HAL HADDON INTERVIEWS ED BRADLEY
HAL HADDON: I’m in Woody Creek with Ed Bradley. Ed has graciously consented to give an inTerview for the second edition of The Woody Creeker, edited by, written for, and hopefully read by Woody Creatures and a larger audience. Ed, we thank you for giving us this interview and I’d like to ask if you would trace you; odyssey from wherever you came from to Woody Creek. Would you tell us how you came to this place and what the passage was?
ED BRADLEY: You know, I came out here for the first time in 1976. I had met Hunter Thompson on the campaign — at the time I was covering Birch Bayh — and we met in New Hampshire and struck an immediate friendship. I had read his work when I was in Vietnam for the ’72 campaign. I was in Saigon and Cambodia. So I knew him through Rolling Stone and there was just an immediate kinship that we had. And we stayed in touch, saw each other on the campaign trail in Massachusetts, and then after Birch Bayh dropped out I flew down to Florida with him and we spent three days there, ending up in Key West at Jimmy Buffett’s — Jimmy and Jane Buffett’s — house. And then I went off, I was covering Jimmy Carter after that, and of course Hunter had covered that famous ( 1976) Law Day speech that Carter had made, and I had listened to that. Hunter had played it for me. And then at some point during the campaign, it was in the spring because it was a beautiful, beautiful time in the valley — it must’ve been May, late May, early June — the Carter campaign was taking a three-or four-day weekend off and I didn’t have to go back to Georgia. There was going to be nothing happening. So I flew up to Aspen to meet Hunter; he’d invited me up. I stayed at Owl Farm, in what is now known as the War Room. It was in the basement. And there were a few things that I remembered. One was the satin sheets on the bed and breakfast with Hunter which didn’t happen at normal breakfast hours, but just sitting out on the porch and looking out at that-over that tranquil ridge. It was just absolutely wonderful. I mean, I just loved it here and always had that memory m the back of my mind and never really got rid of it.
Then a couple years later, I’d been coming out here visiting and staying with friends, and I decided l wanted to buy a place in Aspen, and I bought a condo and was happy with that for a winter, a summer, another winter and the second summer I said, I gotta get out of here. There was just too much noise in town. You could hear the buzz in the town and you could hear the construction noise because there was always construction in town. And I had talked to a friend of mine who was also a Realtor, Ed Podolak, and I said, I want a place that’ll pass the “piss off the deck test,” where I can go out on my deck and take a leak and nobody can see me. And one day Podey called me and said, I’ve got the place for you, and he brought me here to Woody Creek. And actually I realized I had been on this property a year earlier with George Stranahan but I wasn’t ready to buy, and now I was. So I bought this place in Woody Creek and since then I’ve remodeled it once, then I built an addition to it, then we tore the kitchen down and rebuilt that, and then we tore the guest end down and rebuilt that. So we’ve completely rebuilt this house over the years.
HH: When did you move in here?
WHATEVER YOUR POLITICAL BELIEFS ARE, IT’S THE SYSTEM TO EXPRESS YOURSELF — EXPRESS THOSE BELIEFS, AND IF YOU’RE OPPOSED TO THE SYSTEM TO RAIL AGAINST THE SYSTEM. THATS THE AMERICAN WAY AND THAT WAS HUNTER’S WAY AND THE WOODY CREEK WAY.
EB: I think I moved in maybe in 1989. I’m not sure. but I think probably about ’89.
HH: You maintain a residence in New York?
EB: Yes. So I’m here as often as I can be. some years more than others. Tn a good ski year I would get thirty-five ski days. I didn’t get as many this year but we were here for Thanksgiving for about a week, Christmas for about ten days, and now in March we have another ten days. We always come in the summer for a month or so, five weeks, as many days as I can squeak out. Winters are great but summers are why we stay here. I mean it’s wonderful to ski and I love it, but if all I did was ski I could come in and stay in a hotel. But in the summers, to sit out or the deck, to walk down by the river and sit on one of the benches we put down there watch the eagle go up and down the river . . .it’s just my little slice of heaven.
HH: Do you get to harass the trout at all?
EB: You know, actually Patricia fishes more than I do. I remember going in to see Ro: Palm and walking out about $1,500 poorer. And I remember the first time I fished. I caught three fish and I said, well, that’s $500 a pop.
HH: That’s an Orvis moment.
EB: Yeah. So I’ve been trying to amortize my Roy Palm investment. But Patricia really enjoys fishing and is in the river a lot — she fishes with Ollie Fields — so she fishes a lot more than I do. I go in occasionally but not so much anymore. I’d just as soon sit by the river and fish.
HH: Our common bond, of course, is Hunter Thompson, and I met him in the 1974 Gary Hart campaign. And now he’s gone and he’s left a void and a vacuum in a lot of lives and in Woody Creek itself. What or who do you think will replace Hunter here in terms of his legacy and, indeed, what do you think his legacy is?
EB: Well, I don’t think anyone can replace Hunter. Hunter was unique and there’ll never be another Hunter. I mean, there may be another great write who lives in Woody Creek. There maybe someone who loves guns who lives in Woody Creek. There may be someone who loves motorcycles who lives in Woody Creek. There may be someone who has a crazy side to them who lives in Woody Creek. But there’s never be anyone to put all the things that Hunter was together and replace Hunter. His legacy is that there is this void that’s here. I can’t tell you how many times I drive out of town, you know, in the winter after skiing, Hunter was getting up for breakfast. I’d go up and sit down in the kitchen and rehash the news and look at the papers and watch an old TV and just talk. It was almost a daily ritual. And sometimes I’m driving out of town and the steering wheel tugs to the right and it’s sad know that he’s not there.
IN THE SUMMERS, TO SIT OUT ON THE DECK, TO WALK DOWN BY THE RIVER AND SIT ON ONE OF THOSE BENCHES WE PUT DOWN THERE, WATCH THE EAGLE GO UP AND DOWN THE RIVER. . . IT’S JUST MY LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN.
When I got married I watched how he loved Patricia. And then when her parents came out how he just charmed Patricia’s mother. I mean, he was amazing that way. His legacy takes many shapes and his legacy is in his work, in his writing, and it’s also in that place that he created up there. His presence is still there after all of this time.
His legacy is also the many memories that all of us have who had Hunter in our lives. I can remember getting up in the morning and Patricia would see this, that there was a stuffed lamb and a snake on the front porch. And she’d say, What is it, what is it? I said, you know Hunter was here. That bird over there (on the shelf) — you push the button and it squawks. That’s another Hunter gift, you know. There’s a can up here somewhere — oh, it’s gone, its here somewhere — but its a propane tank that has a bullet hole in it, which is a souvenir of one of my shooting exhibits with Hunter when I hit the bull’s-eye on the propane and blew it up.
You have all of those memories, and Hunter also railed against the system and I guess that’s part of his legacy. Woody Creek is very different from Aspen and in some ways Woody Creek has become a magnet for tourists who come to Aspen, you know., they want to come to Woody Creek. And I think the person who put Woody Creek on the map was Hunter.
HH: The Woody Creek Caucus has taken a stand against several provisions of the Patriot Act. (See 25 & 43) Is that basically just whistling into the wind or does the voice of the Woody Creek Caucus get heard outside of this valley?
EB: You know, I don’t think the president hears it.
HH: Does he hear anything?
EB: They just passed a revised version of the Patriot Act so I don’t think the Woody Creek Caucus has much influence. But, you know, we need the Woody Creek Caucus and caucuses all over this country to make our voices heard, and I think that the Woody Creek Caucus says and does, whether it’t heard or not, is important. I think it’s whatever your belief is. Whatever your political beliefs are, it’s the system to express yourself — express those beliefs, and if you’re opposed to the system rail against the system. Thats the American way and that was Hunter’s way and that’s the Woody Creek way.
HH: Hunter talked about an organization that may or may not be mythical called the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club, and he said it was so secret that people would only meet in the dark to maintain maximum anonymity. Hunter said you were a member. So I guess my question is — if you wouldn’t be breaching the oath of the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club — did that organization exist and what did you do?
EB: I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me. You know, there was stationery for the Woody Creek Rod and Gun Club. They actually had stationery made up for this thing. If it existed, I never attended a meeting, unless it was called to order before I arrived in the kitchen.
HH: If it were in the dark then none of us would know if we were members. I suspect that this organization was set up as a front for Hunter’s porcupine hunting activities. You never know.
Tell me if you can, whether Hunter’s style of journalism had any influence on yours and vice versa.
EB: You know, what we did was obviously very different, but we had a mutual respect for what each other did, because his is opinionated journalism in that he expresses his views, and mine is — I have to draw a line and not cross it. My job is not to express my views, but to elicit the views of people I’m interviewing, and sometimes I have to play the devil’s advocate because if I’m talking to two people in a dispute, they’ve got two different stories and I have to take one side when I question one person and the exact opposite side when I question the other person. But I have to keep myself of it. So I think what we did was very different but, as I said, we had a mutual respect for what the other did. I think he appreciated what did on “60 Minutes.” I know he would often call me and talk to me about stories that I did, and I enjoyed the hell out of Hunter’s writing and what he did, and was sometimes envious because I wished that I could say what I felt about something. But that’s not what I get paid to do.
HH: Hunter seemed to have a literary renaissance in the last ten years of his life — at least that’s my observation — and I wonder whether that is something you noticed and if you know why that happened.
I DON’T THINK ANYONE CAN REPLACE HUNTER. HUNTER WAS UNIQUE AND THERE’LL NEVER BE ANOTHER HUNTER.
EB: Yeah, I think what happened was that Hunter– I don’t know if he stumbled into or delved into this treasure trove of everything he ever wrote or that anyone ever wrote about him in his life. In the last years of his life he was, in many ways, recycling material because it was material previously written by him and others. But recycling in a unique way, and I think that is the renaissance to which you refer. But he wasn’t it sitting down {to write) anymore except for the ESPN columns on Page Two, which were really just fantastic. He used sports, which was so important in his life, as a point of departure for politics and things of interest to all of us. He was just masterful in the way that he was able to do that in those ESPN columns. And I also think that things like the Gonzo Papers were in so many ways a reflection on our time.
You look back at what he wrote then and what others wrote to him and the way he chronicled those things: it’s amazing, he had stuff from high school. He never threw anything away. I sit back now and I think, jeez, I wish that I kept all of those notebooks. I’m thinking of stories that I did in the sixties when I was working in local radio, my first jobs. Boy, I wish l had kept those scripts. How did he have the foresight to keep everything he ever owned? The Rum Diary, for example: The Rum Diary manuscript sat in a drawer in my kitchen for a year. When his brother died, he messed around and it was too late for him to catch a flight to Louisville to be there; we both forgot about it. Then one day he asked me about it and I dug it out and it was The Rum Diary, ready to publish. That he could have this thing all those years later, it just speaks volumes about Hunter. I thought he was just amazing.
HH: You told a wonderful story at Hunter’s second funeral, the one with the cannon, about trust, and how you trusted Hunter so much that you let him shave your head. Could you repeat that story for our readers?
EB: One summer when I came out from New York, I shaved my head the day before I left. I like that; I said, this is great, so I wanted to keep the look. When you shave your head, to keep that look you have to keep shaving it. So I went to the barbershop in Aspen, you know, it wasn’t really a barbershop — it was one of those salons, and the guy charged me $145, which I thought was outrageous. So Hunter said, well, next time I’ll shave it. And he showed up one night, we were sitting in the kitchen, he came in with a bag and a bottle of scotch, which he put on the table, and he had a bag of some kind of Chanel cream and a package of Bic safety razors, the throw-away kind. He steamed my head and wrapped towels around it, and then put on this Chanel cream and wrapped a towel around that, and then put another coat on it, and then he just started shaving.
He’d hit about three or four strokes and then he’d throw that razor away and take the next one. And he shaved my entire head-there was not a nick, not a scratch. nothing. and everybody marveled that T would let Hunter shave my head. But I trusted him. I let him drive my car. We flew to Denver together to pick up this car, I guess it was in l 995 or ’96, I bought this four-wheel-drive Porsche and we drove it back. And I let Hunter drive part of the way.
HH: That’s bold.
EB: Yeah, he sort of spun out when we went through Twin Lakes where the police car sits there with the dummy inside. He saw the dummy, hit the brake, hit the clutch, and threw it in another gear, and then we both laughed and realized it was a dummy and I said, “Okay, Hunter, I’ll drive now.”
HH: Let me ask you one final question. We’re still struggling with the future of Owl Farm and how it fits into the social fabric — not just the social fabric, but the environmental fabric of Woody Creek. Do you have some advice for us, and when I say us, for the trustees of the estate and for Anita and Juan, on what the future should be?
EB: Yeah, I think maybe Owl Farm should be the home and meeting place for the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club, and our members should be allowed to come in the open, in the daylight and have our meetings there.
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