Hunter S. Thompson Units His Christmas Tree on Hearth, Almost Burning His Home Down (1990)

It was some­factor of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Yearly, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and go away it on the entrance porch slightly than dis­pose of it complete­ly. That’s as a result of Hunter, most of the time, need­ed to set it on hearth. In 1990, Sam Allis, a author for the then for­mi­da­ble TIME magazine­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s house and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and begin­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fireside starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room hearth­place, a couple of ft away from an unopened wooden­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too giant to suit into the hearth­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig on the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­period on the ground.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his lengthy­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­period plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the desk, and there have been the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a person pos­sessed by now, filled with the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been combine­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wooden­en man­tel above the hearth­place appar­ent­ly nonetheless has burn marks on it right now.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our web site in 2015.

If you want to enroll in Open Tradition’s free e mail newslet­ter, please discover it right here. It’s a good way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in a single e mail, every day.

If you want to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our web site. It’s laborious to rely 100% on advertisements, and your con­tri­bu­tions will assist us con­tin­ue professional­vid­ing one of the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to be taught­ers each­the place. You possibly can con­tribute by Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Stuffed Dai­ly Rou­tine

Free: Learn the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Phrase Essay That Turned Hunter S. Thompson’s Concern and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel Concerning the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Offers Ideas for Discover­ing Imply­ing in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)