Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman by Hunter S. Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

and fortune!
    As the hands of the clock are winding into the wee hours of the morning, I find that the need for sleep is becoming too powerful to resist. I’m going to Tallahassee tomorrow night for the weekend, and should fortifymyself with some shut-eye. FSU’s homecoming football game is quite an attraction, and I’d hate to miss it because of battle fatigue, writer’s cramp, or some such occupational disease.
    If you have time, drop me a line and tell me how you are, and that sort of thing. I remain, dead tired, but still typing somehow;
    much love,
Hunter S. Thompson
Command Courier

3201 AB Wg.
Eglin AFB, Fla.
    TO JACK THOMPSON :
    As a boy, Thompson was always impressed by his older half-brother Jack’s white Navy uniform and riveting bedtime stories about the Hatfield and McCoy feuds. Jack went on to prosper as the owner of an insurance company.
    October 24, 1956
Eglin AFB
Fort Walton Beach, Florida
    Dear Jack,
    As I can’t think of a suitable excuse for not writing long ago, I won’t even try to explain my failure to drop you a line. Let’s just say “better late than never,” and go on from there.
    As you may or may not remember, when I was home last summer, I informed one and all that I was some sort of radio technician. Well, that sort of thing is no more; I have stumbled upon an entirely new concept of Air Force life. I am now the hard-bitten sports editor of the
Command Courier,
the official organ of Eglin AFB. As far as service life goes, I sort of live in the fringe area. I pull no detail, stand no inspections, pull no KP, and just generally leave the menial jobs to the enlisted men. However, if I were being paid by the hour on a civilian pay scale, I would have no worry about having enough money to go to college. For instance: yesterday I came to work at 7:15, and worked until 5:00; with an hour off at noon for lunch. I completely missed dinner and had to rush to make a 6:00 Speech class. I had to miss Psychology in order to come to the wrestling matches, which lasted from 8:00 until 10:00. At 10:00 I came back to the office and began on the wrestling story, finishing it at about midnight. About that time, my photographer arrived with the pictures, and I spent about an hour cropping and captioning them.
    When the wrestling story and pictures were ready for print, I began on the football prevue and all the football pictures. All this lasted until about 4:00, when the last caption was finished. After getting everything ready for the printer, I raced back to my room and passed out for about 2 hours, in what amounted to a fatigue coma.
    Staggering out of bed at 6:30, I drove back to the office—almost colliding with a huge truck en route—and went from there into Pensacola to do the layout for the sports section. As usual, I made several glaring errors which I was too tired to notice at the time; but which will be painfully evident tomorrow. That finished, I got back to the base at 2:30, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a job selling vacuum cleaners. If it comes through, I may still find some way out of this terrible poverty. Of course, I’ve never sold vacuum cleaners—but then I’ve had no previous experience in sports writing either; so it certainly can’t hurt to try.
    Anyway, I guess you get the point about the rather tight schedule around here. Since taking over the sports desk, I’ve dropped from 190 pounds to 170, become a terrible case of nerves, become addicted to coffee—drinking about 20 cups a day—and had to give up cigarettes when I got up to 4 packs a day. All in all, it’s hell; but it will take wild horses to get me back to the radio shop.
    For the first time in my life, no one is hanging over me saying, “my oh my Hunter, just see what you can do when you apply yourself,” or “do this Hunter, do that Hunter, behave yourself Hunter,” and all that sort of rot. Here, they say,