Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas   ::   Thompson Hunter S.

Somewhere around eleven, I made another tour in the press vehicle, but all we found were two dune - buggies full of what looked like retired petty - officers from San Diego. Theycut us off in a dry - wash and demanded, “Where is the damn thing?”

“Beats me,” I said. “We’re just good patriotic Americans like yourselves.” Both of their buggies were covered with ominous symbols: Screaming Eagles carrying American Flags in their claws, a slant - eyed snake being chopped to bits by a buzz - saw made of stars stripes, and one of the vehicles had what looked like a machine - gun mount on the passenger side.

They were having a bang - up time - just crashing around the desert at top speed and hassling anybody they met. “What outfit you fellas with?” one of them shouted. The engines were all roaring; we could barely hear each other.“The sporting press,” I yelled. “We’re friendlies - hired geeks.”

Dim smiles.

“If you want a good chase,” I shouted, “you should get after that skunk from CBS News up ahead in the big black jeep. He’s the man responsible for The Selling Of The Pentagon.”

“Hot damn!” two of them screamed at once. “A black jeep, you say?”

They roared off, and so did we. Bouncing across the rocks scrub oak/cactus like iron tumbleweeds. The beer in my hand flew up and hit the top, then fell in my lap and soaked my crotch with warm foam.

“You’re fired,” I said to the driver. “Take me back to the pits.”

It was time, I felt, to get grounded - to ponder this rotten assignment and figure out how to cope with it. Lacerda insisted on Total Coverage. He wanted to goback out in the dust storm and keep trying for some rare combination of film and lense that might penetrate the aweful stuff.

“Joe,” our driver, was willing. His name was not really “Joe,” but that’s what we’d been instructed to call him. I had talked to the FOMOCO boss the night before, and when we mentioned the driver he was assigning to us he said, “His real name is Steve, but you should just call him Joe.”

“Why not?” I said, We’ll call him anything he wants. How about “Zoom”?”

“No dice,” the FOrd man said, “It has to be “Joe”.

Lacerda agreed, and sometime around noon he went out on the desert again, in the company of our driver Joe. I went back to the blockhouse bar/casino that was actually the Mint Gun Club - where I began to drink heavily, think heavily, and make many heavy notes…



6. A Night on the Town… Confrontation at the Desert Inn… Drug Frenzy at the Circus Circus…

Saturday midnight… Memories of this night are extremely hazy.