I’ve now managed to sucker otherwise rational people into paying me money to commit words to paper for more than 20 years now. That by itself is amazing, but the sheer glee of it is multiplied whenever someone actually offers kind words about something I’ve written. They simply don’t make hats big enough to fit my head after I get an “attaboy” letter from a happy reader.
Last week, when I heard of the death of Hunter S. Thompson, I realized that I’d missed my chance to write him the attaboy letter he so richly deserved for all the joy he’d given me. For those of you living under a rock (or still in grade school or perhaps even in utero) in the 1970s, Thompson was an unlikely figure who helped to redefine journalism by injecting himself into the stories he covered. He road with, and was pummeled by, the Hells Angels. His “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” was part road trip, part acid trip and part trip to a place where fact and fiction intermingle seamlessly. He called it “Gonzo journalism.” We called it genius.
Thompson styled himself as the editor of the “sports desk” for the old “Rolling Stone” magazine and his battles with his editors over deadlines, payments and highly dubious expense reports were legendary. Yet they continued to pay him large piles of money because the words that flew off his ancient Royal typewriter and traveled through the “mojo wire” were sheer magic. In short, the kind of man a man like me worships.
OK, here’s the point of all of this: I met Thompson through a mutual friend back in Lawrence, Kan., more than a decade ago. The three of us sat together at one of the town’s numerous college bars while a steady line of giggling sophomore girls and drunken frat boys meandered up to buy Hunter a shot of Wild Turkey and get a verbal dose of his legendary mean streak.
I tried to play it cool the whole time until my friend mentioned that I too was a writer, albeit for a golf industry trade magazine (I worked for GCSAA at the time). Thompson was quiet for a minute before launching into a tirade about how he despised golf, felt it was in no way a sport and how golf courses were ruining his beloved Colorado. Yikes!
As I sat there stunned and speechless after basically just having been called scum by one of my journalistic heroes, he turned to me again and said, “You get them to pay you to write about that crap? That, young man, is a helluva thing.”
Yeah, Hunter, and it still is.
Curiously, Hunter’s last column for ESPN.com was tangentially devoted to golf … at least his version of it. Check out how HST suggests to another of our old friends, Bill “Spackler” Murray, that golf can be improved with the addition of firearms. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1992213
Hunter, at a time when golf desperately needs some kind of new ideas, maybe you were on to something. Thanks for being my anti-hero ... and goodbye.
