Hunter S. Thompson's boyhood home

Hunter S. Thompson's boyhood home. Photo by Mark Payne

After some searching I was able to hunt down Hunter S. Thompson’s boyhood home.

It originally started from an interest of a buddy of mine, Shane Ersland. We went biking in Louisville and thought it would be a good idea to find his home. However, we were bounced around in multiple directions and couldn’t find it.

A week later I read a blog by Tom Eblen that was written in May 2008. In his blog, he said the home was for sale and stated the address. He also said it was owned by an editor from Louisville’s daily paper, The Courier-Journal. (In an updated entry on Eblen’s blog he said the home was sold in June of 2008.)

So I went and hunted it down.

I also had a talk with Stephen George, the editor of Louisville’s alternative weekly, Leo weekly, while at Louisville’s music festival, Forecastle.

He said that when people where remodeling the house they were trying to scrape up a black circle in the middle of the house. The workers started to ask around as to what the cirle was and the neighbors told them it was from when Hunter was a boy and he drew the circle, calling it his own portal to hell.

P.S. If you are ever driving through Cherokee park and go through the circle, around Daniel Boone’s statue, look at the large white house with a nice decorated yard. That house belonged to the non-fictional character of Daisy, in The Great Gatsby. Apparently Fitzgerald wrote a lot of the book at a hotel in Louisville, The Seelbach.

About these ads