We had to tilt the iron monster so far over that it was perfectly balanced to fall instantly, just as the fool zoomed into the bus stop at his usual arrogant speed. We would need ropes and pulleys and certainly no witnesses to do the job properly. It was a brazen Insult to the honor of the whole neighborhood. Every kid in the neighborhood agreed that this new swine of a driver was a sadist who deserved to be punished, and the Hawks A.C. He was new on the job, probably a brain-damaged substitute, filling in for our regular driver, who was friendly and kind and always willing to wait a few seconds for children rushing to school. 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. I had done it, of course, and I had done it with plenty of help. My parents hung their heads, and I saw my mother weeping. They already knew I was guilty, they said, because other culprits had squealed on me. 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. 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. They were heavy green vaults that stood like Roman mile markers at corners on the neighborhood bus routes and were rarely, if ever, moved. Mail is a Federal offense punishable under Federal law. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the brown-suit agent replied. “That was only the sports section,” I told him. “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. “Are you a moron, son?” the agent asked me. “How do you know he’s not blind, or a moron?” “Not necessarily,” my father said sharply. “The warning is clearly printed on the Mailbox,” said the agent in the gray suit. “Not in prison! That’s insane! He’s only a child. It was a Federal Offense, they said, and carried a five-year prison sentence. 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. My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. 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 one of those unnatural questions that are better left alone. 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. Kingdom of Fear When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson’s legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Thompson's infamous rule breaking-in his journalism, in his life, and under the law-changed the shape of American letters, and the face of American icons.Ĭall it the evolution of an outlaw. Thompson’s life as a rebel-from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flaunting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances.īrilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. The Gonzo memoir from one of the most influential voices in American literature, Kingdom of Fear traces the course of Hunter S.
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