Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

This was Ginsberg’s first encounter with the Angels, and he quickly became an aficionado. Sometime late in the evening, when it became apparent that everyone leaving the party was being grabbed by the police, Ginsberg and I drove out to see what it meant. A Volkswagen which left just ahead of us had been pulled over about a half mile down the highway, and the occu­pants were taken out for grilling. Our idea was to arrive on the capture scene with a tape recorder, but I barely got out of first gear before we were pulled over by another sheriffs car. I stepped out with the microphone in my hand and asked what the trouble was. The sight of the mike caused the deputies to stand mute except for the bare essentials. One asked to see my license while the other tried to ignore Ginsberg, who inquired very pleas­antly and repeatedly why everyone who left the party was being seized. The cop stood with his feet apart, hands clasped behind his back and his face frozen in a dumb stare. Ginsberg continued to question him while the other deputy ran a check on my license. I enjoy listening to that encounter on tape. It sounds as if Gins­berg and I are flapping rhetorical questions at each other, with a police radio chattering in the background. Every few moments a different voice comes in with a monosyllabic utterance, but our questions are never answered. For several moments there is no talk at all — only the sound of Ginsberg humming a Near Eastern raga, backed up now and then by the spastic crackling of the Voice from Headquarters. The scene was so ridiculous that even the cops began smiling after a while. Their refusal to speak amounted to an unlikely reversal of roles, starkly emphasized by our amusement.

The deputy who’d been left to deal with us was staring curi­ously at Ginsberg. Suddenly he asked, How long did it take you to grow that beard?

Ginsberg stopped humming, gave the question some thought, and replied, About two years — no, I think it was eighteen months.

The cop nodded thoughtfully. . . as if he meant to grow one himself, but might not be able to invest all that time; twelve months okay, but eighteen — well, the chief might wonder.

The conversation lagged again until the radio deputy came back to report that I was clean of outstanding warrants. At this point I said I’d turn off the tape recorder if they’d engage in even the most limited conversation. They agreed, and we talked for a while. It was the Hell’s Angels they were watching, they said, not Kesey. Sooner or later the hoodlums would cause bad trouble, and what the hell were they doing there anyway? They were curious about how I’d managed to find out enough to write about them. How do you get em to talk? said one. You’ve never been beat up? They let you hang around? What’s with em anyway? Are they really as bad as we hear?

I said the Angels were probably worse than they’d heard, but that they’d never given me trouble. The deputies said they didn’t know anything more about the outlaws than what they’d read in the papers.

We parted on good terms except for the citation they eventu­ally got around to giving me — for having cracked taillight lenses. Ginsberg asked why the driver of the Volkswagen had been taken away in a police car. After several minutes the radio came back with an answer: he’d failed to pay a traffic citation several months back, and the original $20 fine had grown, as fines will in California, to a current figure of $57 — which would have to be paid in cash before the fugitive could be released. Neither Gins­berg nor I had $57, so we got the victim’s name, thinking to send one of his friends after him when we got back to Kesey’s. But it turned out that nobody knew him, and for all I know he is still in the Redwood City jail.

The party continued for two days and nights, but the only other crisis came when the worldly inspiration for the protagonist of several recent novels stood naked on the private side of the creek and screamed off a long, brutal diatribe against the cops only twenty yards away. He was swaying and yelling in the bright glare of a light from the porch, holding a beer bottle in one hand and shaking his fist at the objects of his scorn: You sneaky motherfuckers! What the fuck’s wrong with you? Come on over here and see what you get. . . goddamn your shit-filled souls anyway! Then he would laugh and wave his beer around. Don’t fuck with me, you sons of shitlovers. Come on over. You’ll get every fucking thing you deserve.