“It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”
-Ken Kesey
Furthur aka Further the magic bus October 1966, Warehouse, Harriet Street, South of Market, San Francisco, California
Furthur Down the Magic Trip
In 1960 after graduating from Stanford University, Ken Kesey began training with the Olympic wrestling team while working as an orderly at a psychiatric ward at the Menlo Park VA Hospital. This year will forever change Kesey…
Kesey would volunteer for a study being conducted at the hospital, knowing very little about what or who he was volunteering for. The study it turns out was for ‘MK ULTRA’ the CIA’s study into mind control through drugs. ‘MK ULTRA’ tested LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, aMT, DMT, ect… on human subjects, some willingly, some not so willingly…
Showing up to the Menlo Park VA Hospital, he would be shown to an empty white room with a hospital bed, a side table with a glass of water and a wollensak tape recorder. A window with protective wire screen would serve as the only view into the outside world.
Given LSD25 by the nurse attending to the study, he was left alone to discover the results of the drug on himself. The discovery was mind blowing…
Ken Kesey rides atop the bus Further on April 26, 1967
After the initial government test, he began to experiment with psychedelics in his private life. Before a shift at the same Menlo Park VA Hospital where the lsd test was performed, he took a dose of Peyote for the first time…
That night, high as fuck on peyote, he would have a vision of Chief “Broom” Bromden in the halls of the psych ward… This vision would become a inspiration.
Still high as fuck tripping on peyote, he sat down and started writing his first literary classic ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ with Chief Bromden as one of the main characters…
Neal Cassady flying furthur with Ken Babb’s sitting shotgun to the madness
With the success of his Book ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ he was looking for the next great life adventure…
After a cross country road trip to see his book as a Broadway play in New York, Kesey and a couple friends would drive back to California tripping on cactus… The psychedelic road trip sparked an idea…
With the money he made from the book, Kesey bought a 1939 International Harvester school bus.
The plan? The group of Pranksters would take a psychedelic trip across the country filming the escapades along the way ending at the New York Worlds Fair.
“You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”
inside Furthur
Painting the bus with all kinds of psychedelic vibe, the group would load up with legend Neal Cassady at the wheel flying out of his mind on Amphetamines…
The trips start would be a preclude to the madness ahead, running out of gas before even leaving Kesey’s property…
Gassed up they were on their way…
Taking days, the prankster group would eventually make it to the conservative Phoenix downtown. Again taking out the bright paint, the group would paint “A vote for Barry is a vote for fun!” referring to republican candidate Barry Goldwater, a Phoenix resident.
Not confusing enough, the pranksters loaded onto the bus. Neal pull away from the curb in reverse and he continued to drive the bus in all its glory down the street backwards right past Barry Goldwater’s campaign headquarters…
Tripping while further was stuck in the mud, outside of Phoenix
Outside of Phoenix, Cassady the madman that he is, veered the bus off the road towards a watering hole. Only Cassady would know if he saw a squirrel or a watering hole… Before long the bus was stuck in the deep mud…
Taking this as a sign, Kesey decides to really start the trip…
Whipping out a jug filled with orange juice that had been dosed(how much or how many times no one really knew) with LSD…
Taking sips as dosages, the stranded pranksters would slide into a trip that would continue much of the journey.
Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Sandy Lehman-Haupt…, at the HItchcock estate, site of Tim Leary’s Millbrook Castalia Foundation, 1964
The troop of pranksters would finally reached New York to see the worlds fair. After a uneventful meeting with Jack Kerouac, the destination of the World Fair was the next stop. With built anticipation, it became another disappointing pitstop on the trip…
Allen Ginsberg thought a meeting was in order to perk everyone up…
He would take the prankster group up to see Timothy Leary and his IFIF foundation at the Millbrook estate owned by the Hitchcock family. The east coast psychedelic scene meeting the west…
The meeting would never happen as Leary and crew would hold up in the upstairs of the house while experimenting with DMT. The pranksters would wait around until the general feeling was it was time to go. Cassady and Allen Ginsberg would stay, while the remaining pranksters aimed the bus home…
When the group arrived home in California, they all discovered something. It wasn’t the destination but the actual trip that made memories…
This revelation would lead to many of the 60’s ideal’s of the ‘be ins’ and acid parties to come…
“Neal Cassady & I went upstairs to attic at Millbrook estate Castalia Foundation big house where Timothy Leary and friends were then experimenting with DMT, a half hour trip – here Neal resting eyes closed with Millbrook lady friend (Susan Metzner, wife of Dr Ralph Metzner) in charge of holding the vile of liquid psychedelica. I’d driven upstate from New York City with Ken Kesey & Merry Pranksters in their day glo painted bus recently arrived East crosscountry from California, Neal at the wheel, Fall 1964.” Allen Ginsberg
First Party At Ken Kesey’s With Hell’s Angels
Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. The blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
-Allen Ginsberg- December 1965
SF Chronicle April 27, 1965
“I don’t like to divide the world into ‘they’ and ‘us’ but people here don’t seem to be able to leave us alone”
-Ken Kesey
As the Pranksters and Kesey edited footage from their Magic Trip, they stayed at Kesey’s La Honda property. On one of these days while painting flowers on the toilet, narcotics police raided the property, arresting Kesey among others for possession of marijuana.
Months later while awaiting court for the raid, Kesey was again arrested for Marijuana possession… Fearing a long jail sentence a plan was hatched…
Placing a fake suicide note inside Kesey’s car, the pranksters drove the car off a cliff overlooking the ocean…
Kesey safe and sound was stuffed into a trunk of a car and smuggled into Mexico…
The prankster group would reunite in Manzanillo where they stayed for the next couple of months…
“Never trust a Prankster”
Ken Kesey and John Browning re-enact what they were doing at the time of the La Honda narcotics bust in April 1965
“Ocean, Ocean, I’ll beat you in the end”
-Ken Kesey’s fake suicide note
Deciding to face the music in the U.S., the pranksters would return to California where Kesey was sentenced to 5 months in jail…
The pranksters would look back at this magic trip as the kick start to the 60’s madness to come.
Its not the destination in life but the trip itself…
Furthur with Pranksters at worlds fair 1964
“He’s working on his wave theory. This morning for breakfast he brewed and drank enough weed to put a horse in orbit. He’s been out there for three hours with his eyes closed … Imagining that he’s a piece of kelp or a jellyfish.”
-Mountain Girl, comments while Kesey floats in the Mexican ocean