I hit the brakes and pulled over

They'd been waving frantically at traffic for about three hours before I came by [Hunter Thompson - Campaign Trail '72 excerpt] . . . and in truth I only stopped because I couldn't quite believe what I thought I'd just seen.  Here I was all alone on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a fast downhill grade -- running easily, for a change -- when suddenly out of the darkness in a corner of my right eye I glimpsed what appeared to be a white gorilla running towards the road.

I hit the brakes and pulled over.  What the fuck was that?  I had noticed a disabled car as I crested the hill, but the turnpikes & freeways are full of abandoned junkers these days . . . and you don't really notice them, in your brain, until you start to zoom past one and suddenly have to swerve left to avoid killing a big furry white animal, lunging into the road on its hind legs.

A white bear?  Agnew's other son?

At this time of the morning I was bored from bad noise on the radio and half-drunk from doing off a quart of Wild Turkey between Chicago and the Altoona exit so I figured, Why Not?  Check it out.

But I was moving along about seventy at the time and I forgot about the trailer . . . so by the time I got my whole act stopped I was five hundred yards down the Turnpike and I couldn't back up.

But I was still curious.  So I set the blinker lights flashing on the Volvo and started walking back up the road, in pitch darkness, with a big flashlight in one hand and a .357 magnum in the other.  No point getting stomped & fucked over, I thought -- by wild beasts or anything else.  My instincts were purely humanitarian -- but what about that Thing I was going back to look for?  You read about these people in the Reader's Digest:  blood-crazy dope fiends who crouch beside the highway and prey on innocent travelers.

Maybe Manson, or the ghost of Charley Starkweather.  You never know . . . and that warning works both ways.  Here were these two poor freaks, broke & hopelessly stoned, shot down beside the highway for lack of nothing more than a ninety-cent jack-handle . . . and now, after three hours of trying to flag down a helping hand, they finally catch the attention of a drunken lunatic who rolls a good quarter-mile or so before stopping and then creeps back toward them in the darkness with a .357 magnum in his hand.

A vision like this is enough to make a man wonder about the wisdom of calling for help.  For all they knew I was half-mad on PCP and eager to fill my empty Wild Turkey jug with enough fresh blood to make the last leg of the trip into Washington and apply for White House press credentials . . . nothing like a big hit of red corpuscles to give a man the right lift for a rush into politics.

[a very small drawing, between paragraphs]

But this time things worked out -- as they usually do when you go with your instincts -- and when I finally got back to the derailed junker I found these two half-frozen heads with a blowout . . . and the "white bear" rushing into the road had been nothing more than Jerry, wrapped up in a furry white blanket from a Goodwill Store in Baltimore, finally getting so desperate that he decided to do anything necessary to make somebody stop.  At least a hundred cars & trucks had zipped past, he said:  "I know they could see me, because most of them swerved out into the passing lane -- even a Cop Car; this is the first time in my goddamn life that I really wanted a cop to stop for me . . . shit, they're supposed to help people, right . . . ?

Lester, his friend, was too twisted to even get out of the car until we started cranking it up.  The Volvo jack wouldn't work, but I had a huge screwdriver that we managed to use as a jack-handle.--------------- [end H. Thompson excerpt]

=====================
Sweet wonderful you,
You make me happy with the things you do,
Oh, can it be so,
This feeling follows me wherever I go.
I never did believe --
in miracles --
But I've a feeling it's time to try.

I never did be - lieve
in the ways of magic,
but I'm beginning to wonder why.

Don't -- -- don't break the spell,
It would be different and you know it will,
You -- you make loving fun,
And I don't have to tell you you're the only one.
You -- make loving fun.
You
make loving fun.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
{book excerpt -- Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson.  Copyright, 1973 - San Francisco, CA:  Straight Arrow Books)}
{song:  "You Make Loving Fun" -- written / Christine McVie.  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours - 1977 - Warner Bros.}

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