Fear and Loathing with Bill Moore in New York City

(fear and loathing and other adventures now available in book form at http://feathandloathing.blogspot.com/ )

I stopped working full-time for Cardinal Associates in 1973 after having a ten-minute bout of tachycardia one night at a pool hall with Slick Eddie and some others.  I had to quit the lifestyle or die. The fact that paychecks were becoming infrequent made the decision easier.  

However, I still continued to associate with the Associates.  When there was money, I did some free-lance assignments. I also worked with Claud Hunter on the book deal with Little Brown. And whenever possible, I tried to parlay what I learned from Ambrose and McGahey into consulting assignments.

 

I went to New York in the pursuit of consulting opportunities.  Having managed to set up meetings with Xerox Learning Systems and the media division of Random House, I planned to present McGahey’s method for producing programmed instructional material and to present myself as one who had mastered the method.  To support my claims, I would lug along a 30-pound DART (Directed Action Response Training) teaching machine and sample units that I had developed.

On the surface, the trip didn't go too badly.  Although no work resulted, I was well received in both places, especially at Xerox Learning Systems.  If I had followed up better, or been closer geographically something might have come of that.  I probably even looked normal.  

However, beneath the surface, the trip was a freak show.  Influenced by the writings of Hunter Thompson and Carlos Castenada and plagued my by own fear and loathing I suffered ongoing out-of-body experiences and recurrent paranoia.  

Bill Moore, who worked at Cardinal and shared some of my visions, came along for the ride.  If I was Don Quixote then he was Sancho Panza.  I suppose the train was Rocinate and Gotham's towers were the windmills.  

Following are sketches that Bill and I drew.

The Trip

 

 

The Piedmont Crescent left Charlotte at 1:00 AM. Above is Bill's image of the Salisbury train station early in the morning.  This was our first stop. We were supposed to arrive in New York around noon.  However there was a derailment in Washington and we didn't pull into Penn Station until 4:00 PM.  Going though Philly, a little boy named Tyronne puked in the middle of the floor.  

 

Breakfast was served before daybreak by rude zombies.  Everything was old and tarnished - the staff, the plates, the utensils, the tablecloth, many of the passengers. Death and disapproval loomed.  I ate. like a pig and remembered a similar trip in 1943 when my mother and I rode to Baltimore to meet my father who had already gone to work at the Martin airplane plant.  Bill complained about the hour.

 

Impressions of New York

 

 

This is Julia Childs who was on the TV in our room at the Holiday Inn. I had never seen her before, had never seen that sort of television. She seemed so strange. .

 

Coming back from a restaurant that my sister had told me about, Bill and I got lost down near the waterfront. We encountered some men dressed for effect in black leather jackets and one friendly hippie. There was no one else around. It was very cold, making the little restaurant  seem like an island of warmth and congeniality.  

 

Bill wandered around town while I was out doing business.  He went to Central Park (where I later saw a squirrel wearing an acorn cap like a jaunty beret) and a Museum. I think this is from a coffee shop where he encountered some fashionable people.  He has the woman saying, "I would wish the escargots, which reminds me of my prize Appaloosa."   

 

 

One night, just before the doors closed, we took the serial elevators to the top of the Empire State Building. I think it was my idea. The City was panorama of light and movement. Bill brought out a joint to commemorate the occasion. One of us was moved. The other said, "Gurk".

 

Toward the end, even Bill got disturbed. Above is his image of himself lying in bed in the Holiday Inn remembering a fat woman that he saw somewhere while I was gone.  

 

Doing Business

 

Dressed in a suit and tie, dragging my 30 lb DART teaching machine and a briefcase, I hailed a cab to get from the Holiday Inn to the Random House offices. However, the driver refused to leave until I said the street name correctly. I had violated one of the Manhattan protocols for giving directions to cabbies.   Once that was done, he was friendly.

Standing on the sidewalk looking up at the Random House building, I felt like Youngblood Hawke (The southern writer from the Herman Wouk novel who tries to make it big in New York City.) I was greeted by an old man who reminded me of the cabby.  His office was in an out-of-the-way corner and about the same size as the interior of the cab.  He too ended up being kind, but without hope.

 

I took the train to from Penn Station to Stamford, Connecticut, where Xerox Learning Systems was located. From the train window, passing through nice Connecticut neighborhoods, I saw children skating on frozen ponds.

In the meeting, I skated on thin ice as I explained McGahey's vision.

Coming back, I missed the bus to the Stamford train station and had to call a cab from a public phone in the middle of nowhere, concerned that I was either losing my personal history or repeating it. The above picture isn't clear.  .

Time to Leave

 

 

I don't know whether being with me pushed Bill over the edge or if he would have gone over anyway, but by the end of the week we were both ready to leave. Above, he wakes up in the middle of the night, horrified to discover that it is not yet the next day.  

 

 

The last night in New York we went to a nightclub where a singer who reminded me of Edith Piaf  sang French songs. She was lovely and I was transfixed by the music but something about the waiter offended and frightened me.  

 

Getting limo reservations to the airport (we did not take the train back), we were abused by the old woman who operated the Holiday Inn news stand. She suggested that we didn't have what it takes to make it in the Big Apple. .   

 

Returning Home

 

This is Bill's image of me returning to Gaynelle Lockridge, the 1966 VW bus parked in my driveway back in Shelby, North Carolina.