Fear and Loathing in Lincoln, Nebraska

By Tim Clark — HEAD ABOVE WATER

I remember the first time I flew, at least parts of it, and most of what led up to it, at least parts of it, too. We were football fans. Our team was going to play in the Orange Bowl in Miami Florida for the National Championship.

My roommate, Jim, thought we should go to the game. We bought a tour package that came with plane tickets, a motel room, game tickets and a bus ride to and from the stadium. There were three of us, Jim, our friend Charley, we called him Chuckles, and me.

We had about thirty tablets of uppers in an aspirin jar, two flasks filled with Canadian whisky, an ounce and a half of pot (it started as three ounces but by the time we left it had suffered some shrinkage) and 4 packages of rolling papers. We had heard bad things about the humidity in Miami.

It was a 4-hour drive to Lincoln. Coffee, donuts and a few bennies and we were ready.

When we got to the terminal they told us the plane with our pilot and flight crew were going to be late. Bad weather, they said. We sat and waited. I noticed a severe looking man, in a brown suit sitting close to the counter. He was short and heavy. He scanned the crowd with a cold, calculated precision. His head swiveling back and forth like a metronome.