{"id":169,"date":"2011-12-21T20:51:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T20:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lightangel.net\/lightblog\/?p=169"},"modified":"2011-12-21T20:51:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T20:51:12","slug":"pop-culture-history-merry-pranksters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/margaretharrell.com\/2011\/12\/pop-culture-history-merry-pranksters\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop Culture History – Merry Pranksters"},"content":{"rendered":"

As some of you know, a long time ago, during the publicity tour of\u00a0 Hell’s Angels,<\/em> I crossed paths – for a moment – with satirist Paul Krassner, the then founding editor of the notorious counterculture publication, The Realist.<\/em> When he sent me an outrageous letter, naturally I kept it and it proved a piece of luck for my memoir. Before reproducing it in Keep This Quiet! <\/em>I tracked him down and he granted me the right, free of charge, to reprint the letter – in part illustrating the philosophy that you stand behind whatever you do. He didn’t happen to remember the letter, but it was his and he stood by it – in public.<\/p>\n

More recently still, as I was about to send him a copy of Keep This Quiet!<\/em>, he sent me a couple of his latest pieces – still going strong, as satirical and politically incorrect as ever. I am reprinting this little piece on his reminiscences of Key Kesey below. Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest<\/em> and other well-known work.<\/p>\n

He has approved the publication, so pick it up and pass it on if you wish.<\/p>\n

To read his funny letter to me, it’s inside Keep This Quiet!<\/em><\/p>\n

Here we go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adventures with Kesey<\/p>\n

By Paul Krassner<\/p>\n

For Paul’s website, click\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In February 1971, I moved from New York to San Francisco. Publisher Stewart Brand had invited me to come out and co-edit with Kesey The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog<\/em>. Brand told me that \u201cKesey said he\u2019d do it if you would.\u201d I replied, \u201cYes, yes, yes, yes, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were a couple of hundred cartons in my Lower East Side loft, and I went through each one, throwing stuff away, saving an occasional item. I came upon this strange card, praising \u201cThe Anal Sphincter: A Most Important Human Muscle,\u201d which \u201ccan differentiate between solid, fluid and gas.\u201d I couldn\u2019t decide whether to keep it, so rather than break my rhythm, I simply stuck it in my pocket.<\/p>\n

Kesey had been in Palo Alto for a week when I arrived. He was sitting in the backyard at a table with an electric typewriter on it. His parrot, Rumiako, was perched on a tree limb right above him, and whenever Rumiako squawked, Kesey would type a sentence as though the parrot were dictating to him. Kesey looked up at me. \u201cHey, Krassner, I\u2019ve just been sitting here, thinking about the anal sphincter.\u201d I reached into my pocket, withdrew that message about the anal sphincter that I had transported 3,000 miles, and handed it to Kesey. \u201cMy card,\u201d I said. It was a magically appropriate gesture for a new beginning.<\/p>\n

Each morning, Kesey would come by the Psychodrama Commune where I was staying. We\u2019d have crunchy granola and ginseng tea for breakfast. Then, sharing a joint in an open-topped convertible, we would drive up winding roads sandwiched by forest, ending up at a large garage which was filled with production equipment. Kesey and I would discuss ideas, pacing back and forth like a pair of caged foxes. Gourmet meals were cooked on a pot-bellied stove. Sometimes a local rock band came by and rehearsed with real amplification, drowning out the noise of our typewriters.<\/p>\n

Kesey had been reading a book of African Koruba stories. The moral of one parable was, \u201cHe who shits in the road will meet flies on his return.\u201d With that as a theme, we assigned R. Crumb to draw his version of the Last Supper for our cover of The Last Supplement<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One morning in the Psychodrama kitchen, I couldn\u2019t help but notice that Kesey was pouring some white powder \u2013 from a box he found on a pantry shelf \u2013 into his crotch. \u201cI\u2019ve used cornstarch on my balls for years,\u201d he explained. It seemed like an organic commercial in the making, so the next morning, our Prankster managing editor Hassler brought his camera. Our public service ad would eventually appear on the inside back cover of the Supplement<\/em>, with Kesey giving this pitch:<\/p>\n

\u201cY\u2019know how it is when you\u2019re swarthy anyway and maybe nervous like on a long freeway drive or say you\u2019re in court where you can\u2019t unzip to air things out, and your clammy old nuts stick to your legs Well, a little handful of plain old cornstarch in the morning will keep things dry and sliding the whole hot day long. Works better than talcum and you don\u2019t smell like a nursery. Also good for underarms, pulling on neoprene wet suits and soothing babies\u2019 bottoms. And it\u2019s biodegradable.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pair of black women from Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses stopped by the garage one day, and within ten minutes Kesey convinced them that in Revelations where there\u2019s talk of locusts, it was really prophesizing helicopters. Actually, he was a practicing Christian who also threw the I Ching <\/em>every day as a religious ritual. When his daughter, Shannon, was invited out on her first car date, he insisted that she throw the I Ching <\/em>in order to decide whether or not to accept.<\/p>\n

Once he forgot to bring his family I Ching <\/em>to the garage, and he seemed edgy, like a woman who has neglected to take her birth-control pill, so I suggested that he pick three numbers, then I turned to that page in the unabridged dictionary, circled my index finger in the air and it came down pointing at the word bounce<\/em>. So that was our reading, and we bounced back to work.<\/p>\n

After a couple of months, we finished the Supplement <\/em>and had a big party. Somebody brought a tank of nitrous oxide to help celebrate. Kesey suggested that in cave-dwelling times, all <\/em>the air they breathed was like this. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThere are stick figures hovering above,\u201d he said, \u201cand they\u2019re laughing at us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd,\u201d I added, \u201cthe trick is to beat them to the punch.\u201d<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Kesey lived on a farm in Oregon — in a huge, sectioned-out barn, with a metal fireplace that hung from the living-room ceiling — and he also had a house in La Honda, across the street from a hill where a pair of speakers were embedded and could be turned on from the stereo system in his living room. One evening, we were sitting on the large front lawn of the La Honda house, watching the sunset, when a car stopped on the road. A couple inside were arguing fiercely.<\/p>\n

Kesey, with his wrestler stride, returned to the house and put on a record of Frank Sinatra singing \u201cStrangers in the Night.\u201d The couple was stunned by such loud \u2013 and appropriate \u2013 music emanating from the hill. We could see them smiling as they shared that mystery, then drove away.<\/p>\n

I interviewed Kesey at my new home in San Francisco \u2013 each of us using an electric typewriter on my dining-room table, passing paper with questions and answers back and forth \u2013 but first he boiled a pot of hash tea for our creative fuel.<\/p>\n

Kesey and I had discussed the fact that, during the sixties, when abortion was illegal, I ran a free underground referral service. Now I typed: \u201cSince you\u2019re against abortion, doesn\u2019t that put you in the position of saying that a girl or a woman must bear an unwanted child as punishment for ignorance or carelessness?\u201d<\/p>\n

He replied: \u201cIn as I feel abortions to be probably the worst worm in the revolutionary philosophy, a worm bound in time to suck the righteousness and the life from the work we are engaged in, I want to take this slowly and carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

He proceeded to type quite a long, poetic justification, concluding:<\/p>\n

\u201cPunishment of unwed mothers? Bullshit! Care of neither the old nor the young can be considered to be punishment for the able, not even the care of the un-dead old or the un-born young. These beings \u2013 regardless not only of race, creed and color, but as well of size, situation or ability \u2013 must be treated as equals and their rights to life not only recognized but defended!<\/em> Can they defend themselves? You are you from conception, and that never changes no matter what physical changes your body takes. And the virile sport in the Mustang driving to work with his muscular forearm tanned and ready for a day\u2019s labor has not one microgram more<\/em> right to his inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than has the three month\u2019s fetus riding in a sack of water or the vegetable rotting for twenty years in a gurney bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s to know the value or extent of another\u2019s trip? How can we assume that the world through the windshield of that Mustang is any more rich or holy or even sane than the world before those pale blue eyes? How can abortion be anything but fascism again \u2013 back as a fad in a new intellectual garb with a new and more helpless victim? I swear to you, Paul, that abortions are a terrible karmic bummer, and to support them \u2013 except in cases where it is a bona fide toss-up between the child and the mother\u2019s life \u2013 is to harbor a worm of discrepancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krassner:<\/em> \u201cWell, that\u2019s really eloquent and misty-poo, but suppose Faye were raped and became pregnant in the process?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kesey:\u201d <\/em>Nothing is changed. You don\u2019t plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbor\u2019s shovel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krassner: \u201c<\/em>I assume that it would be her decision, though?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kesey: \u201c<\/em>Almost certainly. But I don\u2019t really feel right about speaking for her. Why don\u2019t you phone and ask?\u201d<\/p>\n

I then \u2013 uncomfortably \u2013 called Faye Kesey in Oregon and reviewed that dialogue. She asked, \u201cNow what\u2019s the question \u2013 if I were raped, would I get an abortion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat about sums it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple of years later, Kesey would change his position. He had become pro-choice. \u201cI believe that a woman\u2019s reproductive rights are inextricable from her freedom in general,\u201d he explained \u2013 \u201cthat she should have control of her body as well as her mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back when I was still living in New York, I had told Bob Dylan about my plan to move to San Francisco. \u201cOh, yeah?\u201d he said. \u201cWell, if you see Joan Baez, would you tell her that I\u2019d like to do a benefit with her again some time?\u201d Now, before Kesey returned to Oregon, we went to a fundraiser for the United Farm Workers, and I saw Joan Baez there. When I gave her Dylan\u2019s message, I suddenly realized that I really had<\/em> left New York.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

In 1985, I moved to Venice Beach, but in October 1989, Kesey and I somehow found ourselves visiting New York without a place to stay. I remembered that my then-agent, John Brockman, was a big fan of his work. So Kesey waited on a bench in Central Park while I searched for a telephone booth (B.C. \u2013 before cellphones) and called Brockman. We stayed at his home that night. Kesey had recently completed a collaborative writing project with a group of students at the University of Oregon, and he was searching for some words to leave with them to fire their intensity. Now Brockman asked him to speak to his literary gang, the Reality Club. He did:<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve often told Allen Ginsberg, you can\u2019t blame the president for the state of the country, it\u2019s always the poets\u2019 fault. You can\u2019t expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don\u2019t have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the job of a writer in contemporary America right now? I\u2019m not sure. But here\u2019s an example. We started off with what not to do.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re going to be walking along on the street one of these days, and suddenly there\u2019s going to be a light over there. You\u2019re going to look across the street, and on the corner over there, God is going to be standing right there, and you\u2019re going to know it\u2019s God because he\u2019s going to have huge curly hair that sticks through his halo like Jesus, and he\u2019s got little slitty eyes like Buddha, and he\u2019s got a lot of swords in his belt like Mohammed.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s saying, \u201cCome to me. Oh, come to me, I will have muses say in your ear that you will be the greatest writer ever, you will be better than Shakespeare. Come to me, they will have melon breasts and little blackberry nipples. Come to me, all you have to do is sing my praises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your job is to say, \u201cFuck you, God! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!\u201d<\/p>\n

Because nobody else is going to say it. Our politicians aren\u2019t going to say it. Nobody but the writer is going to say it. There\u2019s a time in history when it\u2019s time to praise God, but now is not the time.<\/p>\n

Now is the time to say, \u201cFuck you, God, and the Old Testament you rode in on. I don\u2019t care who your daddy was. Fuck you!\u201d<\/p>\n

And get back to your job of writing. The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and tempting and powerful.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years after Tom Wolfe wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, <\/em>mythologizing the cross-country trip of Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters — they were once again driving the psychedelic bus, Furthur <\/em>(deliberately misspelled, a <\/em>combination of further<\/em> and future<\/em>), from the farm in Oregon to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

There would be various stops along the way. Tim Leary asked me to be sure and call him when the bus arrived in Los Angeles before heading east. Kesey told me that in Philadelphia, a troop of Girl Scouts with a hip scout leader was scheduled to board the bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re calling it Cookies and Kool-Aid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This was not the first time such a trip was planned. In 1974, a group of second-generation Pranksters were repainting the designs and symbols and inner-vision comic strip characters on Furthur, <\/em>because there had been an inquiry from the Smithsonian. Kesey figured that if the outside of the rusting bus could be brightened anew, why, then, the inside would automatically work again and it could be driven all the way to Washington.<\/p>\n

In 1984, the bus was still there on the farm. In fact, People<\/em> magazine was planning to publish a special section on the sixties, and a photo of Further <\/em>would be on the cover, with Wavy Gravy perched on the hood, Kesey and me sitting on each of the front headlights. Posing for the cover of People, <\/em>I couldn’t resist holding on to my crotch with one hand.<\/p>\n

However, they made Michael Jackson the main story instead, and put his <\/em>carefully chosen picture on the cover with his gloved hand grabbing his <\/em>crotch. The photo of us atop the bus was a full page on the inside, identifying me as \u201cfather of the underground press.\u201d I immediately demanded a paternity test.<\/p>\n

On a Saturday morning in November 1990, I flew from Venice to San Francisco so I could join the pilgrimage. I was on assignment from the San Francisco Examiner. <\/em>It had always been impossible for me to cover Kesey’s trip without getting personally involved, but this time I also found myself torn between reporting the truth — that this was not <\/em>the original bus — or snitching on a friend. I had a terrible conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

Was my responsibility to reveal what I knew or to be loyal to Prankster tradition? The original bus, a 1939 International Harvester, was still resting in peace at Kesey\u2019s farm, a shell of its former shell, metal rusting and paint fading, a psychedelic relic of countercultural history. But the bus I boarded now was a 1947 International Harvester. The Grateful Dead had donated $5,000 for a sound system, which was blaring out Ray Charles\u2019 \u201cHit the Road, Jack\u201d as we left San Francisco.<\/p>\n

This version of Further <\/em>had been deemed the Most Historical Float in the Oregon Fourth of July parade. It was painted by fifteen individuals starting in April. The result was a magnificent visual feast. A Sun God with refraction discs so the eyes followed you. A totem pole and a tiger. Adam and Buddha.\u00a0 Pogo and Silver Surfer. A lizard following Dorothy and her companions down the yellow-brick road\u2014referred to as the Lizard of Oz. A banner on the side of the bus warning Never Trust a Prankster. <\/em>A helium tank on the back platform, so Kesey could blow up balloons and give them to kids. One parent offered him a quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m an important author,\u201d he explained, with a twinkle in his eye — \u201cyou can’t give me a quarter<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em>So now the parent wasn’t sure whether the balloon was free or she should give Kesey seventy-five cents.<\/p>\n

Pedestrians flashed the V-sign and the Star Trek<\/em> signal. Drivers waved and honked their horns. A police car was behind us, and the cop inside it used his megaphone to call out, \u201cGood luck on your journey.\u201d Our hood ornament was a beautiful sculpture of a court jester holding a butterfly net, named Newt the Nutcatcher, with a profile resembling Neal Cassady, legendary driver of the original Further.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>On the inside, a picture of Cassady watched over the current driver, Kesey’s nephew, Kit, who refused to wear a taxicab cap. Kesey’s son, Zane, was also on the crew, so the trip had a strong sense of continuity. Altogether there were twelve males plus one female, a twenty-three-year-old Deadhead who got on the bus in Berkeley instead of going to a Halloween party dressed as Pippy Longstocking.<\/p>\n

Lee Quarnstrom had quit his job as a reporter to join the original Pranksters, and he was covering this event for the San Jose Mercury-News. <\/em>Since we were now in San Jose, the bus circled around the parking lot of the Mercury-News. <\/em>Kesey quickly found a CD of sixties songs and played \u201cMr. Lee\u201d by the Bobbettes over the sound system. Lee was sitting on the top deck of the bus as the editorial staff stood outside the building, cheering for him while the lyrics rang out: \u201cOne, two, three, look at Mr. Lee . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed McClanahan had been a classmate of Kesey\u2019s in the Stanford writing class where it all started. He gave up a chance to go on the original journey, regretted it for twenty-six years, and was now covering this trip for Esquire.<\/em>\u201c If the bus goes past the Esquire <\/em>building,\u201d he asked Kesey, \u201care you gonna play the theme from Mr. Ed<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, I happened to overhear Quarnstrom whisper to fellow ex-Prankster Zonker, \u201cShhh, Paul doesn’t know.\u201d There was some sort of hoax in the air.\u00a0 I was tempted to corner him and say, \u201cLee, I’ve trusted you till now,\u201d but instead I decided to maintain conscious innocence and just allow events to unfold.<\/p>\n

Quarnstrom and Kesey had something awful in common. They had each lost a son. Eric Quarnstrom had been shot in a meaningless street encounter. Jed Kesey was killed in an accident when the van carrying his wrestling team skidded off a cliff. I had just come off stage at the Wallenboyd Theater when my producer, Scott Kelman, said he had to tell me something.\u00a0 I assumed it was about my performance — Scott always gave me complete freedom and <\/em>helpful feedback — but now he was telling me about Jed. Scott had held back from telling me before the show.<\/p>\n

I was shocked. Jed and I had a special relationship. I flew to Oregon. Faye was stalwart, but Ken was shaking with emotion as we embraced. \u201cYou were his favorite,\u201d he sobbed. Kesey had always been against seat belts — \u201cThey sanction bad driving\u201d — but after this tragedy he would campaign for legislation that would require <\/em>vehicles to have seat belts, the kind that might have saved Jed’s life. For now he had only unspeakable grief. \u201cI feel like every cell in my body is exploding,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n

During the reunion bus trip, Quarnstrom and Kesey talked with each other about their mutual tragedy for the first time, in the kitchen at Wavy Gravy’s house in Berkeley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think about Eric every day,\u201d said Quarnstrom.<\/p>\n

Kesey said he thought about Jed every day, adding, \u201cAnd it’s appropriate that we should.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a color photo of the bus had appeared in Time <\/em>magazine, and an employee at the Smithsonian immediately recognized it as not <\/em>being the original Furthur. <\/em>Their spokesperson issued a statement: \u201cThe current bus is not even close to the original. Even if it were, the Smithsonian is not interested in a replica.\u201d Kesey was aghast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think of this bus as a replica,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Smithsonian — they want to clone the other one from the carburetor, which is about all that’s left of it — the way they wanted to do in that Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, <\/em>when they only had the nose for that. And they wanted to put on new metal, new chassis, new motor, and hire some artists to paint, you know, they’re going to restore it, and I thought, \u2018In what form?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they going to go back to when it was bright red and we all drove it into Berkeley on Vietnam Day with swastikas and Stars of David and American flags all over, with guns stickin\u2019 out of the top? Or when we went to New York with Pop Art stuff on it? It\u2019s had dozens of different permutations. If they really want to restore it, they’ll take it back to yellow.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the thing about the Smithsonian is that I’ve never spoken to them. They’ve been dealing with some rich people up in Portland\u2014they wanted me to give them the bus\u2014they’re going to fix it up and donate it to the Smithsonian. My metaphor for this is that they’ve also been negotiating for Tom Selleck’s dick but they haven’t mentioned it to Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n

We reporters had a discussion about journalistic ethics, specifically how we planned to handle any possible use of drugs on the bus. What with stomach paunches, gray hair and bifocals, the drug of choice this time around could well be ant<\/em>acid. Kesey would permit neither cigarettes nor diet soda on the bus. In response to a decade of \u201cJust say no\u201d propaganda, he advised, \u201cJust say thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was disinvited from a Nightline<\/em> panel on drugs because he was pro-marijuana. He made a distinction between pot, mushrooms, LSD, psilocybin — \u201cthe organic, kinder, gentler, hippie drugs\u201d — and cocaine, crack, ice — \u201cdrugs that make you greedy and produce criminals.\u201d He called drugs \u201cmy church\u201d and confessed that he had taken psychoactives \u201cwith lots more reverence and respect than I ever walked into church with.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning in San Jose I ate a marijuana cookie given to me by a friend the day before in San Francisco. It was coming on powerfully just as the bus arrived at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Appropriately, the painting on the back door of our bus was a splendid eye-in-the-Pyramid.\u00a0 Kesey’s video crew had been filming the reporters reading their articles, and he wanted me to read mine from inside a tomb in the museum, the king’s sarcophagus.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I haven’t written anything yet,\u201d I protested.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have twenty minutes,\u201d Kesey said.<\/p>\n

However, the marijuana cookie had an extraordinarily pleasant physical effect, and I was feeling very nonlinear. Instead of writing anything, I just stared at the mummies. There were framed X-rays in their cases to prove that actual human beings were buried with their arms crossed inside all that adhesive tape. Now the Pranksters were ready to bring me into the tomb, but I felt totally unprepared. My mouth was extremely dry, so I ingested another \u201cdrug,\u201d a vial of Chinese herbal tonic labeled Deer’s Tail Extract<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Maybe they planned to seal me inside the king’s sarcophagus! Could that<\/em> be the secret they weren’t telling me before? But with a leap of faith I lowered myself into the hole in one corner of the tomb. Only my face was now visible. Ordinarily I would get in trouble for this, but we were also being filmed by CBS, and the manager of the museum only wanted to know when it would be shown on TV. Kesey gave me the signal to start.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, as Yogi Berra once said, this feels like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again. The last time I was in a sarcophagus was 1978, when we accompanied the Grateful Dead to Egypt, where they played the Pyramids, and won. But that time we walked there from the hotel. This time the bus brought us here, this bus that the Smithsonian doesn’t want because it’s not the original. You know, it’s not really Fonzie’s leather jacket at the Smithsonian — that was actually worn by Penny Marshall.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it’s not really Archie Bunker’s easy chair there, either — they just found it on some other set and said it was Archie’s. But this bus has been turning on whoever sees it, like a traveling oasis, transcending age, transcending gender, transcending race, transcending class. The Smithsonian doesn’t deserve <\/em>this bus. A man from the Peace Center here in San Jose told me, \u2018This bus was painted by the spirit of time.\u2019\u00a0 If God wanted the bus to be in a museum, God wouldn’t have given it an engine.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I finished babbling, Kesey directed me to disappear back into the tomb. But first I couldn’t resist saying, \u201cAnd now I’d like to share with you the secret of eternal life.\u201d Suddenly I began writhing around in agony and grabbed my throat — \u201cAarrgghhh\u00a0 Yaarrgghhh! Braagghhh — <\/em>then fell back into the sarcophagus, as my choking sounds continued until they finally faded out. I vowed to myself, \u201cI surrender to the Unknown.\u201d Then I emerged from the tomb, and Kesey\u2019s fellow Prankster, Ken Babbs, announced, \u201cAs we say in Mummy Land, \u2018That’s a wrap.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em>I called my daughter, Holly, to tell her that we were at the Rosicrucian Museum and that I had just been in the king’s sarcophagus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe king’s esophagus? What were you doing in his throat?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em>On Monday, we headed north for Stockton, where Kesey was scheduled to speak at the University of the Pacific. And the machinations of the prank began. I was the only one who didn’t know what the plan was. But while Kesey was inside speaking, Zane was drawing a chalk outline on the street around the perimeter of the bus. Inside, Kesey was finishing up his question-and-answer segment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d he finally said, \u201cthat’s enough. Now we will sing our national anthem.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he led the audience in singing the lyrics of the Grateful Dead song, \u201cTruckin\u2019\u201d — <\/em>\u201cWhat a Long Strange Trip It’s Been . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside, the crew made sure my bag was off the bus. They were staging a fake mutiny. Inside, Kesey left the stage. He said to Zonker, \u201cWhy don’t you run out there and tell us the bus is missing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Zonker replied, \u201cBecause I didn’t know it was.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Lee rushed in and reported, \u201cKesey, they done left us!\u201d<\/p>\n

Kesey shouted, \u201cThe bus is gone! The bus is gone!\u201d<\/p>\n

Where the bus had been, there was now only that chalk outline and a message in white tape spelling out: NOTHING LASTS!\u00a0 The bus was on its way back to Oregon.\u00a0 Kesey and a couple of others would stay at a hotel in Stockton and take the train back. They had planned from the very start that the bus would not be driven to the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew we wouldn’t carry this prank too far.\u201d Kesey said, adding in mock shock, \u201cThat’s <\/em>not the real Elvis!\u201d<\/p>\n

I called Tim Leary to inform him that the bus was not <\/em>coming to Los Angeles after all. Leary had been in Europe, returning with an East German flag which he wanted to donate to the Smithsonian, but he didn’t say whether it was the original flag or just a replica.<\/p>\n

Zonker offered to drive me to San Jose, where I could catch a plane back home the next morning. Before I went to get my bag from Kesey’s room, I told Zonker, \u201cI hope I don’t come out of the hotel only to find a chalk outline of the car.\u201d Kesey asked me to call Herb Caen (columnist for the San Francisco<\/em> Chronicle<\/em>) <\/em>and tell him that Furtuer <\/em>has disappeared. I suddenly realized that I was experiencing the Stockton hostage syndrome. A hoax was played and, although I had been a victim of that hoax myself, I was now expected to help perpetuate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell him there’s been a mutiny,\u201d Kesey instructed me, \u201cand that you’re an irate Prankster who’s been left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat, and ruin my credibility?\u201d<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

After his son died, Kesey said, \u201cI\u2019m so sad about losing Jed, it made me realize that when I die, it\u2019s gonna make a lot of people sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a totally true observation. When Kesey died on November 10th<\/sup>, 2001, a lot of people were indeed saddened. Some were sad because they had been affected by the books he wrote. As for One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/em>, he told me, \u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to write a novel, I was trying to go all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

About his second novel, I asked,\u00a0 \u201cIn Sometimes a Great Notion<\/em>, you had this idealistic logger in the role of a strike-breaker, and yet now, back in real life, you\u2019re glad that the union has shut down the local paper and pulp mill \u2013 what\u2019s made the difference — ecology?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen\u2019s Lib,\u201d he replied. \u201cI mean, Women\u2019s Lib has made us aware of our debauching of Mother Earth. The man who can peel off the Kentucky topsoil, gouge the land empty to get his money nuts off, then split for other conquests, leaving the ravished land behind to raise his bastards on welfare and fortitude — is different from Hugh Hefner only in that he drives his cock on diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen\u2019s Lib was the real issue in Notion.<\/em> I didn\u2019t know this when I wrote it, but think about it. It\u2019s about men matching egos and wills on the battleground of Vivian\u2019s unconsulted hide. When she leaves at the end of the book, she chooses to leave the only people she loves for a bleak and uncertain but at least equal<\/em> future. The earth is bucking in protest of the way she\u2019s been diddled with. Is it strange that the most eloquent rendition of this protest should come from the bruised mouth of womankind?\u201d<\/p>\n

Others were sad because they identified with and were inspired by the mission of Furtuer<\/em> and its inhabitants, the equivalent of wanting to run away with the circus. Still others were charmed by his charismatic zest for life. Family and friends loved him simply for who he was.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy energy is what I do,\u201d he said. \u201cMy image is what other people think<\/em> I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there was his little granddaughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow,\u201d she asked plaintively, \u201cwho will teach us how to hypnotize the chickens?<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul Krassner recently received the Oakland branch of the writers organization PEN\u2019s lifetime achievement award. His latest book is an expanded edition of his autobiography, <\/em>Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com and as an e-book on Kindle.<\/em> <\/em> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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