Susie and Hunter — and The Kentucky Derby is Depraved

Hunter Thompson was my friend, but long before that, his writing turned me on my ear. — A remembrance for Derby Day.

You can't start your Derby Day right without reading Louisville’s Favorite Son, Hunter Thompson, in his seminal essay on the Kentucky Derby and the Nixon years, first published in 1970 in Scanlan's Monthly.

It’s the story that made readers and editors everywhere go, “Who IS This?”

I think we all still have that reaction; it is so fresh. There had never been sportswriting like it. I read it each year and find something new.

Susie, bottom left, then John, Todd, and Jenny, at Churchill Downs in 1977.

Do take a sip—  don't stop until you get to the bottom of the glass.

I sure miss my old comrade— who writes like this anymore? I was first a fan of Hunter’s, then curious new friends in the 80s when we both were habituées of the Mitchell brothers’ O’Farrell Theater.

But a much deeper bond arose because of a publisher’s error in judgement. One year we were both authors at Simon and Schuster, who was considering an experiment in the then-mysterious “e-book” market. They asked me to write an origi…