The High-water Mark

The clip is from the movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” a movie about Hunter S. Thompson. One of the premier writers of his time. He wrote a book called “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream“.

He sent me an e-mail once saying he liked my writing. Well I liked his. A LOT. He captured the zeitgeist of the time. Here is Hunter on the hunt:

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
Hunter S. Thompson

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

[snip]

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Note: Does any one remember who the anti-war protestor in the General’s costume at 2:07 in the video was? I met him at an anti-war protest in LA that occurred in the afternoon before the Century City riots in ’67. I was fresh out of the US Navy (March ’67) at the time. A lot of vets showed up at those protests. He was a side kick of another anti-war protestor that also wore a general’s costume.

I remember now. He was the sidekick of General Wastemoreland.

General Wastemoreland, Interview, 1998.
An interview with Vietnam War protestor General Wastemoreland (Tom Dunphy) as he recalls his friendship with General Hershey Bar (Calypso Joe) and their experiences in the 1960’s protesting against the Vietnam War in Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles through “guerrilla street theater.” Videographer, Harold Adler. 48 min. Video/C 5673

So the guy in the video would be General Hershey Bar (Calypso Joe).


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5 responses to “The High-water Mark”

  1. Simon Avatar

    The hippie at just short of 1 minute in looks like a young Harrison Ford.

    The Bathroom with all the graffiti reminds me of the top floor bathroom at 1090 Page although the bathroom at 1090 was a LOT grungier.

  2. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I dunno…

    I liked his Hells Angels book. Fear etc Las Vegas wasn’t bad, but-
    Why were he and his 800 pound Samoan lawyer picking on that poor waitress in that diner? What did she ever do to them???

    After that his entire literary technique consisted in going to hotel room somewhere near where he was “reporting”, doing a mega buttload, near-lethal quantity of drugs and writing his hallucinations. Really just a burned out old freak at the end.

    On the other hand, Tom Wolfe.

  3. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    I was around back then opposing the war and during the christmas bombing of hanoi and mining of haiphong anti-war activist were arrested for symbolicly mining american harbors so anti war activists in opposition to nixons opperation linebacker 2 escalated. The activist started operation turn out the lights on the nixon administration and derail the war in vietnam. And when tricky dick realized he could not protect the power lines and rail lines of amerikkka he signed the peace treaty and thompson was afraid to talk about what he knew about it.

  4. Simon Avatar

    Taking out the aqueduct that fed LA would nave caused a few problems.

    But I dunno. The communists killing 100,000 post war was not a good thing. And add in the 250,000 who died at sea. And add in that ‘Nam now WANTS to trade with the USA. Perhaps the North chose the wrong side to ally with.

    The US did get a LOT of Vietnamese restaurants out of it. So it wasn’t all bad.

  5. Gringo Avatar
    Gringo

    Simon
    But I dunno. The communists killing 100,000 post war was not a good thing. And add in the 250,000 who died at sea.

    Add in the ~2 million slaughtered in Cambodia. The slaughter in Cambodia jolted out of my pacifism. No hands are clean when thugs roam the earth.