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656 The Kentucky Anthology Hunter S. Thompson from Kingdom of Fear, Part One, “When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro” Hunter Thompson invented what he called Gonzo, or Outlaw, Journalism, a kind of irreverent, in-your-face, iconoclastic journalistic aberration, and for that reason he is a well-known writer. Actually, it can be a very effective form of reportage. In The Great Shark Hunt (1979), he defines his invention as a combination of a master journalist’s talent, an artist’s and photographer’s eye, and an involved participant. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966) is based on his participation in the controversial motorcycle club and conversations and interviews with its members. He went to Las Vegas to cover a desert motorcycle race and attend a seminar on illegal drugs, the principal sources for his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Strange Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1972). In the 1970s he also wrote articles for Rolling Stone. Born in Louisville in 1937, he lived recently in seclusion in Montana until his suicide early in 2005. The personal essay below, “When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro,” is from Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2003). h There are no jokes. Truth is the funniest joke of all. —Muhammad Ali The Mailbox: Louisville, Summer of 1946 My parents were decent people, and I was raised, like my friends, to believe that Police were our friends and protectors—the Badge was a symbol of extremely high authority, perhaps the highest of all. Nobody ever asked why. It was one of those unnatural questions that are better left alone. If you had to ask that, you were sure as hell Guilty of something and probably should have been put behind bars a long time ago. It was a no-win situation. My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. Two grim-looking Agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was a “prime suspect” in the case of a Federal Mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus. It was a Federal Offense, they said, and carried a five-year prison sentence. “Oh no!” wailed my mother. “Not in prison! That’s insane! He’s only a child. How could he have known?” 656 Hunter S. Thompson 657 “The warning is clearly printed on the Mailbox,” said the agent in the gray suit. “He’s old enough to read.” “Not necessarily,” my father said sharply. “How do you know he’s not blind, or a moron?” “Are you a moron, son?” the agent asked me. “Are you blind? Were you just pretending to read that newspaper when we came in?” He pointed to the Louisville Courier-Journal on the couch. “That was only the sports section,” I told him. “I can’t read the other stuff.” “See?” said my father. “I told you he was a moron.” “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the brown-suit agent replied. “Tampering with the U.S. Mail is a Federal offense punishable under Federal law. That Mailbox was badly damaged.” Mailboxes were huge, back then. They were heavy green vaults that stood like Roman mile markers at corners on the neighborhood bus routes and were rarely, if ever, moved. I was barely tall enough to reach the Mail-drop slot, much less big enough to turn the bastard over and into the path of a bus. It was clearly impossible that I could have committed this crime without help, and that was what they wanted: names and addresses, along with a total confession. They already knew I was guilty, they said, because other culprits had squealed on me. My parents hung their heads, and I saw my mother weeping. I had done it, of course, and I had done it with plenty of help. It was carefully plotted and planned, a deliberate ambush that we set up and executed with the fiendish skill that smart nine-year-old boys are capable of when they have too much time on their hands and a lust for revenge on a rude and stupid bus driver who got a kick out of closing his doors and pulling away just as we staggered to the top of the hill and begged him to let us climb on. . . . He...

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