The Full Moon Family's Tribute to Ken Kesey

"Put Your Good Where it Will Do the Most"---Ken Kesey

We heard about Ken Kesey's passing via e-mail. We knew he was sick, but we just had no idea that he was going to move on
to the next reality like that! Melissa just cried, until Jeff pointed out the Alice in Wonderland blotter art on the wall in front of her...
with Kesey's bright, shimmering, shining, laughing, glittery silver signature staring her in the eyes. HA! I guess the joke was on us!
We drove to Louisville, Kentucky that night, to see Phil play the Palace. Hearing "The Other One" > "Cryptical".... WOW.
The energy was intense. Just like when Jerry passed, it's our turn now.
And what else can we say... it's hard to find the words. Kesey and the Pranksters started their trip well before we were
even born. But we got on the bus too. And we watch the videos and read the books and collect the artwork,
because THAT is the energy that we want to surround us in our lives.
I'll never forget when I was visiting my parents in Chicago & you guys were in town.
Who else than the Pranksters would tell you the hotel where they were staying, and invite you over!?
Thank you Master Prankster. May this new trip of yours be even more beautiful than the last.
Love, Light, Weirdness & Fun,
THE FULL MOON FAMILY
(oh...   and Dad... Thank you for buying me "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and making me read it. It changed my life).

There are some wonderful contributions on this tribute page, from many different people.
We hope you enjoy them. As of May 2005, we are still receiving contributions!

(Thanks to our good friend Shady for this beautiful contribution...)

In tenth grade I was reading a history of the United States in the '60s called Coming Apart and the words The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test jumped out of the page at me. I wound up reading that book that year and it blew my mind. The following year, I was in an English class and the assignment was to pick an author and read three books by or about the author and write three book reports, culminating in a term paper on the author, due at the end of the year.
I picked Ken Kesey.

Our Personal Recommendations:

*These Key-Z Productions Presents videos: Intrepid Traveler and his Merry Band of Pranksters Look for a Kool Place, The Merry Pranksters, and The Acid Test Director's Cut

*Kesey's appearance with the Dead 10/31/91

*Spit in the Ocean (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

* Key-Z.com and Intrepid Trips.com

*Sometimes a Great Notion, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

*This Ken Kesey interview by Matthew Rick

The Intrepid Traveler now embarks on his greatest journey. Continue going Furthur.
Say hello to Jerry and Neal for us, and remember to keep the camera rolling because the world is still your movie. -Circus
___________________________

Ken Kesey's death is heart breaking to all of us. I know at this time of mourning we are all very sad, but please, let's not let him go without giving him one more hand for the things he has done, that we will remember him for. And at this time, though we are all very sad, remember one thing, he is in good company...Jerry is with him! Nothing let to do but smile smile smile. -Little Roo

I reread parts of Kool-Aid and did a book report on that. Then I went to Cuckoo's Nest and did a book report on that. Part of the class involved learning to use the library and access all the reference books, so I found all the sources that indicated different writings by and about Ken Kesey and, as the teacher instructed, began compiling flash cards with all sorts of citations. I dug up Garage Sale and bits and pieces that were later collected in Demon Box and also read a biography about Kesey written by Stephen Tanner.
(Actually, in all honesty, I stole the book from the school library,
and still have it.)

The term paper was supposed to be something like ten pages,
but mine had grown to about thirty pages. I had references from
all sorts of directions and the paper was growing fairly
unwieldy.

I started Sometimes A Great Notion at that time also, and it totally changed the way I looked at fiction writing. I was doing a fair amount of fiction writing at that time, and started trying all the narrative tricks that Kesey used in Great Notion, generally to very awkward results. But it really freed me up as a writer.

Kool-Aid had also introduced me to the Grateful Dead and it was also about this time that I started collecting Dead bootlegs and plotting my first journey to Grateful Dead land.

I didn't actually finish Great Notion junior year. Even though I was totally blown away by the book, it was too complex for me to digest in a single sitting, and it wasn't until I was living in the Redwoods and interacting with logging communities, during the Earth First! Redwood Summer protests in '90, that I determined that I was going to finish the book, and did.

My Kesey book report was so involved that I eventually gave up on the footnotes and bibliography, and instead of putting in a typical cover page, I drew a picture of Kesey's face melting into a Steal Your Face with the words LOVE in psychedelic letters above it, and the words "Ken Kesey: Psychedelic Pioneer" also on it, and a psychedelic sugar cube in the third eye of the Prankster. The teacher was blown away by the paper and praised the writing but docked me all sorts of points for throwing out the bibliography and footnotes and substituting my psychedelic cover page for the conventional one, so I wound up with a 67% grade and eventually said, "Fuck it" and took off with a delinquent to Colorado during exam week, failing the class...

I never lost interest in Kesey or the Pranksters, though, and instead kept all the original file cards and citations and read every new piece I could find, compiling them in a few different folders.

Fun, smart, talented, original, incredible, caring, true...
Thank you Mr. Kesey.
We love you more than words can tell!
-MB

When I got to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, I was required to write a thesis on an author and I decided, without much need to consider the matter, to write it on Kesey. As fate would have it, a series of events unfolded where the director of the writing program, Anne Waldman, received a call from Ken telling her she would be opening for the Grateful Dead at the '92 Field Trip. (He not only didn't ask, he also told the press that she'd be reading at the opening.) So Anne went out to Oregon and a group of students went with her. I caught a ride to Boise, Idaho and went to the Nez Perce Indian reservation because I wanted to see it first hand because I was hoping to incorporate a Nez Perce into a story I was writing, and after a few days in Nez Perce land, hitchhiked over through Washington, down into Portland and on to the Eugene area, spending a couple of days at the Cougar Hot Springs.

When the fateful call came that Jerry was in the hospital due to an enlarged heart and that the Field Trip was cancelled, I checked the local phone book, got the phone number for Faye and Ken's place, and put in a call to see if Anne Waldman had come out. She had, and the group was meeting over at a school house for a reading. I went to the reading, and, later, over to Kesey's house where they did an impromptu Field Trip.

The following January when I returned to Naropa, Kesey had released his first novel in 28 years, Sailor Song, and was scheduled to come and read "The Sea Lion" and it was there that I got to interview him, courtesy of a wonderful woman named Emily Hunter. There were a handful of other weird synchronicities, such as sitting at a lunch table the day that the Ken Kesey press packet arrived and talking with the woman at Naropa who was in charge of publicity and having her let me photocopy the packets entire contents.

And there were some letdowns, like the night I lingered too long in the parking lot after the Autzen Stadium show and was supposed to go to the premiere of Kesey's play Twister! but was told that they'd exceeded fire marshall capacity and would have to come back the next day (only to learn the next day that there would be no second show) but mostly my long strange trip into Pranksterdom was riddled with curious and delightful magic.

Kesey wound up coming to Boulder in '94 for the Allen Ginsberg tribute, and I was working in Emily Hunter's office helping her coordinate the conference along with the writing department, and was given the (paid!) job of being Kesey's teaching assistant for a week long writing class he did there and also putting together many of the logistical aspects of the Ginsberg conference (which a few of us jokingly called Ginstock.) Kesey's writing class was incredible, and he scheduled extra classes in when he felt that we didn't have enough time to do everything that he wanted to see the class do. I also got the opportunity to sit in with Kens Kesey and Babbs talking with Ginsberg, a photo of which I later saw on the net, and tape record most of Ken's press conferences and classes.

My Kesey archive has grown in leaps and bounds since the high school note cards, but I still keep those as well. Additionally, Kesey gave me written permission to read his novel "Zoo" which was his pre-Cuckoo's Nest manuscript about beatnik life in the North Beach, and Zane gave me permission to visit the University of Oregon Prankster archive when I was in Eugene following Furthur '98.

____________________

I left Boulder after Ginstock and eventually settled in upstate New York to work with the New York Tie-Dye Mafia. I finished my MFA Thesis on Kesey in fall of '95, just around the time that Garcia died. Two years later, something really curious happened -- Happy Life Productions, a tie-dye company that I was working for, got a phone call from Key-Z Productions and was asked to work the Kesey booth on that year's Furthur. I volunteered myself to go on the tour and work the booth for the simple reason that I'd read most everything he's ever published.

The Merlin's Wheel Gallery (merlinswheel.com) that I do with Mikio evolved out of that, as did two tours doing the Kesey booth on Furthur. (The tours are far more hellish when they are happening than in retrospect, due to rigor and intensity of the vendor tour schedule.)

photo courtesy of
Key-Z Productions

I think what amazes me most is that it has really been little more than a certain kind of passion for the whole Prankster mythology that has triggered so many of these synchronous happenings. The fact that the Pranksters were inspired by Marvel Comics super heroes gave me a real affinity for them in high school. Also, I really enjoyed the fact that they approached the heavy issues with humor and tried to create art from it rather than just spout rhetoric.

In many ways, the Prankster trip has always been the central kernel of my journey on the Golden Road. The Pranksters opened a window for me that pointed forward to the future and backwards to the past -- turning me on the Grateful Dead experience even as it gave me a reference point for accessing the Beat literature. And it helped me to realize how far one can go just on a dream, and in the case of the Pranksters, the dream was (and is) about creating rather than destroying, and, above all else, about keeping a sense of humor in one's creations.

One final thought: when Kesey came to Boulder to read the Sea Lion, I approached him with some books to sign. Additionally, I had a copy of the term paper that I'd written in high school. I handed it to him, he gave me a curious look and I explained what it was and he signed the drawing that I put on the cover (with the Kesey face melting into a Steal Your Face with the sugar cube on the third eye) by drawing a thought bubble (comic book style) coming out of the head with the words "OH MY GOD! AM I KEN KESEY?"

He was, is and forever will be.

In our hearts and Not Fadin' Away...

Matthew Rick/ Shady Backflash (Legion Of Sufficiently Twisted)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

FAREWELL TO THE CHIEF By John Allen Cassady

"One flew East, one flew West, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest…"

The long, strange trip came to an end for Ken Elton Kesey at 3:45 AM Saturday, November 10th, 2001, after 66 years and a few hundred lifetimes on this planet.

Ken was a great friend to my father, Neal Cassady, and almost a second father to me after Neal died in 1968 when I was 16 years old. Kesey was one of the kindest and wisest men I've ever known, and he was one of my biggest heroes and mentors starting soon after he met Neal in the early '60s, a feeling which continues in me to this day. The pearls of wisdom that he shared with me and others around him are too numerous to count, but thankfully he left a great legacy in his body of work that will last forever.

Neal always wanted to be a provider to his family, and little did he know that much of that provision would be accomplished posthumously through doors that were opened to me because of his famous friends like Kesey and the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia being another of my heroes from about 1965 on. Much to the worry of my mother, Kesey and Neal would come collect my sister and me at high school, giving the authorities some song and dance about dentist appointments or whatever, and they'd whisk us away to see the Dead play at some local high school prom dance, just after they changed their name from the Warlocks. Some fond, early memories there.

I recall once being called to the school office, not knowing what I had done to deserve what was surely going to be trouble from the evil principle, only to open the door and see Neal and Ken dressed in American flag jumpsuits complete with day-glo red Beatle boots and silly hats. The principle looked confused and said to me "this man claims to be your father!" He looked like he thought the circus was in town.

My mother needn't have worried. When I'd try to sniff the smoke from the refers being passed around the car, Dad would admonish the passengers "no dope for the kid!" Kesey knew I was disappointed, but always honored Neal's request in those early days.

After Neal's death Kesey would go out of his way to look us up when
he was in the Bay Area, and he showed up unannounced at my wedding
in November of 1975 on his way back from Egypt, while writing a
piece for Rolling Stone. That was one heck of a party. I still have
pictures of him holding my then-3-month-old son, Jamie, and beaming
like a proud godfather.

friends are few
and life ephemeral as dew
on buttercups untrod

to Ken Kesey

-P.S.

Another warm memory was back stage at a Dead show in Eugene when Kesey's fellow prankster Zonker ceremoniously presented me with one of 2 railroad spikes that the Dead's roadie Ramrod, while on a sacred pilgrimage, had extracted from the tracks where Neal died in Mexico. And again when Kesey and Ken Babbs bequeathed Neal's black and white stripped shirt to me that he had worn on the bus trip to New York in 1964, this time during a show we did at the Fillmore in 1997 before bringing the bus to Cleveland, where it was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ken called and asked if I would drive "Further" into Ohio "because Neal can't make it this trip." Although veteran Prankster driver and mechanic George Walker did the actual driving, Kesey's heart was in the right place. That road trip was surpassed only by the 4-week tour of the UK in 1999, sponsored by London's Channel Four studios. Traveling with Ken in close quarters for that long really made for a lasting bond between us, and he was at his peak as a performer. It was fun for me to play guitar behind his harmonica and the Thunder Machine. I last saw him as we said our goodbyes at SFO after that incredible journey, and I was sad to have not been able to do so again before last Saturday.

Ken Kesey was a great teacher and a beautiful soul, and he will be missed by all that his magic touched.

*************************************************************************

Submitted by David W. (a.k.a. Gone Are the Days)

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while
      towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

-- Stephen Spender

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Submitted by Erik O...

I had always marched to a different drummer, from the time I was born. Eventually however, I fell into the whole popular, get chicks, and be the big shot game that most of us fall into. fortunately, the curiosity remained, and in 10th grade I found myself smoking mad reef, and experimenting with other substances. These wonderful things made me open-minded enough to start listening to Phish, the Grateful Dead, and so on with many groups. It also got me to stop listening to rap, and give up the thug-a-wear clothes and huge shiny chains for tie-dies, hemp, clown pants, clogs, sandals, jester hats and so on. My interest in the 60s grew, as my interest in the more powerful psychedelics. In 11th grade we studied the 60s, so we read One who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and learned a bit about Ken. My interest in the Dead, 60's and LSD prompted me to read, re-read, re-re-read and keep on reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I really grooved on the stuff they were doing and believing in. Not too long ago, I gave into my year long desire to see whacked out stuff, and experience the experience that was the basis of the Prankster's beliefs. As Kesey would say, I got zonked out of my gourd. Weirdly, after those 2 groovy experiences I completely understood everything Kesey and the Pranksters were about. Despite how well I thought I knew before, I wasn't truly into the pudding until that experience. I feel a comradery with Ken and his Merry Pranksters, and whether he would like to admit it, Ken is a true teacher and helped show me the true path that we should all be on. Unfortunately I won't be able to meet you and Jerry until I pass on to the never-ending trip as well, but I seem to feel your presence and approval. I will always be on the bus, and always go FURTHUR, thanks in a big part to Ken, the Pranksters and the Dead. Peace.

Submitted by M David Grindstaff, a.k.a. Stoney

I first met Ken's brother Chuck, back in 1978 at the original creamery in Springfield, Oregon. I showed Chuck some of my artwork one time (I was still a 23 year old student back then!) and we all (Ken, Chuck and another person) went out to the side of the building and looked at the very old mural that was already there. I hesitated to repaint it because the piece was still pretty trippy even though quite ragged in places from chipping and fading. I really did not realize who ken was at the time since I only had read about him and never expected an older guy. I guess I was a bit naive and probably was accepted more for that.

In 1982 I moved out to a mobile home near Pleasant Hill. I was asked by my landlord if I wanted to help him store some hay for a neighbor and I agreed to a sweaty afternoon of hard work which the woman of the house rewarded with a wonderful lunch. I soon discovered that she had been Ken's elementary school teacher and one of the things she said was that Ken was a "rascal" but basically a good kid. This farm was the next one past Ken's old converted home, I lived about 3/4ths of a mile past it the other way, on Rattlesnake road.

Ken and I had a meeting planned to discuss a book project he was considering not too long after that, Ken was pretty interested in my past military experience in some US Army experiments and he had wanted to get together but right about that time, Ken's son was killed in a tragic accident. I told Chuck I was pretty sure we might all be better off letting the issue rest. There were times when I occasionally ran into Chuck or Ken, usually on the road from Pleasant Hill to Eugene and one time in the grocery store. I was introduced to Ken Babbs and a few of the old time Pranksters then (right near the produce aisle!) and invited to Conde's redwood for a party. The local festival near Eugene used to be really awesome and they were concerned with how the public viewed the open nature of the event and the Dead were supposed to play, anyway for whatever reason, the Dead decided to boycott the event and play at Conde's. I am sure someone would through a rock at me for saying this but I had family obligations and could not go, a decision I do regret!

Ken was a very pleasant person and had a social conscious as well as hard working lifestyle. I used to wave (or honk my horn) every time I rode my motorbike past his small farm and saw him either messing around with the old bus, his small herd of cows or maybe riding an old red tractor wearing a straw hat. His experience with the Menlo Park V.A had a huge effect on him and we related on a deeper level. Our common bond was our insight into the situation that Leary, him and a lot of us shared at events, happenings and certain Rainbow gatherings. I was at the first "official" gathering in 1972 near Strawberry lake, Colorado...and in the Army testing program in October of that year.

There are a few more things I would like to say about what we discussed in private but I am saving that for a while. I miss the guy and even though we were almost a generation apart I feel like a part of his extended family....What we all shared is symbolized by that old and faded mural on the Creamery wall, peeled in places, blasted by weather and time, but still bright in places, a collage of events that are somewhat obscured by time and the acid wash of politics. A bit of patchwork encoded in an obscure pattern that has meaning to some- a dream held in common like a collective vision. I will remember ken standing on the ground with a shovel in one hand looking at a sky covered with rain clouds and the sun breaking through over Mt. Pisgah and the rainbow. Work and dreams, that is all any of us have.

We would love to continue to fill this page with personal tributes.
If you have something to add, e-mail us with "Kesey" in the subject line.