Friday, February 12, 2010

Further the Bus and Ken.

 When I lived in Oregon in 1980 I managed to find a 3 bedroom prefab located on Rattlesnake Road out side of Eugene by a really nice little mountain called Mt. Pisgah which is on a county park. The side of the mountain was partially leased out to some people for a few dollars a month by the Government.Down on the way to the county park entrance was Ridgeway Road. The next neighbor or two down from me was living in an old barn which had been converted into a house. The landlord told me that Ken Kesey lived there and I about fell over. To me Ken was larger than life and I was actually over whelmed with the idea that the famous writer of so many good and timely novels was right there.I saw the bus in the field behind the barn house a few times then it struck me that it was the bus written about by Tom Wolfe in "The electric acid cool aid test." Getting close to Ken turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined.
A neighbor told me some outrageous tales about Ken's childhood and expressed amazement that he was not a convict or dead. Years later Ken was dead and Mt Pisgah apparently renamed after him. I did see a nice memorial to Ken on the top of the hill overlooking the valley where his home was. Now Further is supposedly at the Smithsonian and Ken is gone. I wonder if this is his greatest prank?

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