going to get some kicks, if nothing else.

For the time being you should do whatever you want with The Rum Diary manuscript. Everybody except my lawyer says Ballantine owns it, so I guess they do. I have now retired on pills and cheap whiskey, not to emerge again until this godrotten Hell's Angels thing is whipped, which might be quite a while. Until then there is no possibility of my writing a cheerful letter to you or anyone else. The only time I feel human is when I'm booming out on the motorcycle, which I think I'll do now, a quick run on the Coast Highway to clear my brain.

Sincerely,
Curt Testy

Curious as to what Mailer thought about the Hell's Angels, Thompson sought a quote from him to use in his book
.

November 4, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Norman Mailer

c/o G.P. Putnam's Sons

200 Madison Ave.

NYC 16

Dear Norman:

Somewhere in late 1961 or so I sent you a grey, paperbound copy of Henry Miller's
The World of Sex
, one of 1000 copies printed “for friends of Henry Miller,” in 1941. You never acknowledged it, which didn't show much in the way of what California people call “class,” but which was understandable in that I recall issuing some physical threats along with the presentation of what they now tell me is a collector's item. I had no intention of “flogging you into a coma,” of course, but if memory serves your sense of humor at that stage of the game was not what it might have been and I can see where there was not much point in your visiting a potential flip-out, in Big Sur or anywhere else.

And so be it. I hope you have the book and are guarding it closely. In your old age you can sell it for whatever currency is in use at the time.

In the meantime, I think you owe me a favor—and if you don't come through with it I'll have to put you clown as a paunchy cocktail punk or maybe a noisy ape still trying to imitate his betters. Which reminds me of something I read somewhere, in the old days.

Anyway, by December 1, 1965 I'm supposed to have 80,000 words on the Hell's Angels to Ballantine—which they, in turn, have sold to Random House for April publication, and so far I have spent $4500 on booze, LSD and one giant bike for myself in the course of six months' research, while turning out a total of 34 first-draft pages. So I now have 25 days to come up with a massive jolt of words and wisdom—if for no other reason than that the fate of my already-written novel seems to ride on the commercial fortunes of this pre-sold, unwritten jumble of rape and violence.

The favor I'm asking is that you send me whatever bundle of words you can muster on the subject of the Hell's Angels. I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about here. If not, well … I guess it was bound to happen. (I maybe should add here that for the past eight months I've spent nearly all of my time with the Angels and I have plenty of stuff—but it occurred to me that you might have some original ideas on the thing, an odd comment or two that could add some zang to my text.)

Or maybe I should just say that I'm interested in your views on the thing, and leave it at that. I wouldn't want you to think that the book depends on you in any way, for I know you're a busy man and of course I understand. But if you have any comments on the Angels I'd be happy to include them in my text if they seem at all interesting. The book is a grab-bag of word-photos, libel, straight narrative, and occasional wisdom. Anything you might send would fit in the format I'm using—whether it actually has to do with the Hell's Angels, the psychic roots of the motorcycle syndrome, sex as a long-haired vision on two wheels, or anything else with even a slim pertinence. Needless to say, I would use your stuff however you wanted it used, or not at all. My own idea would be to come on with something like: “Norman Mailer, a would-be Hell's Angel for many years, put it all in a big plastic bag, to wit … etc.”

Anyway, send what you can, but only if you feel up to it. I tend to assume an interest you might not have—or maybe you got over it. But even the reasons for that would be worth a look, and probably worth printing. My gimmick on this book is that I'm already so far into them on the money score that they can't quarrel much with what I send. Especially since they want a book on the Angels and I'm the only one who knows anything real
about them. I say this to assure you that whatever you might send would definitely be for print.

So do what you will, and thanks for anything that helps.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson was fed up with his 1959 Rambler Custom, which kept breaking down
.

December 1, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

R. A. Abernathy, Pres.

American Motors Corp.

14250 Plymouth Rd.

Detroit 32, Mich.

Dear Mr. Abernathy:

I see in a recent Standard & Poor notation that your Ramblers are not selling as well as they might, and it occurred to me that I might be able to give you at least one small reason why. On the same very minor scale I can also suggest a remedy, to wit:

It happens that I own and drive a 1959 Rambler Custom that is literally falling to pieces. Today some sort of crucial seal blew out in the transmission, spewing fluid all over the engine. I solved this by jamming a large cork in the filler pipe, but I suspect the transmission is on its last legs anyway. On the other hand I have felt the whole car was on its last leg for at least six months, and for that reason I long since abandoned any idea of paying for repairs.

To release the emergency brake (in place of the handle, which broke off) I use a tack hammer. To counter the absence of a parking gear (which broke off in my hand one foggy afternoon) I use a large wooden chock under a front or a back wheel, depending on which way I'm facing on these steep San Francisco hills. The prospect of the car breaking loose from its feeble moorings is not a pleasant one. The car, on its own, is easily capable of causing severe damage or even death. I have insurance against this sort of thing, but no amount of insurance could prevent the ugly scene that would certainly transpire if the car ran amok in downtown San Francisco.

These are the only serious safety hazards in the car's make-up right now … unless we could include a teeth-rattling front-end shimmy that I have paid to have corrected twice in three years and am not about to pay for again. At 55, the car shakes like it has just been broadsided by a bazooka shell, and anywhere between 40 and 70 it is a real effort to keep the thing in a lane. Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, is such a nightmare that I only make that trip when absolutely necessary. Another safety hazard, now that I think on it, has to do with the fact that all four door latches have apparently frozen in the open position. The two back doors are tied shut by a large rope across the back seat, making it impossible for them to be opened under any circumstances. I did this to make the back seat safe for my young son. But the front doors are a different matter: anyone getting in on either side has to pull the door closed and then reach out with a sort of putty knife—which I keep on the dashboard—and pry the outside latch in such a way that it will engage and thus keep the door from swinging open on turns.

Other, less serious safety problems include inoperative turn signals, broken tail-light lenses (clue to the lights being in a position to be broken by any car maneuvering into a parking space behind me), unreliable windshield wipers and dead shock absorbers which allow the car to lean dangerously on curves. I don't want to write a monster letter so I'll merely sketch the rest of the problems:

1.) A loud rod knock, despite a new crankshaft 3 years ago and a complete lower-end overhaul less than two years later. 2.) An almost entirely rebuilt—piece by piece—electrical system, including both a new starter and generator. 3.) New brake cylinders and shoes on both rear wheels—installed after I lost my brakes entirely one day in the middle of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. 4.) The defroster has jammed and the windshield washer has failed. 5.) The heater fills the car with such a stench that I can no longer use it. 6.) The driver's seat has deteriorated completely, making the car extremely uncomfortable to drive.

I could carry on with this wretched indictment, but there would be no point in it. The fact is that I am driving one of the worst advertisements on the road, and until very recently I was driving the car all over the Western United States. In 1963 I was a West Coast correspondent for the
National Observer
, driving all over California and making trips now and then as far as Butte, Montana, Denver and Las Vegas. In 1963 I put about 35,000 miles on the car; in 1964 it was about 20,000 and this year I have spent most of my time working on a book, which cut my travel to less than 10,000 miles in all. I mention my travels because I have lost count of the times I have had to stop in service stations for minor repairs, and sometimes
for major repairs—which can be damned expensive when some outback mechanic has you entirely at his mercy. In the course of these tribulations I have cursed the car savagely in service stations all over the West—not with any intention of queering the Rambler image, but usually in a fit of anger that finally became a ritual as the car failed me more and more often.

The obvious solution to my problem would of course be to get rid of the car by trading it in on some newer and more dependable model … and there is the catch, and the reason I'm writing this letter. Since leaving my position as correspondent for the
Observer
I have been making a living as a free-lance writer, and in that capacity I can't get a dime's worth of credit. The irony of the thing is that I'm making more money now than I did on a regular income: just last month, for instance, I paid cash for a brand new $1375 motorcycle, which has taken the burden of driving this rotten car off my own shoulders and placed it on those of my wife, who is scared to death of it.

Perhaps I might have been wiser to put that motorcycle money into a car, thus getting rid of this junker. But I thought I'd be better off with a new, warrantied motorcycle than I would with another second-hand, four-wheeled liability … and I still think so, even though my wife is still cursing me.

In any case—referring back to my opening paragraph—I'm certain that this horrible failure of a car that I'm forced to drive and display is a more effective advertisement for Rambler than any half-dozen TV spots or magazine ads you are laying out quite a bit of money for. When you consider the impression that this wreck—along with my raving about it—has made on probably 150 service station attendants in the course of two years, there can be no doubt in your mind that this thing is a serious liability and a threat to the Rambler image.