Ruth,
Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest" is one of the great plays and movies of all time. I have seen it performed by local theatre groups, on Broadway, by high school students, the movie, and it is always great. When I lived in Kesey's back yard, there were a lot of burned out Pranksters left behind. Sons of Loggerman with great tracks of prime redwood forest and flower child transplants form all walks of life. We had a great Thanksgiving under the sequoias in Big Basin, stars twinkling at the ends of the dark columns of pine, sixty foot stretches of table set up in the forest, laden with every imaginable gift of food and drink, including the electric punch. It was a great time in writing, art, life and experimentation and the Pranksters left their mark. I think, the constant rain in Sometimes a great notion was the soothing elixir that brought some semblance of reality and grounded many that were in it. When we were near Stanford (Ok Ralphy?) we rented an old Tudor off El Camino with two med students and a PhD in Physics (then a night guard, Ken, he called himself Arindhog) from the same university. We would go on monthly trips with one of the group designated as "Trip Leader" in charge of the itinerary. This was part of the Kesey paradigm and it was normal behavior for that part of the country.
Spring is here, it was close to 60 (where's the degrees button) in Brat right?
Leland
-----Original Message-----
From: "Let us not speak foul in folly!" - ][<en Phollit [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ruth Barton
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 11:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Histo Presto: Merry Prankster Bus Reunion Tour
OK you young whippersnappers, what is the "Merry Prankster Bus," who is Ken Kesey and why would the Smithsonian want his old heap anyway? Ruth
At 7:11 PM -0500 3/15/03, Ken Follett wrote:
>This from one of my favorite sleeper writers Ed McClanahan:
>
>"It was a totally crazy project. About five years ago the Smithsonian
>started talking to Ken [Kesey] about how they wanted to get the
>original Merry Prankster bus for their collection--they literally
>wanted the whole bus. But the original prankster bus has been sitting
>in a swamp out behind Ken's house for years. It had grass growing in
>it; it was totally immovable. So he [Kesey] said, "Well, the original
>bus is in ruinous condition." And the Smithsonian replied, "Don't
>worry, we will renovate it; we will bring back to what it was." So Ken
>explained, "Why if you're going to do that you would have to renovate
>it aU the way back to yellow, because originally it was a yellow school
>bus!" And there is also the fact that there is no original bus in a
>sense that it was changing all the time. They would paint it wildly
>psychedelic one day and then go paint it black the next day if they had
>one particular event they wanted to have a black bus in. And
>immediately they'd go paint it wildly psychedelic again. There were
>places on that bus where the paint was literally over an inch thick. So
>Ken told the Smithsonian that "there is no original bus." But they kept
>insisting on it. So he went and bought a "new" bus; it wasn't at all
>new, though. I think the original was a 1939 International, and the
>"new" one was a '47, I believe. It looks pretty much the same, except
>that it is smaller, and very much in better shape than the [14] old bus
>ever was. It was a nice, tight, ready-to-roll little school bus that
>had been pretty well maintained. Ken redid that particular bus. And
>they did just an exquisite paint job on this version of the bus. It was
>truly beautiful inside and out--it had an astonishing sound system--all
>the stuff. So Ken did this, and did it secretively. And he pushed the
>old bus even further into the swamp and covered it with camouflage
>cloths, and declared to the Smithsonian that he was going to bring them
>the bus. This was all a hoax. It was all meant to--well, it was a giant
>prank. The Smithsonian very emphatical ly declared that it didn't want
>a reproduction; it wanted the original bus. Ken declared that despite
>that fact, he was driving the bus across the country for one last trip
>and intended to present it to the Smithsonian. And they kept saying,
>"We don't want it!," and Ken kept saying, "It's coming anyway!"
>
>Check out the conclusion:
>http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/95/hhr95_3.html
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--
Ruth Barton
[log in to unmask]
Westminster, VT
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