Hunter Thompson was sitting in front of me. We were in the small theater in North Beach. A dark place. I could only see two rows of seats running downhill twenty feet deep into the blackness. It was one of Bob Marley’s first American shows. I was the art director of Rolling Stone and a photographer for international publications like Vogue, Esquire, the Sunday Times of London, People. Hunter was in San Francisco to get paid by Rolling Stone or just to shoot somebody since he never delivered his writing to the magazine in person. He faxed all his stories in and it took days.

Turning to me in that dark little theater, cigarette unlit in a long cigarette holder, Hunter reached back with his pinkie raised and offered me a little white stamp held delicately between his thumb and forefinger like the wing of a butterfly. On the stamp was a line print in blue of Mr. Natural.

“Take it, Mad Dog,” he said.

Thinking of Hunter these few years after his death, I remembered that gift from him but I had forgotten that everyone I know in San Francisco, besides my family there, calls me Mad Dog. Hunter gave me that handle the night he gave me the tab of LSD.

Thompson made a habit of insulting and challenging anyone who could see or hear him. But never me. That little stamp was in my wallet for years. I never dropped that acid. I never actually dropped any. A Mad Dog needs no help. And the tab was my seal of Hunter’s approval. - MIKE SALISBURY