Using an advance for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey purchased a home in the San Francisco suburb of La Honda, where he finished writing Cuckoo’s Nest, and a 1939 International Harvester school bus, for which he paid $1,500. The bus was anointed “Further” by artist Roy Sebern, who painted the name on its destination sign. (The word was later briefly misspelled on the placard as “Furthur,” which is why it is referred to as “Furthur” in the Tom Wolfe novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). “God” was printed above the odometer and “Weird Load” across the rear panel. Magic was spray-painted in white on the front bumper. However, before the Kesey and the Merry Pranksters could head east in Further in the summer of 1964, they had to resolve a minor issue. They needed a bus driver. That is, until Neal Cassady came roaring up the driveway of the La Honda home late one night in a Jeep station wagon. “The rear end immediately fell off,” recalls Prankster Ken Babbs. “That was our introduction to Neal. He spent three sleepless days and nights talking and working and putting that thing together. We looked at each other and said, ‘This is the man we need on our team.’” After Further’s 1964 journey across America, the bus took one last trip - to the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in 1969. For the next 35-plus years, the International Harvester found repose in a swampy area on the Kesey farm, where it served as a family hangout, a chicken coop, and a dugout for backyard baseball games. Curators from the Smithsonian Institution approached Kesey in 1992 about acquiring Further. “At first, the Smithsonian did not want the bus because they had no room to display it,” reveals Zane Kesey, the author’s son. “Then they wanted it if we had someone restore it. Then they just wanted to put it in their ‘archive storage’ next to the Ark of the Covenant, so Dad just said, ‘No.’” Zane - named by his father after the adventure novelist Zane Grey - had the bus relocated to a sprawling pasture on the family farm in 2005. For the next eight years, Further resided in this pastoral setting, a rusting hulk, its rotting roof covered with deep green moss. The same California license plate (MAZ 804) that once proudly adorned the front bumper wearily hung at a 45-degree angle. The odometer remained stuck at 64,359 miles. In March, 2013, the bus was finally placed under a shelter on the Kesey farm. But, after 40-plus years of sitting unprotected in the damp, often harsh Oregon weather, the damage was done. Today, the bus is a shell of its former-self; in retrospect, its easy to second-guess the decision, but the Keseys should have turned it over to the Smithsonian. Early in 2013, Zane restored a replicate made by his dad of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of psychedelic buses. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of his father’s 1964 trip with the Pranksters, Zane took the replica on a 42-date journey around America in the summer of 2014, stopping at the Lockn Festival for four days and nights of partying and adventure there !! “When we went to Lake Pontchartrain [in Louisiana] and went into the ‘Blacks Only’ section of the beach, we weren’t trying to make trouble,” recalled Ken Kesey. “We were just high on acid, having a good time.” — Aces Back To Back: The History of the Grateful Dead (1965 — 2013), excerpts from pages 4, 5, 10 and 11. Our biography is the most comprehensive, fact-filled, fun and up-to-date history of the Grateful Dead ever written — now updated through August, 2014 !! Written by a Deadhead for Deadheads. AB2B is the only book to detall the entire post-Garcia era of the band. Grateful Dead lyricist and renowned civil libertarian John Barlow penned our Foreword. Please Like our page or the page you are reading this on. Thank you !! Reader review: Simply the greatest book ever written about the greatest band in the land. - Jack Wilson Eugene, OR December 17, 2014 __________________________________________ Photos of Further in 1964 and 2008 (below) used courtesy of Key-Z. __________________________________________ Happy Sunday, everyone !! — Scott
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:04:17 +0000
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