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

Monsters in the Dark

Monsters in the Dark

<Last Week:The Long Night

 

 

Once again, I had a week dominated by a domestic project which involved shovels, dirt, hundreds of concrete curbstones, and pavers, and nothing that remotely resembled either assistance, or fun. But I did complete the clerical stuff on archive 13. The catalogue is up to date with 808 entries at 500 pages even. 

And just to set my obsessive compulsive teeth on edge, the last two packing boxes will fit archives 9 and 10, and archives 12 and 13 perfectly , but there is no way I can fit archive 11 in a box and have room for anything else.

 So that means that tomorrow, when I go down to the storage I have to leave archive 11 here and come home with a box for it so I can take it back later.  I wanted to take all the completed work to the storage in order, and in one trip. But I’m just getting silly over pointless details. Welcome to The Lost Canyon Project.

With this archive, all of the collected works from Pete Hampton’s shows and stories are recorded. I took great care to catalogue the paintings in the order that Pete stored them, but it soon became apparent that many of the sequences were scattered over several collections. There is material for “The Deep Dark Hole” in archive 11. The Pigrat sequence for today’s post was likewise scattered across several collections. Similarly, Jeff’s encounter with the old lady in Rideout Heights is spread out in several archives. As I mentioned, I’ll be going to the storage Monday morning. By next week we should have pictures from the last collection of large assorted works.

A visit to Pete’s hut in the Lost Canyon was more than an overnight camp-out, and all night bull session with your best pal.  The Whittier Hills was a world of  pristine beauty in the day, and the realm of monsters and nightmares after dark. In previous posts we’ve seen visits from the mangled corpse of Joseph the oilman, in “The Terrible Thing”. We've seen the attack of the Monster from “The Midnight Terror.” We’ve seen the Telehonepolies, strange hostile birds from “The Lost Era”, and had an encounter with Green Mist that left a man hanging headless from a tree.

But somehow, the Pigrat from “The Lost Canyon Trip” was Pete’s favorite mythical creature. When Pete talked about his show, he seldom failed to mention the frightening and fatal encounter with this unheard-of animal.

Part of the reason for the overnight camp-out in “The Lost Canyon Trip”,   was that Pete wanted to trap a California Thrasher. How does one trap a bird? Easy. Box. Bait. Stick. String. Just like in The Roadrunner. Only it really can work. (Pete did trap his bird.) But back to the camp-out.

 Something late at night is raiding the bird trap.

 Whatever it is, it's big!

 Staring Pigrat/ as big as a cocker spaniel/ climax shot/ #10

“Pig-rat/ It collapsed, It’s dead, Jeff, died of fright! Probably never saw a person before. I wonder??/shot # 14”

 

  

Why not, indeed? And then there was the even more mysterious White Pigrat:

Strange white Pig-Rat in oilwell hills / Strange white pig-rat like animal disappearing off a lonely road in the oilwell hills/ $15.

Next week: Bringing It All Back Home>