BY LYNN BURTON
The Aspen Wall Posters were a lot of things, but mostly they were just flat-out funny.
“He (Thompson) would come in with this stuff, and I’d just laugh myself sick. I thought even the greed-heads would have to find some humor in it,” said Aspen Wall Poster co-founder Tom Benton in a Carbondale Valley Journal article in 1987.
Thompson’s humor covered the spectrum, from tongue-in-cheek to in-your-face, plus satire, wise cracks, insider jokes and stream-of-conscious rants whose style would later evolve into Gonzo (or that is this writer’s theory anyway). Thompson even cast shark-sized treble-hook barbs at himself and Benton.
For example, buzzed from the literally overnight success of Aspen Wall Poster No. 1 and the “blizzard of one-dollar bills” that hit their “cast iron collection pot,” Thompson boasted in AWP No. 2 that with the posters’ obscene profits they’d turned into “Capitalist swine” and promised to build a drive- in movie theater in Woody creek and buy a building lot at Wildcat.
Wildcat was the multi-thousand development proposed for thousands of acres north of Snowmass Village, which never got off the ground. Thompson speculated about Aspen’s future if Wildcat were approved, and its impacts on Highway 82. In AWP No. I he wrote in part: “All those rented Mustangs skidding around between Aspen and Snowmass weren’t put there by the god damned stork. They are there because Snowmass is there… and then Wildcat looms into life.. even a new four-lane highway won’t adequate to handle all the traffic.”
In AWP No. 1, Thompson also spun 180 degrees north of Wildcat, focusing his attention on the industrial area the Roaring Fork River at Woody Creek and wrote “The Gerbazdale slag-heap is a monstrous eyesore. Most resort communities are hypersensitive about the first impression they offer visitors… that area looks like a condemned section of Pittsburgh, or a truck slum on the outskirts of Wheeling… the whole length of 82 is becoming a plastic graveyard. “
Thompson then puts on his tour-guide hat and describes the entryway to Aspen this way: “To your left you’ll notice what appears to be a hideous industrial slum… it was donated by the people of this valley by the Pitkin County Attorney and his old friend, the ex-county commissioner. They worked hard to create that malignant little wasteland, and we’re particularly proud of it.”
It’s easy to imagine Thompson with his head down, his tour-guide hat screwed on tight and his typewriter glowing red as he pounded out the following in less than 30 seconds: “Quick. Look up through the billowing gases … it’s right above the slag heap and the smelter and the rail yards and the asphalt plant and those two gravel pits … · they planned for an 18-hole layout, but lack of water and freakish environmental factors caused them to settle for seven, with the first and last holes to be played completely underground in radioactive caverns.”
ANY NAZI GREEDHEAD WITH THE MONEY TO HIRE A GOOD GHOST WRITER IS WELCOME TO SUBMIT HIS SCREED FOR PUBLICATION. WE WANT TO BE FAIR.
ASPEN WALL POSTER MASTHEAD
Golfers with children could let them “amuse themselves by riding the conveyor belt back and forth across the Roaring Fork River and dropping dynamite – if they wish – into the schools of vicious garbage eels that now control the river.” Those words, in AWP No. I, created such an in an instant frenzy within-minutes of rolling off the-press that a “fat man from Wisconsin emptied his wallet and bought 22 copies before dawn,” Thompson wrote in AWP No.2.
ln AWP No.3, Thompson investigated the famous Holland Hills windmill bombing. The Holland-style windmill replica in question, the remnants of which is inhabited to this today and is easily visible behind the poplar trees on the north side of Highway 82, was built as a sales office for the subdivision just up-valley from Basalt.
Lots of people didn’t much like the windmill and one night some person or persons blew it up to some degree. Thompson reported the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was called in, “but their work was hopelessly complicated by the vast number of good leads and suspects. So many people have been threatening -for so long- to either burn or blast the windmill, that when somebody finally got around to doing the deed, half the town panicked for lack of alibis. And since the blast occurred on a Saturday night just after a lunatic distributed 500 tabs of mescaline, a good percentage of the likely suspects weren’t sure where they’d been at the magic hour.”
And speaking of drugs, in a later A WP, under the headline ”Treacherous Drug Dealers,” Thompson wrote a short blurb about a local dealer that said in part, “Avoid any dealings with this person; he sells a bad product and refuses to talk about refunds.” (Rumor has it this alleged dealer is still around, living a life of luxury on the Roaring Fork River between El Jebel and Carbondale, and was in some way connected to the Woody Creek community for many years, but this is just a rumor so don’t go spreading it around very much).
Sometimes, Thompson and Benton just lobbed in funny fillers (they are called “house ads” in the business), .such as the little box in the middle of AWP No. 4 that says “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon.” The masthead said, “Any Nazi greedhead with the money to hire a good ghost writer is welcome to submit his screed for publication. We want to be fair.”
The masthead on AWP No. 1 said in part: “Dull and/or illiterate bullshit will be rejected out of hand. Our space is lim ited and we have to rewrite staff to cope with gibberish or garbled swill.” AWP No. 2 included a list of “non-advertisers” which was to include “firms, persons and/or strange coalitions who want no part of us, our product or anything we stand for.” All it took to make the list was to send a $5 check to the AWP PO Box. To get this section rolling, Thompson and Benton gave free listings to: Impressions, George Madsen, Pitkin County Dry Goods, and KNCB Moore.
For some reason, in AWP No. 4, Thompson went off on Pitkin County commissioner Candidate Ned Vare (a close personal friend) in an open letter signed by Martin “Bing” Bormann (Executive Vice-President and Chief of Human Relations for TexTax Dynamics, SW Texas). It read in part: “You evil bird-brained little bastard, how did you ever gel elected anyway … you twisted communist all covered with warts and fishy eyes too crazy to see the troth right in front. I wish Cardinal Spellman was still alive by God he’d straighten that bent head of yours damn fast you lint-head son-of-a-bitch you’d be down on your slimy belly screaming for unction! Why don’t you get haircut and take a steam-bath you scurvy pig you represent Aspen like Columbus discovered Cuba … how much do you want laying off Southwest TexPetrol … I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse and if you do by Christ I’ll have your teeth ripped out and stomp your filthy ass till your nose bleeds. You filthy little moron.”
Despite all the obvious humor, the brotherly love expressed toward friends such as Vare, offers to list non-advertisers at only $5 a pop, the outing of the untrustworthy drug dealers, and allowing Nazi greed-heads access to the printed page (In English no less), not everybody in Aspen got the joke.
Said Benton in the 1987 Valley Journal interview, “It takes a special kind of person to read these (Wall Posters)… I think this kind of stuff can really turn people off. Quickly.”
Maybe Benton’s right but the people who weren’t turned off got turned on. The laughs continue today for folks lucky enough to have saved their posters or somehow gotten their hands on them, almost 40 years after Thompson wrote in the first AWP masthead: “So, in the now famous words of Spiro T. Agnew, ‘Let the Hundred Flowers Bloom.’ “
Lynn Burton is a longtime Roaring Fork Valley newspaper reporter. He acquired his first Aspen Wall Poster at a yard sale in 1983, and he thinks he now owns a full set.
