The Kitchen Readings (6 page)

Loren Jenkins on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, waiting to be flown to the carrier.

The decompression process after months of covering combat is a difficult one. Sleep doesn't come easily, one remains wired, the blades on the overhead fan are the rotors of a gunship, unexpected sounds suggest danger. On his second morning on Bali, Loren was startled awake at 4:00
A.M
. to the sounds of battle. Was it in his head? No, it was in the room. There was Hunter, standing by the door with one of his high-tech tape recorders playing, at full volume, the war in Vietnam. Loren was less than amused. Hunter thought it was funny as hell.

 

Hunter had flown to Bali with a beautiful blonde. In the blonde's makeup case was a jar of face powder. Not really. The jar was full of organic mescaline; the two look much the same. The three of them spent the next week on the beach consuming it. Hunter had missed the battle but made it to the after party.

Hunter and Loren, more than a few years after their adventures at war.

GRENADA: THE GREAT WRITER, THE HAND, AND THE FIGHT

Loren Jenkins was the only journalist to bring a date to the invasion of Grenada. In October of 1983 he was working for the
Washington Post.
When the United States invaded Grenada, the
Post
sent Loren to Barbados, which was the closest you could get to the island after the initial wave of Marines moved in. The navy kept the press away for four days after the invasion, and then would fly in groups on C130s for three or four hours at a time.

The invasion followed the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. The soldiers who invaded Grenada had been heading for Lebanon and were diverted to the island. Loren thought the whole thing was a face-saving move to secure a victory after the tragic loss of 241 lives to Hezbollah terrorists.

Loren Jenkins at the Floridita Bar in Havana, drinking with a statue of Ernest Hemingway—which is not at all like drinking with Hunter, Braudis, and Cleverly.

Still, on October 13 there had been a bloody coup on the island led by Marxist Barnard Coard, who then installed himself as dep
uty prime minister, with crony Maurice Bishop as prime minister. This didn't sit well with the Reagan administration, or jibe with its war on communism. When improvements were started on the Grenada airport, the administration decided that the airport was being brought up to military grade, that the Grenadan government wasn't just trying to improve tourist capacity. There was a Cuban military presence on the island, and some engineers, not to mention a thousand U.S. medical students. That was good enough for us.

The result was operation “Urgent Fury.” Twelve hundred Marines stormed the island and initially met with heavy resistance. By the time our force reached seven thousand, the resistance had dissolved, and whatever fighters were left were fleeing into the mountains. When the press corps was finally allowed to occupy the island, most stayed at the St. George Hotel in the capital. When Loren realized that he'd probably be there for three or four weeks, he called Missie and urged her to join him; the water was fine. Hunter got wind of the fun to be had and convinced
Rolling Stone
that this was an assignment custom-made for you know who. He left for the island a day before Missie, and arrived two days after she did. Where Hunter's missing three days went, he wouldn't say.

A few days later, Loren encountered the great writer V. S. Naipaul, who had just checked into the St. George. When Loren next saw Hunter, he told him that “he wasn't the most famous writer in the hotel anymore, that V. S. Naipaul was staying there.” Hunter replied, “Who's V. S. Naipaul?” Later Hunter and Naipaul met and became great friends. Before long, the press corps tired of the St. George and its location in the middle of the capital city, so they, en masse, liberated a small beachfront hotel called Hidden Bay. There they spent their days swimming, drinking, and attending briefings at which the military would try to convince them that they were busy hunting down commies in the mountains.

One day Hunter, Loren, and Missie were driving through a village, and one of them looked down an alley and noticed a garbage can with a human hand sticking out of it. Hunter insisted they stop. With Missie snapping pictures, the guys cautiously approached, as if the thing could become aware. There was a khaki sleeve on its arm. As they closed in on the gruesome tableau, they realized that the hand was a prosthetic. This was even better, and Hunter grabbed the prize. The thing wasn't just an inanimate lump of plastic; it was articulated. By manipulating the end where it would have attached to the stump, he could make the fingers move in an eerie, lifelike manner. Hunter couldn't believe his good fortune.

The next few days saw a lot of the kind of pranks that are really funny if they're not being played on you. Waiters and waitresses, bartenders, people driving cars with Hunter in the backseat, and random victims on the street all met “the hand,” with its grasping, twitching fingers. Hunter created an elaborate mythology surrounding the discovery of the hand, which of course bore little or no relation to actual events. It became an instant legend among the press corps. Unlike its previous owner, Hunter and the hand were inseparable.

Hunter was determined to bring the thing back to the States with him. There was Woody Creek, and worlds far beyond Woody Creek, for him and the hand to conquer. Sadly for Hunter, there was a physician present during one of his performances. He took an immediate interest in the hand and explained how really sophisticated and expensive the thing was. In other words, it wasn't a toy. Says who? For Hunter this was a really crummy turn of events. The hand was the best toy he'd come upon in ages. The doctor was adamant, though. The thing had to belong to someone out there who, undoubtedly, would be missing it
badly once he sobered up. If not, someone else could make real use of it. Hunter was of the strong opinion that
he
was making real use of it, but it was hard not to listen to reason. With great reluctance, he relinquished his prize. What followed was a period of mourning for him, and perhaps to some degree for Missie and Loren as well. The rest of the island fell into two categories, past victims of the hand and future victims of the hand. Had they known about Hunter's loss, I suspect they would have had different feelings on the matter.

The three thought that a trip into the mountains would cheer them up. There was a fine restaurant called Mama's that was reputed to serve an excellent conch soup. They set out in an open Jeep. About halfway to their destination, after several miles of rough roads and switchbacks, they came to a sudden halt. The road was blocked by U.S. troops. It was a checkpoint to keep the phantom Cuban army from sneaking around the island.

Deb Fuller and Bob at the Jenkins wedding.

Instead of being waved on through as they fully expected, the three were detained. The hood of the jeep was raised and a thorough inspection of the vehicle was begun. Loren Jenkins was displeased. He had endured this sort of thing in countless Third World war zones at the hands of petty military types, and he wasn't happy to have to take this sort of crap from our own guys. He and Hunter produced their press credentials, with little effect. Jesus Christ, this was the world-famous Hunter S. Thompson. This was Loren Jenkins. You know, with the Pulitzer Prize. This was a beautiful blonde who couldn't be more an American WASP and less a Cuban spy if she had
USA
tattooed on her forehead.

Loren Jenkins and Missie Thorne's wedding. The beautiful Barbara Groh with Benton, Cleverly, and Braudis, who come in assorted sizes.

Loren's patience stretched and then snapped. He launched into a tirade. “What the hell are you people doing here, anyway?” He went on to suggest that our government would be better off minding its own business, and from there he went on to vent his
spleen at large, expressing political leanings somewhat to the left of Fidel and Mao. The young soldiers felt pretty sure that people without guns probably should be civil to people with guns. They put Loren facedown on the ground and cuffed his hands behind his back. This was too much. Missie was the next to snap. She yanked off her sandal and proceeded to use it to beat one of the soldiers on the helmet, all the while Loren keeping up his rant from the dirt.

Hunter's pain over the loss of the hand was instantly replaced with the bliss of chaos. This is what he lived for. The scene continued for some minutes, with Hunter cheering everyone on just to keep the action going. An officer finally showed up and witnessed, with mouth agape, his boys bullying the very press corps that they had spent so much time sucking up to. The officer had Loren released immediately, and no one was sorry to see the group head up the road toward the restaurant. The conch soup was just as good as they had been told.

Grenada was our first war with Cuba, and our first military victory since long before Vietnam. It was also the first time since before World War II that a communist government had been replaced with a pro-Western one. Being the fierce patriot, Hunter must have been very proud.

Ed Hoban—University of Notre Dame, class of 1972, Lompoc Federal Prison, class of 1984—was a close friend of Hunter's for years, and they shared many adventures…only some of which can be recounted here.

Ed was a large figure in the Aspen scene in the seventies and eighties. He knew the right people and traveled in the best circles. By “the best,” I mean the most fun. Celebrities would come to town to visit
him
.

The legend began while Ed was an undergraduate at Notre Dame. Dick Kienast, who would later become sheriff of Pitkin County, was also a student there at the time. Both attended lectures by the philosopher Mortimer Adler. When they ended up
in Aspen they had a lot in common. Ed was introduced to many people through his classmate, and it snowballed from there. Kienast became sheriff, but he wasn't a regular cop. He was in the vanguard of progressive law enforcement in the Roaring Fork Valley, with his policies earning him the nickname “Dick Dove” and garnering him the attention of the national media. Tim Charles, a mutual friend, introduced Ed to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Ed and Hunter became close friends and remained so until Hunter's death. They shared many of the same hobbies, some of which Ed turned into a profession. Hence, the tour in Lompoc.

Ed became a solid citizen upon graduation from the federal penal system. He left the valley to pursue an honest living and he would occasionally use his famous friends as references.

Hunter was a fiercely loyal friend. Was he a good job reference? That remains an open question.

Here…you decide:

Doc and Ed having prettied themselves up with lipstick. Ed with Deborah and Cleverly, who are pretty enough without lipstick.

Be careful when you ask Hunter for a favor.

 

In the late seventies and early eighties there were entrepreneurial types in the Roaring Fork Valley, people who had a little land and a little privacy and took up subsistence farming. Ed was one of them. He owned an old farmhouse in Emma, a half-hour drive from Woody Creek. At some point there actually had been a town of Emma, but that was long ago. By the time Ed purchased his house there, Emma was pretty close to the middle of nowhere. So he became involved with agribusiness, though what he was growing couldn't be purchased at the local farmers' market. Ed had inside plants flourishing in a greenhouse next to the garage and outside plants in a patch behind the barn. He was a good entrepreneur. A good farmer.

Late one summer, as harvest time was growing near, Ed's girlfriend decided that he wasn't providing her with enough walking-around money. She thought a garage sale was the answer. This was fine with Ed. Everyone has too much crap. The two went through eons of forgotten and unwanted junk, earmarking this and that for the sale. The Saturday morning of the event, Ed responsibly covered the greenhouse with a huge blue tarp. Not wanting to witness the detritus of his life being hawked in a driveway, he left to spend the day in Aspen.

Even before the first early-bird yard-sale aficionados arrived, the tarp had blown off the greenhouse. His girlfriend, focusing on sales, was oblivious, leaving the beautiful bushy plants exposed for one and all to see.

Ed's crops were low-maintenance, requiring little effort once they took hold; in fact, they grew like weeds. Babysitting was the problem. Farmer Ed liked to step out more than your average man of the soil does. He'd go up to Aspen, and some nights wouldn't
come home at all. Sometimes he'd forget to make it home for days at a time. This would leave his crop home alone. To some, this might seem like careless parenting—giving your nymphomaniac teenage daughter her own van and a Gold Card. But to Ed it was a simple matter of trusting his fellow man. Those with a high opinion of human nature are often disappointed. And so it was that when Ed returned home one morning and went out to the greenhouse to tell the kids he was back, he found his babies gone. It was a crushing economic blow. Which is the same as a crushing emotional blow.

Ed, the gentleman farmer.

Photographs by Nancy Cook Kelly, courtesy of Ed Hoban

Farmer Hoban enjoying the fruits of his labor.

The outside patch behind the barn had been left unmolested for whatever reason. Probably a dead-of-night operation. The criminals had taken only what they had observed from the
driveway at the yard sale. There's not much one can do in these situations. But then, over the next couple of weeks, Ed noticed that the outside patch seemed to be shrinking, too. He actually counted the plants and, after a while, determined that the criminals were sneaking back and taking a couple of plants at a time. Ed and a friend erected a small tent in the middle of the patch. The pot was much taller than the tent, so it was invisible till you were right on top of it. Ed began sleeping in the patch. A friend would bring him young women for amusement. Sadly, a man like Ed can spend only so many nights in a tent, even with pleasant diversions to keep him company. One morning he returned from town to find half the crop gone.

Hunter was one of the first people whom Ed called. He needed some sympathy. Hunter was furious. What the fuck kind of world were we living in? Doc immediately declared war. There were two important issues at hand: To protect the remaining crop. First things first. And, beyond that, the ever-popular revenge. Retribution, reprisal, vengeance, comeuppance and getting even. Serious business.

One evening a few days later there was gunfire in Emma. Hunter was speeding up the road in the Shark, radio blaring, firing a pistol in the air. He pulled into Ed's driveway with presents for him: a .410 single shotgun, a two-thousand-candlepower boat/car light, two TV cameras, and a closed-circuit monitor. Everyone involved was confident that this equipment was sufficient to “do the trick.” Optimism was running high.

Hunter heard nothing from Ed for a couple of weeks. It was harvest time, and Ed was pretty busy. There had been no more raids on the field, so Ed was just tending to his agribusiness. Hunter felt that he had a vested interest in the crop now and he was getting a little edgy about the lack of communication. Night
after night he decided to give Ed a call and ended up putting it off each time. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore and drove out to Emma in the wee hours. He left this note stuck to Ed's front door with a dagger through it:

1. HST—one .410 single shotgun
   
2. HST—one 2k candlepower light—boat/car/etc.
   
3. John Kent—one closed-circuit TV set (2 cameras, one monitor)
   
4. HST—one blue chip elbow
   

An elbow is code for “lb.” A pound of first-class pot.

Ed hadn't lost anything; it was just Hunter's way of conveying his sense of urgency. He must have been running out of dope. Actually a friend had borrowed the shotgun, for purposes neither Ed nor anyone else wanted to know. Ed could get it back anytime, if he didn't mind being in possession of evidence.

 

Ed was part of Hunter's posse. Back then Hunter traveled with a sort of entourage. They were all buddies, and Hunter treated them like equals, not minions.

During this time there was a rich Arab who lived up in the Starwood subdivision. The guy, in his mid-forties, liked to entertain, and he entertained people he considered to be important. Hunter fit the bill, so he would get invited to the guy's mini-castle for
Monday Night Football.
Along with Hunter would come Ed and the other members of Hunter's posse; also along with Hunter would come Hunter's gun. Hunter was going through a phase where he would always be “packing” when he
went out. No one else in the posse felt the need to carry a gun, and no one could put a finger on exactly why Hunter thought that he had to carry a gun. It was just a phase; it was Hunter. The gun could lead to the occasional awkward situation, as occurred with the Arab.

Cleverly kept trying to remind Hunter that “one man's souvenir is another man's evidence.”

At the mini-castle, as a rule, bodyguards carried guns; the guests did not. The bodyguards felt they could function most effectively when they were the only ones armed. Sounds a little insecure, but there you are. These guys also performed household staff duties—butler, valet parking, coat checkers, waiters. The sorts of services we hope maybe to get when we go out and splurge is what rich Arabs demand 24/7. Mostly, though, they were bodyguards. Unlike a regular household staff, who would stay at the house when the boss went out, these fellas traveled wherever the boss went. They were always packing and had the look of men with virtually no sense of humor. Undoubtedly a plus in that line of work.

At the house, the guards would never do anything as gauche as patting guests down, so they didn't become aware of Hunter's pistol until after the first couple of Monday-night events. The topic came up when Hunter, ever the populist, decided to engage one of them in conversation. He must have felt that a common talking point would be weaponry, so he asked the guy what his firearm of choice was. That was no problem. The problem arose when Hunter drew his gun to compare. The bodyguards clearly found this disconcerting, judging from their response. I guess no guest had ever whipped out a piece in the presence of the Arab before. From that night on, while Ed and everyone else were checking their coats, Hunter was asked to check his gun.