Blake Broadway: Fear and Loathing in Lufkin Vegas

Blake Broadway probably doesn't look like Johnny Depp, either.

​"The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab," wrote Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls . . . Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

Except, perhaps, an East Texas teen in the depths of a computer duster-spray binge...

KTRE picks up the story:

According to the police report, a security guard at Lufkin Mall, located in the 4600 block of South Medford Drive, notified police that he discovered Broadway lying in a grassy area on the mall's property and that he had been inhaling the chemicals from a can of duster spray.

Well, who among us has not? Who among us can say they've never huffed duster behind a mall?

And wow, a grassy strip behind the Lufkin Mall is a long, long way from Circus Circus in Swingin' Dickie Nixon's Vegas...The story goes on to list the contents of Broadway's alleged drug stash, which makes an interesting contrast with that of Thompson's.

First, there's that computer duster. Yes, you can get high off of it, and even develop a nasty-ass addiction to the stuff, as hardcore fans of the show Intervention know very well.

Walkin' on sunshine!

Also in Broadway's Dr. Raoul Duke starter kit:

A plastic baggie full of over the counter antihistamine pills.

And another bag reportedly containing marijuana, which someone had marked "Illegal substance (Top Secret)."

So yeah, the kid's got a long way to go, but let's not forget, the good Doctor had some cash from that Hell's Angels book by the time he started Fear and Loathing, and he rounded up his pharmaceutical cornucopia over the course of several days' driving all over the drug-drenched LA County of 1974.

Broadway's just a broke East Texas kid doing the best he can in Lufkin. Maybe if he had a Samoan attorney to help him out, he too could score those galaxies of pills and sheets upon sheets of high-quality acid.

As it is, it looks like the attorney he's got still has his training wheels, because that warning he put on the bag of weed did not stop police from hauling Broadway to the pokey. Or maybe it did work somehow, because the kid was charged only with possession of drug paraphernalia (the duster, presumably) and released with an order to reappear in court for the class C misdemeanor.