Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (107 page)

June 6, 1967
Woody Creek, Colorado

Charley.…

[…] Thanks for the good letter and whatever you said on the radio. I'll tell Selma. One of the most frightening questions on the Random House publicity questionnaire was: “Who are your powerful and influential friends in the world of communications?” or something like that. I started to list Julian Hart's wife,
¹⁶
but on second thought I figured you might be more fitting. Sorry, again, that I missed you in New York. Do me a favor and tell Jim Jensen
¹⁷
that I only failed to get by for a screening of that motorcycle film because I was screwed up beyond reason or understanding. The story of that tour will appear, god willing, in the next issue of
The Realist
 … and, again, god's mercy on us all.

I seem pretty god-oriented these days … maybe it's because Sandy has been bed-ridden for 6 weeks with a pending miscarriage and the total ignorance of the local medical cabal has forced me to fall back on the deity—whom I regard with all the pious faith of a death-row lifer confronting his favorite screw.

Anyway, thanks to Him, I am now fairly permanently sunk into this Woody Creek fortress that I call Owl Farm. We have a governess and other servant-types, but my checks are still bouncing. The difference now is that the bank pays them and sends me a polite notice to that effect. Everybody in Aspen thinks I'm rich and you'd be amazed how that kind of myth can change a man's life. I no longer deal in cash.

By all means stop by. Bring Walter [Cronkite] and I'll give him a colorful discourse (punctuated by volleys from my .44 Magnum) on how it is
out here in the badlands of dead-end America. This Jew-Arab business has caused me to order more bullets and gunpowder. You understand, of course, that my invitation is void in case of nuclear attack. In the event, I have 2 bullet molds and 5000 marijuana seeds to carry me through. All visitors will be blown apart.

Your gig at the North Pole sounds like the sort of thing I need to break my image as a hippie-thug writer. All kinds of people want me to write things; today I got an offer from an encyclopedia … the
Record
, as it were. The trouble is right now that I can't leave because of Sandy's ever-present emergency. The other reason is that I'm running way behind on two articles that are already paid for—one for
Harper's
(on Aspen), and the other for
The Realist
. Beyond that,
The New York Times Magazine
calls about every four days with some new idea … and in my spare time I'm trying to fire not only my agent but my publisher. It's a very tricky business but I'm getting to like it. I think I missed my calling: I should have been an agent, or—worse yet—an editor. In lieu of all that I'm considering a high-powered campaign for a county commissioner's post—and after that the Senate. In the hideous power vacuum of these times, I might even be president. And if you want to contribute some funds at the outset, I'll give you every consideration for the appointment as my press secretary. $110 will do for a start, but once I get my power base as a county commissioner, we'll have to up the ante. Give it some thought.

In the meantime, I have a new motorcycle and a half-new Volvo wagon … and also a large house with plenty of room for visitors. In all seriousness, I have two half-furnished guest rooms and a fireplace in the basement, so if you can arrange to stop through Aspen on your western trek, you can count on lodging here. As a minor local deity in my own right, I have a certain influence on the prevailing winds. So in case of attack, give a ring: (303) 925-xxxx.

Bring Petie if you can. I have until recently refused to make any public statements about the
LA Times
cabal and all others of that ilk (those without faith, as it were), but now—since the
LA Times
is after me for articles—I no longer feel any need to make statements, crush detractors, even old scores, etc. The deed is done … and, as long as we're on that subject, thanks for the good words on the book. You're right: it
is
good … but I get a fine boot (about 10–1 ratio) out of compliments from somebody whose taste and judgment I respect. Thanks again, and let me know when your North Pole thing will be on. Hello to Petie (and Walter, of course), but if you have to make a choice between which one of them to bring with you for a visit, I think I prefer Petie. Tell Walter I'll see him in Gaza—at $100 an hour. OK for now, and send word. Ciao.…

Hunter

June 14, 1967
Woody Creek, Colorado

Dear Paul.…

Can I get any leeway on the July 1 delivery date in re: that article you've paid for? If not, I'll get it there by then … but I'd like to have another week or two so I can fully and properly arrange for the burial of some people connected with the
Free Press
. Some pigfucker from the Hashbury, aided and abetted by L. Lipton, has attacked me with about nine salvos of outright lies. I wrote [Art] Kunkin asking for equal space, and if he doesn't give it to me I told him I'd write a forced obituary for all the Old Beatniks into the article I'm brewing up for
The Realist
. If Kunkin has any sense of fairness at all he'll give me the space, but I still want to put some fang-marks on Lipton & his ilk. So let me know about the time-pressure and also if a mad rap at the Lipton syndrome would bother you personally or politically. If all else fails, I'm going out there to pull out his teeth with a pair of wire-cutters. That cartoon in your last issue (“Love Me, You Bastard”) was a fine comment on these venomous old swine, but I think they need more. I've never claimed to be anybody's Flower Child, so I can go for their teeth without any worries about bogging clown in hypocrisy. Some flower-power creep was out here a few clays ago and told me what “beautiful ferns” I have growing behind my house. I should have told him to go ahead and eat as much as he wanted. The shit is hemlock … or Lipton, by any other name. Lipton's Tea, as it were.

I don't mind getting pissed on for not “loving” the Hell's Angels, but that stupid bag of pus who wrote the review actually accused me of giving away Kesey's address in Paraguay “at a time when that was fairly private knowledge.” Yeah … it was so fucking private that the only people who knew about it were Lipton and that freak who wrote the review. Kesey was
never
in Paraguay … and for Lipton to print bullshit like that puts him down in the hole with
Time
. The whole review is the work of liars and fools, and I think they need something to fill the vacuum where their sense of humor might have been.

Well … shit, I see I'm already rapping off on the article. I'm not losing sight of what you originally asked for, but I've decided to update it a bit. In the meantime, you can send me some acid to help me level out. And I'll send you a dozen just-born marijuana weeds. You can plant them in Central Park. OK.…

Hunter S. Thompson

June 25, 1967

Dear Mr. Thompson,

I just got done reading your book on the Hell's Angels, and it's really
great
. That book is really great, I don't know what to say it's so great.

I'll tell you the Honest to God truth, I never read a book and finished it in full and this goes for school books, too. As for this book I didn't miss a word in it.

You know when I get my driver's license in two years I'm buying me a big Harley and going to Cal. Believe what I say.

If possible I would like some pictures of any of the Angels, especially Sonny Barger, I dig him. I will be more than glad to pay for them, I'll pay anything for some pictures of them. I would like to receive a letter for framing. The letter from you of course. Please write and I will be very thankful, really. Thank you.

P.S. Man I think you're really
great
.

Sincerely yours,
Dale
A follower of the Angels
They're
great
, too

June 26, 1967
Woody Creek, Colorado

Sales Mgr.

BSA

Motorcycles—Western

2745 E. Huntington Dr.

Duarte, California 91010

Dear Sir.…

Please send me, by return mail, all information pertinent to establishing a BSA dealership. I'm in the process of putting together a bike agency here in Aspen and I'd like to have BSA, Greeves and at least one smaller Jap bike. The market here is booming beyond belief: when I lived here three years ago there wasn't a motorcycle in the county … now, in a permanent population of 2500, there are 218
licensed
bikes and more than 100 unlicensed. And all those belong to residents; the summer population is not only wealthy, but tremendously bike-oriented.

At the moment there are only two dealers in town. One is Bultaco, a part-time operation; the other is Alpine Triumph, which also handles Montesa and Yamaha. Both of these operate in a lazy, left-handed way that would end in immediate bankruptcy if this weren't such a sellers' market. Both sales and services are so worthless here that many people drive 250 miles across the Continental Divide to Boulder, and buy their bikes there. I've had first-hand experience with the Bultaco dealer and it's nearly turned my hair white. At the moment I'm trying to buy a Greeves … and proof of the situation here is that I'm having it shipped out from New York. The only bike mechanic in town works for the Triumph dealer and spends most of his time racing in California. The Bultaco dealer doesn't even stock carburetor jets, but he managed to sell sixteen (16) new Bultacos in the past three months. I spent more than a month looking for a used 441 Victor anywhere within 200 miles of here, and finally gave up. Maybe there's a BSA dealer in Denver, but I never get over there. It's easier to drive 1200 flat miles to San Francisco than to cross the mountains of Denver.

The point is that Aspen is here in a strangely isolated situation … with a lot of people who could easily afford bikes if they had any access to them. The surrounding terrain is ideal for Victors; as a matter of fact there were nine Victors in town last summer, but the agonies of trucking over to Denver for even warranty repairs was too much. As a result, there isn't a single BSA on the street this summer—or in the hills, either. Bultaco and Montesa have the whole market, with a handful of Greeves and Triumphs on the periphery. The problem is that nobody can repair all the bikes that are sold here. The Bultaco dealer, for instance, has no mechanic at all.

I have a good friend who's been the chief mechanic at a BSA/Greeves shop in the Bay Area for the past five or so years. He wants to leave California and I've told him about the prospect of setting up a serious professional bike agency here. He'd like to come out and I have to let him know something pretty soon. So if you could give me all pertinent details by return mail, I can assess where I stand vis-à-vis a BSA dealership. I don't want to run the agency; I'd leave that to my friend, the mechanic. But it looks like such a good economic possibility that I can't pass it up—at least as an investment. I've written the Greeves and Kawasaki people, and I have four or five other letters to write. But the BSA seems like such a natural that I thought I'd sound you out on the first round. Let me know how it looks from your end.

Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson

P.S. —I gave BSA some nice plugs in my recent book on the “Hell's Angels.” You should probably send me a Victor on the basis of that. At the
moment I'm riding a Bultaco. Let me know if you're in the mood for a trade. I'll even pay the freight charges. You can have my Matador and four elk feet, in exchange for a 441. You can't beat that. HST

Having served as President Johnson's campaign director in 1964, political strategist O'Brien had been named postmaster general early in 1965
.

June 26, 1967
Woody Creek, Colorado

Larry O'Brien
Postmaster General
Washington, D.C.

Dear Larry.…

You can imagine my shock and despair when I picked up the
Denver Post
last week and read that some mossback senator's son had been appointed governor of American Samoa. I thought we understood each other on that score … it never occurred to me that you'd knuckle under to political expediency. How can I explain this to my aged mother? She was ready to move to Samoa and live out her days in peace.

I hate to say this, but I suspect that rotten inner-tube ain't strong enough to keep both you and Hubert afloat. A few years ago you seemed like a man with his balls intact and with maybe even a small sense of humor. But I guess it was just a reflection.

And just for the record—in case you've really gone thick—the above paragraph has nothing to do with the governorship of American Samoa. The implications of your whole act are too depressing for any discussion here. Maybe, with a bit of luck, I'll bump Dominick
¹⁸
out of the Senate next year and then we can talk seriously about these things. In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes open, along Interstate 70, for the “Larry O'Brien Memorial Drinking Fountain.”

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
Spiritual Governor of
American Samoa

June 28, 1967
Woody Creek, Colorado

Dear H. Lawrence Lack.…

Thanks for the note and the straight comment on Anderson's review of my book: “
Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang
, by Hunter S. Thompson. Random House, 278 pp. (no pix) $4.95 plus tax outrage.”

That's the way the
Free Press
presented it in the issue of June 2–9. It wasn't part of the review; what I've just quoted is that little box telling what book is being reviewed. I've run across a lot of pigfuckers in my time, but I never expected to encounter anybody so thick that he'd blame a writer for the tax imposed on a book. And, for that matter, I never expected to find an editor who'd publish that kind of cheap, amateurish sniping. It's a mockery of every decent idea and instinct that might exist in journalism. Larry Lipton is listed as “editor” of that “Living Arts” section, so I'm not particularly surprised at the sloppy, vicious, ignorant style of the review. But I
am
surprised that people like you and Kunkin would let it be published in the
Free Press
. I've been reading the paper for about three years and I've always considered it basically fair and straight. But after reading that review of my book I'll never be able to take anything I read in the
Free Press
at face value … because if you let one vicious punk fill a page with lies and stupid rambling, how can I or any other reader be sure that the rest of the articles are as straight as they claim to be?