Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (31 page)

I will make it as short and pointed as possible, so as not to waste my words and your time. The “other person,” of course, is Hunter S. Thompson as he is right now. He has “gone down” again for the umpteenth time, and if he doesn't come up this time I think this letter will serve as a fitting death rattle. And if he does come up again this letter will be a worthwhile thing to hold on to, for it will serve as a grim reminder that the dirge has sounded once before. In short, if this is the final straw I want it recorded, and if it is not then I want it recorded anyway—as a morale booster for the future, if nothing else.

I was fired last week and I'm presently stranded as high and dry as a man can get. I was given three reasons for my dismissal: 1) the fact that I spent an entire night at work in my sock feet, 2) the fact that I crippled a candy machine in the office with a violent kick after being cheated out of two consecutive nickels, and 3) the fact that one of the
Record
's regular advertisers
lodged a formal and very vocal protest with the publisher after I sent two meals back to his kitchen and abused him in his own restaurant for the low quality of his meals.

“Your work is good,” they said, “and you have a very deep, very keen mind. But this isn't Greenwich Village and you seem a little anti-social, a little off-beat. You don't seem to be very conscious of community relations and we can't afford to have people like you working for the
Record.”

So there you have it, an epitaph for Hunter Thompson. “He was a good lad, but he was a little off-beat.”

And here's another one for you: “he was right, dead right, as he hustled along (in his own off-beat way), but he's just as unemployed as if he'd been wrong.”

Well, at any rate, I hope you get the point. I'm
sans
salary, whether I was right or wrong. I'm convinced, of course, that to play a role or to adjust to fraud is wrong, and I damn well intend to keep right on living the way I think I should.

But right now things look a little bleak. I have no idea what in the hell I'm going to do and I really don't know where to begin looking. I have enough money to last about two weeks, a huge black Jaguar that eats gas like a mechanical camel, no place to live, and no prospects of a job where the same thing won't happen again just as soon as they find out I'm “a little off-beat.”

I feel as if life itself is crumbling away beneath my feet and I don't know whether to jump, or run, or to just stand here and go down, screaming my defiance at the falling debris—as it slowly buries me.

I know I'm right, but I sometimes wonder how important it is to be right—instead of comfortable. I doubt whether this question arises very often in the Tallahassee world, but there may come a day when you have to think about it, too. When you do you will not be the first or the last, just as I am not. The difficulty is not in the question, I think, but in the person who answers it. There are so few people who are strong—or lucky—enough to be right in this lunatic world, and many of the best ones never live to find it out.

This could go on and on, but I think the point has been made already. The Hunterfigure has come to another fork in the road and the question once again is “where do we go from here?” We shall see very soon, of course, for even the Hunterfigure needs food. Something will have been done by the time you get this letter and I want you to keep in mind that it was written at a time of great chaos. Right now, however, I feel as lost as I ever have in my life.

I don't get this way very often, but I think you should know my downs as well as my ups. The carefree Thompson facade gets very tiresome at
times, and I need to have someone with whom I can be honestly confused and lost. I am no more than human and I know that anyone who insists on playing the great game on his own terms is bound to take an occasional beating. It may happen again and that's why I'm going to send you this letter just as soon as I'm in a position for another fall. If the next one has any effect on you—and it may—I'll want you to understand what brought it on, why it will be inevitable, and above all, that it has happened before.

If you are frightened by all this, then I think the letter will have served a very necessary purpose. As I said once before, I am real and not a wandering daydream. This side of my personality is just as real as the rest and I think you should know about it. I think, too, that it is equally important that I know your reaction to this letter. Send it to me when you get the time.

Love, Hunty

TO ANN FRICK
:

Bearded and content to live in a Catskills cabin writing short stories for the summer, Thompson felt money to be his only pressing concern.

March 25, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Dear Ann,

It's been a long time 'twixt letters, I think, but maybe you'll understand once you hear what's been going on up this way. Needless to say, the good ship Hunter is on wild and stormy seas once again.

I was not only fired from the
Daily Record,
but I'm presently in the midst of a knock-down, drag-out battle with the state employment service over my right as a discriminating human being to send an unpalatable meal back to the kitchen in a public restaurant. I was fired for 1) being an “oddball,” 2) having a general “contempt for people,” and 3) specifically, for getting into a running battle with one of the
Record
's advertisers who owns an Italian restaurant in Middletown. I was, in short, “unable to form a workable concept of community relations.” I also “worked for an entire evening in the newsroom without my shoes,” and destroyed a candy machine in a sudden burst of anger.

All this sounds pretty damned silly, I suppose, but it has some pretty serious implications. First and foremost is the sobering realization that I cannot hold a “normal” job without making drastic alterations in my personality. Stemming from this, of course, is the possibility that I may
never hold a “normal” job. This is all well and good as long as I can support myself by writing. If I can't, however, it poses something of a problem as far as my surviving is concerned. And speaking of survival, I wonder what Mr. Darwin would say to all this.

I'm in a rather odd situation at the moment: except for money, I seem to have everything I need for a perfect summer. I have a house in the woods, totally isolated from all human beings, and I have a huge, black jaguar. I also have a fine young dog named Pilar.
³
Everything is fine except that I have not a cent to my name. I've managed to exist for about a month in this manner, but I don't know how much longer it will last. Unless a miracle occurs, I'll probably have to get a job, at least for a while.

But you should see this house. It's the finest thing I've ever laid eyes on. I'm on the side of a mountain in a pine grove overlooking the Neversink River. The cabin has a big living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bath, and an excellent screen porch. I'm about two hours out of New York City in the lower fringes of the Catskill Mountains. All in all, it's too good to be true and I suppose some terrible heaven-sent justice will descend on my shoulders in the near future. Until then, however, I shall continue to live as I am today. Like this:

I got up about ten, fed the dog, took a bath, and had a huge breakfast while I read
The New York Times
for news of the end of the world. I then took the dog, my pipe, and a bottle of wine and walked about a hundred yards down the hill to the river, where I spent two hours sitting on a huge rock above the rapids, smoking, sipping the wine, and planning a short story. It's 2:30 in the afternoon now and I should finish this letter by 3:00. I shall then step into the Jaguar and drive about six miles across the mountain to meet a friend of mine from New York who is coming up with his fiancée to spend the rest of the week with me. We have a monstrous chicken dinner planned at another friend of mine's house in Otisville, and after that we'll probably come back here about ten and hike over to the waterfall to sit on the rocks and drink wine.

The whole day would be 100% better if you could be here and I'm getting damned impatient over the question of your trek to the north. Since I haven't heard from you in several weeks I won't be surprised at anything I get in the next letter. Perhaps you and “the boy” have decided to set up housekeeping by this time, for all I know, or perhaps you've merely decided to stop writing. Whatever you've decided, I'd appreciate hearing from you. I suppose you're in Palatka
⁴
by now, so I'll have this forwarded.
I'm getting a little tired of being the lone wolf at these mountain gatherings and if you've decided not to come up I'd like to know about it so I can advertise in the local papers for a mistress. This is too fine a place not to share with someone and if I can't do it with you, then I might as well import some sort of a pleasant decoration who'll at least cook breakfast for me.

I just reread your last letter and it makes me feel a little ashamed of the paragraph I just wrote. It's one of the best letters I've ever received, incidentally, and I appreciate your going to the trouble to explain your concept of individuality. I agree wholeheartedly with what you say, but I hope you're not like so many of my friends who find it very easy to talk about being an individual and very hard to be one. I don't think you are, though, and I probably shouldn't have said that.

I'm also sorry, very sorry, that I couldn't get down there for a few days. The truth of the matter is, though, that I simply have no money at all and it would have been impossible for me to come. The past three or four weeks have been absolute chaos as far as I'm concerned, and yesterday and today have been the first peaceful moments I've had. I wrote you a letter about two weeks ago, but I've saved it until the time comes for it to be mailed. The time is not now, but perhaps it may be here by the time I hear from you. Try to write soon and let me know how things are coming in Palatka, as well as in that beautifully-encased mind of yours. So until then, I remain, unnaturally yours.

Love,
Hunter

TO JUDY BOOTH
:

Booth, another of Thompson's Louisville girlfriends, was a junior at Smith College in Massachusetts. She accepted Thompson's invitation to spend a weekend in Middletown, meeting up with him at the local post office.

March 27, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Dear Judy,

Yes, Peyton,
⁵
April fourth will be as convenient as any other time. We'll have to work out something in the way of transportation to Cuddebackville, which is somewhat removed from the mainstream as far as population
mass is concerned, but we'll do that in a few moments when I feel more like thinking and less like rambling.

I have just pulled through one of the most terrifying nights of my life, surviving with nothing more than a cold, I hope, to show for it. I ran out of oil about seven last night and by midnight the temperature in the house had fallen to 38 degrees. It had begun to snow again, the wind outside was one notch above intolerable, and a blanket of sleet fell on me about dawn. I had to stay in bed until three in the afternoon because it was simply too damned cold to get up. When I finally forced myself out of bed there was nothing but a half a quart of milk and two slices of swiss cheese for breakfast. I managed to limp over here to Otisville for breakfast and a bit of much-needed warmth and wine. An artist friend of mine from New York has been up here most of the week with some girl from Baltimore and I left them in Otisville last night because the girl was about to freeze to death in the cabin. The dog and I returned to the wretched place for the night where we spent the next twelve hours with the thermometer hovering around the forty-degree mark.

The motto of this story is “never be fool enough to brave the elements unless you have no other choice.” At any rate, if I get a cold now, I should be through with it by the time you get here.

My situation is, of course, unchanged as far as employment is concerned. At the moment I have three dollars to my name, a can of tuna fish and a can of soup in the cabin, no oil for the furnace, one bag of dried food for the dog, and about enough gas in the Jaguar to make it back to that freezing hellhole for the night. Perhaps, on second thought, I'll stay here tonight.

I have resolved, finally and without reservation, that I shall never again spend a winter further north than Atlanta, Georgia. Barring the event of war in the near future, I'll probably jump off for Europe, probably Spain or Italy, sometime around September. If the car doesn't blow up by then I'll have a liquid asset which should provide me with enough money for food and wine across the sea—for a while, at least.

No sense in going on about this as long as you're going to be up here in a week or so, so I'll save it for later. You'll have to let me know how you plan to get here so I can pick you up somewhere.

I'm trying to bring about some sort of uneasy peace right now between my dog and these people's black cat, so I'll wrap this up and expect you on April fourth, sometime in the morning, until I hear otherwise. Keep in mind that I have absolutely no money, of course, and that we'll both starve to death unless you can buy some groceries and some scotch. Until then, take care.

Heroically,
Hunty

TO WILLIAM FAULKNER
:

Thompson genuinely admired Faulkner's novels, particularly
The Sound and the Fury.
This letter—sent to Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi—failed to elicit a response.

March 30, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Dear Mr. Faulkner,

I thought you'd be interested in this item I clipped from today's
Times.
It recalled a statement of yours I once read in something called
Writers at Work.
I don't have the book at the moment, but the statement seemed to involve Henry Ford, Robert Frost, and the concept of “the writer as a fine dog.”