Monday, October 28, 2019

A Little Horror





This week’s post is going to be light on text and long on grizzly.
It’s Halloween week.
Pete Hampton loved nature and beauty. But he had a Poe-like fascination for horror, and the macabre as well. And nothing he saw filled the bill like Tobe Hooper’s low budget horror masterpiece, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Pete liked it so much he painted these:
Enjoy





Not from TCM, but horrible, just the same...


 Happy Halloween.

Monday, October 21, 2019

The Anger




The Anger 

 

<Last week: A Scary True Story

 



It is a clear, warm Monday morning, and I’m sitting here at the keyboard trying to type through a deep brain fog. I got back home yesterday afternoon after a very long drive and a couple days of non-stop smokin’, drinkin,’ and  bullshitting with a couple of old friends up northern California way. It was good. 





That web of coincidence that initiated this project has stretched far and deep into my life, and even touched the lives of people I knew from long ago. This last weekend was a byproduct of the long chain of events that began with my saying “yes” to a visit to the Sawdust Festival a couple years back.




And this rambling bit of a post is a byproduct of spending the last week getting ready to travel, traveling, and returning home, and not getting a heck of a lot done with the Project.
The scary story post from last week seemed to generate a lot of traffic for the blog. I traded a couple of notes on the story with Pete’s brother Richard, who brought up an important point about Pete. 
I have written on many occasions that Pete was “wildly eccentric”, or even mad.
He was all of that, and it was readily apparent to anyone who met him. Some found Pete’s eccentric manner fascinating; others found him-- I guess, “Off-putting” would be a good way to put it.



And Pete knew it. He was always misunderstood. He was always  too painfully aware that a great percentage of the people he encountered in life dismissed him as an odd ball, and would never take him or his work seriously. He carried tremendous anger.
Richard made this poignant observation on Pete’s narrative of the Scary Story event:

“…Having read it this time I was intrigued by Pete's matter a fact recall of events, and justification for shooting these creeps without any apparent remorse. Peter was a gentle soul when it came to nature,  people...not so much.”

We all talked about this at Pete’s memorial. Yes, he had tremendous anger, bitterness, and raw hatred for people, for the world, and especially  for the builders who destroyed the hillsides. He had weapons and firearms. In the realms of his imagination Pete  wreaked incredible violence on his enemies.
Yet he took out that rage in his writings, his audio tapes, his paintings, and most often, in the “mad ravings” posters that I covered several posts back. And alcohol. There was always the alcohol.
But he kept his demons confined in the darkness of his imagination. Pete never hurt anyone. He never threatened anyone. He never took revenge for the slights, the disrespect, or the dishonesty of others.



Next week we’ll take a look into the darkness. Pete loved the macabre, and he was good at expressing it. Hold on tight. It’s gonna get all kinds of creepy here for Halloween.

Next. A note from the Scribe

Monday, October 14, 2019

A Scary True Story






Coincidence has played a starring role in this project ever since its inception. Indeed, it was an odd coincidence that set this whole thing in motion. I’ve lost track of the number of just-so incidents that led me to find what I was looking for at just the right time that I needed it.
I mentioned last week that Pete’s brother Richard sent me a large packet of material from Pete’s private journal, and also a copy of a very tense  encounter Pete had with some sketchy characters up in the hills.




I had seen the story before, somewhere in the folio of notes, and scripts for The Lost Canyon and Lost Era shows. The letter from Richard provided me with just what I needed right then, which was material for the next week’s post.  I got it all transcribed, and you’ll get to see it in just a few more paragraphs. Or you could just skip ahead. But there was one more little just-so element in the mix.



I don’t get very many comments here at the Lost Canyon Project, so seeing the notice in my email started my morning on a very good note. I received a comment from a gentleman who goes by the nic “Lineman” asking about the power poles, one of Pete’s favorite subjects.



 So I searched out the post from last January, about when Mike and Lou  came down over Labor Day weekend to assess Pete’s enormous collection of  powerline insulators.

More Strands in the Web 
If you click over there, you may notice that I ended that post with a teaser about Pete’s scary encounter with some sketchy characters up in the hills. I, uh—forgot to follow up on that teaser. (embarrassed grin)

Until now. To give some context to the story, Pete would frequently build small hidden campsites in the canyons in the Whittier hills. One of the reasons, was to record the night sounds of coyotes howling, or the songs of various birds.
 What follows is from Pete Hampton’s journal. These are Pete’s unedited words.



Scary True Story
By Pete Hampton

May, 1980 



One fine morning I awoke in my tent hearing all the birds singing and the little wren with his beautiful clear burbling song and one coyote up on the ridge and I started dozing off again because it was so comfortable in the tent. Suddenly I was awakened by people’s voices and the roar of some vehicle that had a bad muffler.

What the hell is that going on at 7:00 in the morning? I peeked through the branches of the brush around my camp and I saw an old faded red Datsun pickup truck.

Then I hid, and was going to put the recorder on, but those noisy DC10’s were flying over and I couldn’t get it on tape. There were two people that I estimated were in their 30’s.
“Hey, there’s cows back here. Let’s get the fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that…”
They talked rough and crazy like bad people or even criminals. Then they left.

Then, two days after when I left for home I found an old crumpled up pornographic pamphlet in the beautiful little stream below me. It was raw and crusty pictures of penis enlargers and a picture of a black dude with a 14 inch cock, and all kinds of women’s  vagina, sex stimulators, weird masturbating devices for women. I picked it up out of the stream and threw it where the owners of Rose Hills would find it.

Then another time those creeps were up there again and I figured that they might even have a gun “Bang, Boom” they’re bad people…
Then again one afternoon I was ready to go up the hill from a deep gulch just below my camp (100 feet- 33 1/3  meters) and I found an empty shell from a .30-.30 high powered rifle. As I started going up the hill to my campsite there was a whine overhead and a report of gunfire that followed because a .30-.30 is supersonic. Oh, Oh. There’s that red pickup again, down below in Dark Canyon. 


Yikes, I better get up to my camp, but fast! I rushed up to the front entrance and pulled out the branch door and quickly got under the huge sumac bush and shut the camouflage door and rushed inside the tent and grabbed my hidden Remington .22, 19 shot rifle, and chambered it.

I felt like I was in guerilla warfare as I tried to remain non existent to all intruders in my domain.
Don’t panic now: put your recorder on and tape it all for evidence in court if you have to shoot them in self-defense…
The sun had set now and by their rough, laughing psychopathic voices they were right down below me in that stream under the oak trees again. 

Bang.
They had a gun and they also had a dog with them. A hunting dog.

Oh my gosh what if that dog sniffs me out where I am up here? Paranoia… barkbarkbark arf arf.
I put on the recorder and then crouched down below the dug-out where I could see their silhouette  coming. If they decided to fuck with me. (pardon my French) I would have no choice, but to shoot the one with the high powered rifle in the head; then his accomplice also in pure self-defense. Oh, how would I explain this to police, though?

I was scared, but very organized and prayed they wouldn’t come up the trail and find where I was, although I was extremely well concealed. My heart was pounding and I swallowed down a can of beer to calm my nerves.
Then I heard, “let’s go up here and (harsh obscene words) and if we see ‘em let’s kill ‘em. 

Gulp! For a moment it wasn’t real anymore to me I’m going to have to commit a murder. Wow! Bark Bark  went the dog again. But luckily they went up the other side of the canyon and shot their gun then drove all over laughing and shooting, screwing things up for me and the coyotes. Then they left.

The next morning, when I left, up on the dirt road I noticed a red pickup truck with a white camper on it creeping along. They saw me from a distance and acted very suspicious about my presence. I cleverly waved to them and smiled, and they left and so did I, after a few minutes.
I never saw them again. I told police, but they didn’t seem to care about the incident.