(“Gonzo Technology” was written for my library school blog and posted on April 25, 2016.)

“I never met him alone,” Anne, our volunteer technology instructor at Fairhope Library said. “My husband, or daughter would go with me to downtown Mobile.”
“He would give me his Dictaphone tapes and I would give him his manuscript.” Anne  used her data processing machine in the picture above (left) to transcribe the tapes of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Curse of Lono (1983) manuscript.

“There was a lot of foul words in it,” she recalled, “And I remember them flushing drugs down an airplane toilet.”

“He liked my speed, she said of Thompson. “He was a bit strange, as writers tend to be. This was way before he became famous.”

“I needed the money,” she said. Anne’s IT addiction, a computer and printer set her back five thousand bucks. Anne is pictured above with the actual Apple II Plus (right with NEC Monitor) she used to type Thompson’s manuscript.

Hunter, it turns out was a friend of a friend of Anne’s husband. All these guys shared a love of cars. American Cars! However, this wasn’t just any friend of a friend, it was novelist Tom Corcoran.

I didn’t have any reason to doubt Anne, but I found myself Googling (newly acquired reference skills be darned) Hunter Thompson and Fairhope. The next time I saw her she had done the same thing, “I’m losing it,” she said, of her memory, but of all the people I know, Anne in IT speak is “with it.”

WE found the same book reference. Fairhope is mentioned in Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, by William McKeen.

None of this may seem like a big deal, but Anne continues to be an early adopter despite having a severe case of macular degeneration, which she described to me one day as “looking through a shattered windshield.” She’s mastered Windows 10, wields an iPad better than any kid, and can code like there is no tomorrow.

My first home computer, circa 1992, was a Tandy 1000. (www.old-computers.com)

Anne and I have a lot in common. We thoroughly enjoy lifelong learning and we are absolutely giddy when we are sharing what we know with others at the Fairhope Public Library.