Thursday

                           Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“So long as there is breath in me, that long I will persist. For now I know one of the greatest principles of success; if I persist long enough I will win.”

                                                    Ho Chi Minh

Trivia question of the day:

Who played Maj. Frank Burns and nurse Margaret “Hot lip” Houlihan in the MOVIE M.A.S.H.?

Here is a bio of one of my favorite authors.

                             A Biography of Gonzo

On July 28, 1937 just two weeks before me, Hunter S. Thompson is born in the Cherokee Triangle area of Louisville, Kentucky. He was the eldest of three sons born to Jack and Virginia Thompson. His father was an insurance adjuster and a veteran of WWI while his mother was a reference librarian and secretary. When Hunter was 14 his father died of Myasthenia Gravis leaving the three boys for his mother to raise alone. It was reported but never confirmed that his mother got heavy into the sauce because of the stress. Hunter was a good athlete, especially in baseball but he never played organized ball. He went to high school at the Louisville Male High School which was normally for the upper crust in Louisville society. While there he joined a Literary Group and wrote pieces for the high school newspaper and helped edit the school album. He was kicked off the Literary Group because of his legal problems. He was almost continuously in trouble in school and on one occasion he was caught in a car with others that had performed an armed robbery and he served 60 days in the local jail. It was never proven that Hunter was a participant in the robbery. After being released, he joined the US Air Force and went to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training (me too). After basic training he went to school in Illinois to study aircraft electronics but eventually ended up at Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The base commander there discovered Hunter’s writing skills and made him a major contributor to the base newspaper, especially sports. The base had a football team that fielded some pretty good players like Max McGee and Zeke Bratkowski. Hunter would travel with the team and send back essays of the games they played on the road along with the home games. Hunter’s enlistment ended with him being the rank of Airman 1^st class (three stripes) and was discharged with an Honorable Discharge but was not offered a chance for reenlistment. His commanding officer stated that Hunter was good at what he did but he resented authority and would pass that attitude to others in contact with him (me too). While at Eglin he would also write anonymous articles for the local newspaper in Fort Walton. After the Air Force he became the sports editor of a newspaper in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania before moving to New York and attending Columbia University and took a course on short-story writing under the G.I. Bill. During this time he was working for Time magazine as a copy boy for $51 a week. He used a typewriter in the office to copy Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in order to get a grasp on different writing styles. He was fired from Time for insubordination. Later that year he went to work as a reporter for a newspaper in Middletown, New York. He was soon fired from that job because he destroyed a candy machine in the office that took his money and did not give up any candy. (Been there, as most of us have) and then went down the street and got into a cuss fight with the owner of a restaurant who was an advertiser in the paper. After a series of jobs including one or two in Puerto Rico, he ended up as a caretaker in a resort in Big Sur, California that eventually became a virtual commune of artists and Bohemians. Hunter chose to write an uncomplimentary article about the artists and Bohemians in Big Sur for Rogue magazine that was distributed nationwide. Needles to say, he was fired as caretaker. He then went to Brazil and became an editor for the only English speaking newspaper, National Review, which was owned by Dow-Jones. While there he was joined by his longtime girlfriend Sandra Conklin and upon returning to the United States they were married. They had issue of five pregnancies which resulted in only one survivor. She had three miscarriages and one child died soon after birth. The survivor they named Juan Fitzgerald. He continued to write for the National Review about a variety of subjects including an essay on his visit to Ketchum, Idaho to determine the reason for the suicide of Ernest Hemingway. While there he stole a rack of elk antlers that were hanging over the doorway of the Hemingway

cabin. He had a falling out with National Review when they refused to publish his critique of Tom Wolfe’s new book The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Body and he moved to San Francisco and dived head-first into the drug-hippie culture that was just beginning. Hunter got an opportunity to live with Sonny Barger and the San Bernardino branch of the Hell’s Angels. Sonny is the acknowledge founder of the Hell’s Angel’s phenomenon. After a while the Sonny figured out that Hunter was doing research for a book and demanded that the Hell’s Angels get a piece of the action and when Hunter hesitated, he received a “stomping” as the Angels called it, but it really was a severe beating. In spite of the beating, Hunter wrote of his experiences and a book titled Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Story of Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs. The book was a runaway best seller and Hunter got a lot of money and many offers to write books. He chose to write about his past experiences with the hippies in San Francisco and what is up with them. He gave the Hippies hell because he felt they had sold out their political agenda and was just interested in the drugs. In 1972 he delivered what is considered his masterpiece titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It proved to be crisp and to the point yet it treaded lightly on the factual side over to the imagined and back again to the factual. This writing style was confusing to those that were not familiar with Hunter. Not only that, Hunter himself was a central character but using a pseudonym. This style of writing was named “Gonzo style” by another writer and the name stuck. The Thompson family moved to an Aspen, Colorado suburb called Woody Creek after receiving $15,000 for “Hell’s” plus 2/3 of the price of his house in Woody Creek. Thompson named his house “The Owl Farm”. Hunter ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado under the “Freak Power” banner. He came in a very close second to the winner. Hunter had always been talking about “The American Dream” and in “Fear and Loathing” he finally told us how to find it. He said the American Dream is found in “Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, a quart of Tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen ampules of amyl nitrate.” Hunter enjoyed much success throughout the remainder of his life. He had many friends in the movie industry including Johnny Depp, Bill Murray and Sean Penn among many others. Several of his books were made into movies.

On February 20, 2005 Hunter Thompson, aged 67, blew his brains out while sitting at his typewriter talking to his wife who was at a gym in Aspen. He left a note on his computer what ended up being a suicide note to his wife. It read:

“No More Games, No More bombs. No More Walking, No More Fun, No More Swimming, 67, That is 17 years past fifty, 17 years more than I wanted or needed, boring, I am always bitchy, No Fun-For Anybody, 67, You are getting greedy, Act your old age—Relax—This won’t hurt.”

Gonzo’s funeral was a spectacular one financed by his close friend Johnny Depp. Gonzo had designed a tower with a cannon on top and in August of 2005 about 250 people saw Johnny Depp load Hunter’s ashes loaded into the cannon and blasted into the breeze. When asked why, Johnny Depp said “I was just trying to grant the last wish of an old friend.”

Answer to the trivia question:

In the MOVIE M.A.S.H. Maj. Frank Burns was played by Robet Duvall and nurse Hot Lips Houlihan was played by Sally Kellerman.

              Thanks for listening   I can hardy wait until tomorrow