R.I.P. Ken Kesey

It seems hard to believe that it's been ten years since novelist and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey shuffled off the mortal coil. Although I knew his brother Chuck rather better, I have to say that his passing impacted me more than I would have expected.

My first near encounter with Ken was in the tiny burg of Creswell, Oregon. I was riding through town with Jay in his old pickup truck, when he pointed over to the entrance of the IGA market and asked if I knew who the fellow just getting into a 1966 Pontiac Grand Prix convertible was. Without hesitation, I recognized Kesey, perhaps not so much on sight as on presence. Somehow, I just knew it was him.

We continued to have brief associations over the years, I got to know the Springfield Creamery folks through my association with the Oregon Country Fair, worked on the Creamery facilities a time or two. My meetings with Ken were always cordial, he never seemed to "put on airs" or act superior in any way.

Kesey could be a bit of a troublemaker as well. One year at the Country Fair, he got up on main stage and announced "Resist the Sweep, stay on site all night and keep the party going", inviting the public attendees to not go home after public hours, which was a violation of our land use agreement with Lane County. This made my job at the fair more difficult, as we had to chase fairgoers out of the bushes for hours in the dark.

Ed Moye and I reverse-pranked Kesey the next day when we stood on the other side of a tall fence from a long line of people who were lined up to get in the entrance and announced in loud voices that the Greatful Dead would be playing a free concert at Kesey's farm in Plesant Hill that night and then went on to give detailed directions to find the place. We did this over and over for a few hours, I never did hear if anyone showed up at his home looking for Jerry and the band.

I maintain a small repository of news articles from November 2001, although they are not well marked on the site navigation. You can find the index page to that here. If you haven't read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I maintain a review of that book as well, although these days, that particular telling of Kesey's background and trip across the country in his bus is considered a bit fanciful. Still, it describes quite a lot of what the "youth movement" was going through at the time.

In closing, I guess one thing that really got to me about Kesey's death was that his family took part in his burial. His psychedelicly-painted coffin was loaded on the back porch of Furthur II (and driven that way the 30 some-odd miles to Pleasant hill on state highways), the friends and family gathered at the farm, and after a short private service, his body was lowered into the ground. The able-bodied among the group then picked up shovels and covered the grave. I remember one quote from that, which was (paraphrasing) "Now I know why they cover the top of the casket with flowers - it muffles the sound of the dirt landing on top".