December 9, 1980. St. Louis, Missouri. A bus of grammar school students. Destination: a private school, denomination undisclosed.

Most rides, the kids talk soccer, basketball, or baseball; the current sporting season decides the conversation. Today it’s current events. Last night someone died. A big someone, who mattered with a Capital M.

The kids know his songs, but not his face. They know his melodies, but not his music. They don’t understand what that dead man meant to their parents, but they do know he was important. Others say, they will never understand this connection, because his was the voice of another generation.

Critics said his music would never last. A flash in the pan, they said. Forty years later, John Lennon’s pan is still on fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Opportunities come in many forms, real, imagined, or unrealized, and their source seems as mysterious the direction they might take one. To some, that viewpoint may appear overly optimistic, but the older I get, the more opportunities I notice. And there are probably tons more beneath the surface that I’m unready to see, awaiting discovery.

Maybe karma drives this train, automagically stopping at the homes of the deserving and the unfortunate. Or maybe fate calls the shots. No idea, really. All I know is that there is seldom a run on opportunity. At least not where I try and shop.

In other news, I was duped by the advertising for the new movie Red Eye. The film is neither a horror flick as the ads implied, nor is it particularly scary, or even a thriller. It’s a movie with some tension and some entertainment value. I’ll review it later this week.

Hunter S. Thompson was a multi-talented man: a novelist, a model, a journalist, co-creator of the TV show Nash Bridges, a politico and an irritant to nearly every Republican administration since Nixon. Also, he lived in a nifty bunker in Colorado, had attractive coeds for assistants, and shot bears from the porch.

He was an intense man who took the work seriously, but not himself. He had a great sense of humor and knew how to twist a phrase. Everywhere he was, controversy swirled.

Allegations of drug abuse dogged him throughout his career. Of which charges are myth and which are fact, no one was certain. Perhaps he proved that in massive quantities LSD is a vitamin.

Mr. Hunter S. Thompson was at the top of my want to meet list. Not certain if he would’ve shook my hand or punched me, and for some reason I don’t care. Whatever it might have been, it would’ve been vintage Gonzo.

They don’t make writers like him any more. They don’t make anyone like him. I doubt they will again.

A long time ago, in a galaxy called college, I knew a writer with so much talent the stuff practically dripped off him. He churned out more innovative stories than most commercially viable authors. Some of his work was rough around the edges; to him revisions were the enemy of creativity. But even for first or second drafts, the prose was very good.

Years passed, everyone graduated and went their separate ways. Recently he popped back on the radar screen. A mutual friend clued me onto the location of his new digs; a small room that backed onto an abandoned church. The door will be open, he told me.

I found his appearance was the same, rumpled and dirty around the edges. His clothing was still Gap closeout meets Salvation Army. Reeking of cheap cigarettes, he had trouble holding a cup of coffee steady, spilling half of it on the table and chair. He hadn’t changed.

What had changed was his demeanor. The black eye, he assured me, was just a misunderstanding over a girl and some money. He looked tired and burnt out. There was a sadness about him that there wasn’t before.

I’m not certain what he’s mixed up in now, or what kind of hell he’s been through all these years. What I am sure of, is that once he had a lot of talent and these days he sleeps alone in a church.