Kitchens are the quintessesntial room of the home. The Good Doctor, Hunter S. Thompson, transformed his Woody Creek kitchen into a salon, a battleground, a gambling den, and a refuge area. Here’s how his friends remember it:

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a regular betting partner and close friend of Thompson’s, described the kitchen as “a salon reminiscent of Paris in the 1920s. It was full of artists, politicians, winners, losers — and Hunter made the house rules, especially when it came to wagering.”

Tim Mooney, a former manager for musicians Jimmy Buffet and John Denver, reminisced about his times in the kitchen with The Good Doctor. “The kitchen was the center of the family business. The nourishment was intellectual ideas: sports, gaming, current events, politics, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The family business ran 24 hours a day, eight days a week, and it was as relevant to be as close to the refrigerator and the ice machine and the toaster oven as it was to be next to the phone, next to the typewriter, next to the drawers full of the tools of the lifestyle that were catalogued with the Dewey Thompson Decimal System,” said Mooney.

Flashback to Jackson Browne’s Farther On (Late for the Sky):

As many times as love has come and gone
To those gentle ones my memory runs
To the laughter we shared at the meals
I filled their kitchens and living rooms
With my schemes and my broken wheels
It was never clear how far or near
The gates to my citadel lay
They we’re cutting from stone some dreams of their own
But they listened to mine anyway

Hunter’s family probably is gathered around that kitchen table now, remembering his schemes, his dreams and lamenting whatever broken wheels led to his premature death. And Hunter, wherever he is right now, most likely is looking on and smiling.

P.S. A big, fat raspberry today to the Boulder Camera for its unusually mean-spirited editorial on Hunter’s death. Let them know how you feel about it: Fax: 303-449-9358; Phone: 303-473-1304; email to openforum@dailycamera.com