Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (21 page)
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Meanwhile, the Angels were discovering the goddamnedest thing. Usually, most places they headed into on their runs, they tested people's cool. What are
you
looking at, mother. As soon as the shock or naked terror registered, they would be happy. Or if there was no shock and terror but instead somebody tried some brave little shove back, then it was time to break heads and tear everybody a new asshole. But these mollyfocking Pranksters were test-proof. The Angels didn't know what permissive was until they got to Kesey's.
Go with the flow!
The biggest baddest
toughest most awfulest-looking Hell's Angel of them all was a big monster named Tiny. The second biggest baddest toughest most-awfulest-looking Hell's Angel was a big raw-boned guy named Buzzard, dark-looking, with all this dark hair and a beard, all shaggy and matted and his nose came out like a beak and his Adam's apple hung down about a foot, and he was just like an enormous buzzard. Tiny and Buzzard had a thing of coming up to each other when they were around non-Angels and sticking out their tongues and then licking each other's tongues, a big sloppy lap it up, just to shake up the squares, it really jolted themâso they came up right in front of this tall broad of Kesey's, Mountain Girl, and la-a-a-a-a-apâand they couldn't believe it. She just looked right at them and grinned and exploded sunballs out of her eyes and started laughing at them,
HawâHawâHaw,
as if to say in plain language: What a bullshit thing. It was freaking incredible. Then some of them passed a joint around and they passed it to Mountain Girl and she boomed out:
you
looking at, mother. As soon as the shock or naked terror registered, they would be happy. Or if there was no shock and terror but instead somebody tried some brave little shove back, then it was time to break heads and tear everybody a new asshole. But these mollyfocking Pranksters were test-proof. The Angels didn't know what permissive was until they got to Kesey's.
Go with the flow!
The biggest baddest
toughest most awfulest-looking Hell's Angel of them all was a big monster named Tiny. The second biggest baddest toughest most-awfulest-looking Hell's Angel was a big raw-boned guy named Buzzard, dark-looking, with all this dark hair and a beard, all shaggy and matted and his nose came out like a beak and his Adam's apple hung down about a foot, and he was just like an enormous buzzard. Tiny and Buzzard had a thing of coming up to each other when they were around non-Angels and sticking out their tongues and then licking each other's tongues, a big sloppy lap it up, just to shake up the squares, it really jolted themâso they came up right in front of this tall broad of Kesey's, Mountain Girl, and la-a-a-a-a-apâand they couldn't believe it. She just looked right at them and grinned and exploded sunballs out of her eyes and started laughing at them,
HawâHawâHaw,
as if to say in plain language: What a bullshit thing. It was freaking incredible. Then some of them passed a joint around and they passed it to Mountain Girl and she boomed out:
“Hell, no! What the hell you doing putting your dirty mouth on this clean joint for! This is a clean joint and you're putting your dirty mouths on it!” Nobody in living memory had ever refused a toke from a joint passed by Angels, at least not on grounds of sanitation, except this crazy girl who was just bullshitting them blind, and they loved it.
It even got to the point where Mountain Girl saw Tiny heading into the mad bathroom with a couple of beer cans like he is going to hole up in there and drink a couple of cans in peace, but this is the bathroom all the girls around here are using, and Mountain Girl yells out to Sonny Barger, the maximum leader of the Hell's Angels, “Hey, Sonny! Tell this big piece of trash to stay out of our clean bathroom!”âin a bullshit tone, of courseâand Sonny picks it up, “Yeah, you big piece of trash! Stay out of the clean bathroom! They don't want you in there!”âand Tiny slinks out the door, outside, in a bullshit slink, but he does itâ
And that's it! It's happening. The Hell's Angels are in our movie, we've got 'em in. Mountain Girl and a lot of the Pranksters
had hit on the perfect combination with the Angels. They were friendly toward them, maybe friendlier than anybody had been in their lives, but they weren't craven about it, and they took no shit. It was the perfect combination, but the Pranksters didn't even have to think of it as a combination. They just did their thing and that was the way it worked out. All these principles they had been working on and talking about in the isolation of La Hondaâthey freaking well
worked
.
had hit on the perfect combination with the Angels. They were friendly toward them, maybe friendlier than anybody had been in their lives, but they weren't craven about it, and they took no shit. It was the perfect combination, but the Pranksters didn't even have to think of it as a combination. They just did their thing and that was the way it worked out. All these principles they had been working on and talking about in the isolation of La Hondaâthey freaking well
worked
.
Go with the flowâand what a flowâthese cats, these Prankstersâat big routs like this the Angels often had a second feature going entitled
Who Gets Fucked?
âand it hadn't even gotten to that before some blonde from out of town, one of the guests from way out there, just one nice soft honey hormone squash, she made it clear to three Angels that she was ready to go, so they all trooped out to the backhouse and they had a happy round out there. Pretty soon all the Angels knew about the “new mamma” out in the backhouse and a lot of them piled in there, hooking down beers, laughing, taking their turns, making various critiques. The girl had her red and white dress pushed up around her chest, and two or three would be on her at once, between her legs, sitting on her face in the sick ochre light of the shack with much lapping and leering and bubbling and gulping through furzes of pubic hair while sweat and semen glistened on the highlights of her belly and thighs and she twitched and moaned, not in protest, however, in a kind of drunken bout of God knew what and men with no pants on were standing around, cheering, chiding, waiting for their turn, or their second turn, or the third until she had been fenestrated in various places at least fifty times. Some of the Angels went out and got her ex-husband. He was weaving and veering around, bombed, they led him in there under glare and leer and lust musk suffocate the rut hut they told him to go to it. All silentâshit, this is going too farâbut the girl rises up in a blear and asks him to kiss her, which he does, glistening secretions, then he lurches and mounts her and slides it in, and the Angels cheer Haw Hawâ
Who Gets Fucked?
âand it hadn't even gotten to that before some blonde from out of town, one of the guests from way out there, just one nice soft honey hormone squash, she made it clear to three Angels that she was ready to go, so they all trooped out to the backhouse and they had a happy round out there. Pretty soon all the Angels knew about the “new mamma” out in the backhouse and a lot of them piled in there, hooking down beers, laughing, taking their turns, making various critiques. The girl had her red and white dress pushed up around her chest, and two or three would be on her at once, between her legs, sitting on her face in the sick ochre light of the shack with much lapping and leering and bubbling and gulping through furzes of pubic hair while sweat and semen glistened on the highlights of her belly and thighs and she twitched and moaned, not in protest, however, in a kind of drunken bout of God knew what and men with no pants on were standing around, cheering, chiding, waiting for their turn, or their second turn, or the third until she had been fenestrated in various places at least fifty times. Some of the Angels went out and got her ex-husband. He was weaving and veering around, bombed, they led him in there under glare and leer and lust musk suffocate the rut hut they told him to go to it. All silentâshit, this is going too farâbut the girl rises up in a blear and asks him to kiss her, which he does, glistening secretions, then he lurches and mounts her and slides it in, and the Angels cheer Haw Hawâ
âbut that is her movie, it truly is, and we have gone with the flow.
So much beerâwhich is like an exotic binge for the Pranksters, beer. Mountain Girl and Kesey are up in the limelit bower and the full moon comes down through the treetop silhouettes. They are just rapping in the moonlight, and then Sandy wanders on up there and sits with them, high on acid, and he looks down and the floor of the forest is rippling with moonlight, the ground shimmers and rolls like a stream in the magic bower and they just sit thereâa
buzzard!
Buzzard is wandering up the slope toward them and there in the moonlight in the dark in the magic bower he ⦠is a buzzard, the biggest ever made, the beak, the deathly black, the dopply glottal neck, the shelled back and dangling wings, stringy nodule legsâKaaawwwwwww!âand Kesey jumps up and starts throwing his arms up at him, like the way you would scare away a buzzard, and says,
buzzard!
Buzzard is wandering up the slope toward them and there in the moonlight in the dark in the magic bower he ⦠is a buzzard, the biggest ever made, the beak, the deathly black, the dopply glottal neck, the shelled back and dangling wings, stringy nodule legsâKaaawwwwwww!âand Kesey jumps up and starts throwing his arms up at him, like the way you would scare away a buzzard, and says,
“Aaaaagh! a buzzard! Hey! Get away, you're a buzzard! Get this buzzard out of here!”
It's a bullshit gesture, of courseâand Buzzard laughsâ
Haw! Haw! Haw!
âit is not real, but it is â¦
real
, real buzzard, you can see the whole thing with two mindsâKaw Kaw Kaaawwwwwâand Buzzard jumps and flaps his armsâand the whole ⦠connection, the
synch,
between the name, the man, the bird, flows together right there, and it doesn't matter whether he is buzzard or man because it has all come together, and they all see it â¦
Haw! Haw! Haw!
âit is not real, but it is â¦
real
, real buzzard, you can see the whole thing with two mindsâKaw Kaw Kaaawwwwwâand Buzzard jumps and flaps his armsâand the whole ⦠connection, the
synch,
between the name, the man, the bird, flows together right there, and it doesn't matter whether he is buzzard or man because it has all come together, and they all see it â¦
They all see so much. Buzzard goes, and Sandy goes, and Kesey and Mountain Girl are in the moonlight ripply bower. By and byâwhere?âKesey and Mountain Girlâand so much flows together from the lights and the delirium and the staticky sibilants down below, so much is clear, so much flows in rightness, that night, under the full moon, up above the flails and bellows down belowâ
THE HELL'S ANGELS PARTY WENT ON FOR TWO DAYS AND THE cops never moved in. Everybody, Angels and Pranksters, had a righteous time and no heads were broken. There had been one gang-bang, but the girl was a volunteer. It was her movie. In fact, for the next six or seven weeks, it was one long party with the Angels. The news spread around intellectual-hip circles in the San Francisco-Berkeley area like a legend. In these circles, anyway, it once and for all put Kesey and the Pranksters up above the category of just another weirdo intellectual group. They had broken through the worst hangup that intellectuals knowâthe
real-life
hangup. Intellectuals were always hung up with the feeling that they weren't coming to grips with real life. Real life belonged to all those funky spades and prize fighters and bull-fighters and dock workers and grape pickers and wetbacks.
Nostalgie de la boue
. Well, the Hell's Angels were real life. It didn't get any realer than that, and Kesey had pulled it off. People from San Francisco and Berkeley started coming by La Honda more than ever. It was practically like an intellectual tourist attraction. Kesey would talk about the Angels.
real-life
hangup. Intellectuals were always hung up with the feeling that they weren't coming to grips with real life. Real life belonged to all those funky spades and prize fighters and bull-fighters and dock workers and grape pickers and wetbacks.
Nostalgie de la boue
. Well, the Hell's Angels were real life. It didn't get any realer than that, and Kesey had pulled it off. People from San Francisco and Berkeley started coming by La Honda more than ever. It was practically like an intellectual tourist attraction. Kesey would talk about the Angels.
“I asked Sonny Barger how he picks new members, new Angels, and he told me, âWe don't pick 'em. We recognize âem.'”
And everybody grokked over that.
Likely as not, people would find Hell's Angels on the place. The Angels were adding LSD to the already elaborate list of highs and lows they liked, beer, wine, marijuana, benzedrine, Seconal, Amytal, Nembutal, Tuinal. Some of them had terrible bummersâbummer was the Angels' term for a bad trip on a motorcycle and very quickly it became the hip world's term for a bad trip on LSD. The only bad moment at Kesey's came one day when an Angel went berserk during the first rush of the drug and tried to strangle his old lady on Kesey's front steps. But he was too wasted at that point to really do much.
So it was wonderful and marvelous, an unholy alliance, the Merry Pranksters and the Hell's Angels, and all hours of the day or night you could hear the Hell's Angels gearing and winding
down Route 84 to Kesey's, and the people of La Honda felt like the plague had come, and wasn't there anything that could be done. More than one of the Pranksters had his reservations, too. The Angels were like a time bomb. So far, so goodâone day the Angels even swept and cleaned up the placeâbut they were capable of busting loose into carnage at any moment. It brought the adrenaline into your throat. The potential was there, too, because if the truth were known, there were just a few of the Pranksters who could really talk to the Angelsâchiefly Kesey and Mountain Girl. Mainly it was Kesey. Kesey was the magnet and the strength, the man in both worlds. The Angels respected him and they weren't about to screw him around. He was one of the coolest guys they had ever come across. One day, finally, Kesey's cool came to the test with the Angels and it was a strange moment.
down Route 84 to Kesey's, and the people of La Honda felt like the plague had come, and wasn't there anything that could be done. More than one of the Pranksters had his reservations, too. The Angels were like a time bomb. So far, so goodâone day the Angels even swept and cleaned up the placeâbut they were capable of busting loose into carnage at any moment. It brought the adrenaline into your throat. The potential was there, too, because if the truth were known, there were just a few of the Pranksters who could really talk to the Angelsâchiefly Kesey and Mountain Girl. Mainly it was Kesey. Kesey was the magnet and the strength, the man in both worlds. The Angels respected him and they weren't about to screw him around. He was one of the coolest guys they had ever come across. One day, finally, Kesey's cool came to the test with the Angels and it was a strange moment.
Kesey and the Pranksters and the Angels had taken to going out to the backhouse and sitting in a big circle and doing the Prankster thing, a lot of rapping back and forth and singing, high on grass, and you never knew where it was going to go. Usually it went great. The Angels took to the Prankster thing right away. They seemed to have an immediate intuitive grasp of where it was going, and one time Kesey started playing a regular guitar and Babbs started playing a four-string amplified guitar and Kesey got into a song, off the top of his head, about “the vibrations,” a bluesy song, and the Angels joined in, and it got downright religious in there for a while, with everybody singing, “Oh, the vi-bra-tions ⦠Oh, the vi-bra-tions ⦔
And then Kesey and a few of the Pranksters and a lot of the Angels, including Sonny Barger of the Oakland Chapter, the maximum leader of all the Angels, were sitting around in the backhouse passing around joints and rapping. The subject was “people who are bullshit.”
There are certain people who are bullshit and you can always recognize them, Kesey was saying, and the Angels were nodding yeah, that certainly is right.
“Now you takeâ,” said Kesey, mentioning one of the Angels who was not present. “He's a bullshit person.”
A bullshit person
âand manâ
âand manâ
“Listen, Kesey,” says Barger, 100 percent Hell's Angel, “âis an Angel, and nobodyâ
nobody
âcalls an Angel a bullshit person.
nobody
âcalls an Angel a bullshit person.
âthe freaking gauntlet is down. It's like forever and every eye in the place pins on Kesey's face and you can hear the blood squirt in your veins. But Kesey doesn't even blink and his voice doesn't even change one half tone, just the old Oregon drawl:
“But I
know
him, Sonny. If I didn't
know
him, I wouldn't call him a bullshit person.”
know
him, Sonny. If I didn't
know
him, I wouldn't call him a bullshit person.”
Yeah
â
we-e-e-elll
âeverybody, Angels and PrankstersâwellâKesey
knows
himâthere is nothing to do but grok over this statement, and everybody sits there, still, trying to grok over it, and after a second, the moment where heads get broken and fire gets pissed is overâ
We-e-ell
,
ye-ah
â
â
we-e-e-elll
âeverybody, Angels and PrankstersâwellâKesey
knows
himâthere is nothing to do but grok over this statement, and everybody sits there, still, trying to grok over it, and after a second, the moment where heads get broken and fire gets pissed is overâ
We-e-ell
,
ye-ah
â
Two or three days later it occurs to some of the Pranksters that they
still
don't know what the hell Kesey meant when he said that. He
knows
the guy. It doesn't make any sense. It's a concept with no bottom to itâbut so what! At the moment he said it, it was the one perfect thing he could have said. Kesey was so totally into the moment, he could come up with it, he could break up that old historic push me, shove you, yeah-sez-who sequence and in an instant the moment, that badass moment, was over.
still
don't know what the hell Kesey meant when he said that. He
knows
the guy. It doesn't make any sense. It's a concept with no bottom to itâbut so what! At the moment he said it, it was the one perfect thing he could have said. Kesey was so totally into the moment, he could come up with it, he could break up that old historic push me, shove you, yeah-sez-who sequence and in an instant the moment, that badass moment, was over.
THE PRANKSTERS GOT PRETTY CLOSE TO SEVERAL OF THE ANGELS as individuals. Particularly Gut and Freewheeling Frank and Terry the Tramp. Every now and then somebody would take one or another of the Angels up into the tree house and give them a real initiation into psychedelics. They had a huge supply of DMT. As somebody once put it, LSD is a long strange journey; DMT is like being shot out of a cannon. There in the tree house, amid the winking googaws, they would give the Angels DMT,
and Mountain Girl saw some of them, like Freewheeling Frank, after they came down. They would walk around in no particular direction, listing slightly, the eyes bugged wide open, glazed.
and Mountain Girl saw some of them, like Freewheeling Frank, after they came down. They would walk around in no particular direction, listing slightly, the eyes bugged wide open, glazed.
“They were as naked as an Angel is ever gonna git,” she told Kesey.
A Miracle in Seven Days
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Why the consternation?
Arise ye antediluvians,
Groove on
The Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Noah's destination
Is where it's at:
Now showing at the Mount Ararat,
Apis the Bull in
Après le déluge
,
Groovy movie with a thousand castoffs:
Arise ye antediluvians,
Groove on
The Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Noah's destination
Is where it's at:
Now showing at the Mount Ararat,
Apis the Bull in
Après le déluge
,
Groovy movie with a thousand castoffs:
Whose Angels?â
Hell's
Angels â¦
Dear Lord, prepare to blast off
Into the Angel blue.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Hell's
Angels â¦
Dear Lord, prepare to blast off
Into the Angel blue.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Among those who began to wonder about the mysteries of La Honda
Were some Unitarian ministers known as the Young Turks;
Bob Kimball, Dick Weston and Paul Sawyer said freak our cerebral cloisters and
Emerge! See how the alleged grass-smoking Kesey's magic works.
The Young Turks saw Unitarians becoming ghostly seminarians,
Desiccated Kantians cut off from Early Christianity.
Oh, a century ago we were the vangard, routing the redneck blackguards
Of Fundamentalismâand today?âthe Youth
yawn
at our inanity.
yawn
at our inanity.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Sawyer found our Day-Glo heroes on the beach at Pescadero
One sunny afternoon with Allen Ginsberg in his finest bearded form.
The scene was charged with energy, yet there was a weird serenity
Even when the Hell's Angels pulled in,
rank
but most righteously warm.
rank
but most righteously warm.
Now, Sawyer had his teenage daughter along and she feared something might â¦
go wrong.
go wrong.
When Kesey said,
On the bus!
she said, “Daddy, I ⦠don't want to go.”
On the bus!
she said, “Daddy, I ⦠don't want to go.”
So his daughter stayed behind, but Sawyer was determined to find
The secret of this vibrant communion: Angel Black & Prankster Day-Glo.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Onto the bus!
and it was so fine, with Angels hooking down great jugs of wine
and it was so fine, with Angels hooking down great jugs of wine
And grooving on the sunlit ocean like euphoric Nature freaks,
Passing joints and Haw!âHaw!âHawing! but coursing through their raucous bawlingâ
A precognitive Early Churchly Gnostic note:
Ecstatic Peace!
Ecstatic Peace!
Kesey knows precisely what he's about! No motorcycle beatnik rout
But a trip more vital than all the Kantian prattle in the world.
He has reached the unreachable! Taught and
learned from
the unteachable!
learned from
the unteachable!
The Young Turks owed it to the Church to give the Prankster trip a whirl.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Oh, the Unitarians â¦
Apostate seminarians â¦
Grok the groovy
Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Whose Angels?â
Why the consternation?
Arise ye antediluvians,
Groove on
The Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Noah's destination
Is where it's at:
Now showing at the Mount Ararat,
Apis the Bull in
Après le déluge,
Groovy movie with a thousand castoffs:
Whose Angels?â
Hell's
Angels â¦
Dear Lord, prepare to blast off
Into the Angel blue.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
Arise ye antediluvians,
Groove on
The Pranksters and Hell's Angels â¦
Noah's destination
Is where it's at:
Now showing at the Mount Ararat,
Apis the Bull in
Après le déluge,
Groovy movie with a thousand castoffs:
Whose Angels?â
Hell's
Angels â¦
Dear Lord, prepare to blast off
Into the Angel blue.
Oh, the vi-bra-tions â¦
So Kesey was invited to come take part in the annual California Unitarian Church conference at Asilomar, beautiful state park by the sea in Monterey. The theme this year was: “Shaking the Foundations.”
The fact that Kesey had lately been arrested on a narcotics charge couldn't have mattered less to the Unitarians assembled on the greeny glades of Asilomar by the sea, not even the older ones. The Unitarians had a long tradition of liberalism in such matters and, in fact, were in the vanguard of the civil-rights movement in California. There was a good deal of civil disobedience and scrapes with the police in that fight; yes, sir. But
this â¦
this â¦
â¦
this â¦
The Unitarians were assembled there in Intellectual Sport Shirt multitudesâintellectuals Roughing-it, you understand, in short-sleeved sport shirts and casual Stretcheez trousers with roomy bottoms and waists up about the rib cage,
drawing, casually, on pipes. And here came Kesey. But not alone, it so happened. He arrived on the bus, in a blur of Day-Glo swirls, with Pranksters in costume flapping out of every portal. Among the middle-aged Unitarians, ministers and laymen, tamping down their pipes for a nice relaxed Sport Shirt week, there was consternation written on practically every face as they watched the bizarre vehicle pitching and rolling into the camp grounds. Things were ⦠up tight from the moment they got there.
this â¦
The Unitarians were assembled there in Intellectual Sport Shirt multitudesâintellectuals Roughing-it, you understand, in short-sleeved sport shirts and casual Stretcheez trousers with roomy bottoms and waists up about the rib cage,
drawing, casually, on pipes. And here came Kesey. But not alone, it so happened. He arrived on the bus, in a blur of Day-Glo swirls, with Pranksters in costume flapping out of every portal. Among the middle-aged Unitarians, ministers and laymen, tamping down their pipes for a nice relaxed Sport Shirt week, there was consternation written on practically every face as they watched the bizarre vehicle pitching and rolling into the camp grounds. Things were ⦠up tight from the moment they got there.
I guess this is kind of rubbing their noses in it
, thought Kesey.
The Unitarians are people who stand up for the right to dissent and nonconformity and a lot of other good things, and we're rubbing their noses in itâa bunch of dope fiends, a couple of ex-convicts, one homosexual, men and women living on a bus â¦
, thought Kesey.
The Unitarians are people who stand up for the right to dissent and nonconformity and a lot of other good things, and we're rubbing their noses in itâa bunch of dope fiends, a couple of ex-convicts, one homosexual, men and women living on a bus â¦
But the Unitarian ⦠Youth, the teenagers weren't up tight at all. They flocked around the bus as soon as it got there. Which only wound their parents up tighter, of course. By nightfall the Unitarian Church in California was divided into two camps: on the bus and off the bus.
Kesey's very first appearance on the rostrum got three-fourths of the Sport Shirts so up tight, the conference was ready to fly apart. The main programs were held in a rustic summer-theater-type building on the camp grounds. Kesey appeared at the rostrum in a glowing Yin-Yang jacket. It was an iridescent jacket with a huge Yin-Yang symbol painted on the back in red, white, and blue.
“We're going to be here seven days,” said Kesey, “so we're going to try to work a miracle in seven daysâ”
âand not by talking about it, bub, but by doing it, all of us together, and not by me talking at you, either, but by all of us doing our thing out front and wailing with it.
Many of the women at the conference began to look, rapt, at this rugged, virile man of action who now manned the pulpit. The Sports Shirts did not fail to take note of that rapt gleam on their chops, either.
Paul Sawyer, in the front row, was aware of the tension building up; but so far, all to the good. “Shake the Foundations” was the name of the conference, and so let it be. Sawyer was sitting next to Mountain Girl. What an amazing creature!âsitting next to him here in a vast purple robe. By a remarkable coincidenceâcoincidence? âshe had been brought up as a Unitarian herself and had been a member of the real hope of the church, the LRY, the Liberal Religious Youth. And nowâbut had she really strayed far from what the LRY
ought
to be? It was debatable â¦
ought
to be? It was debatable â¦
Onstage, Kesey, not talking in any formal way, more like
performing
, working magicâtelling of the kind of symbols we use and the games we're in, and how you can't really know what an emotion is until you've experienced both sides of it, whereupon he seizes the big American flag up on the stage and
steps on it
, grinds it into the floorâ
performing
, working magicâtelling of the kind of symbols we use and the games we're in, and how you can't really know what an emotion is until you've experienced both sides of it, whereupon he seizes the big American flag up on the stage and
steps on it
, grinds it into the floorâ
âhuge gasp from the crowd, many of whom are teenagersâ
Sawyer is already into the thing, and he sees what Kesey is trying to doâdon't just describe an emotion, but arouse it, make them experience it, by manipulating the symbol of the emotion, and sometimes we have to come into awareness through the back door. Sawyer hears
sobs
, wheels around in his seat, sees a group of teenagers behind him, from Salt Lake City, looks into their faces, reads the horror that fills themâ
The Flag!
âthen feels the manic energy from the crazed thing that has been packed into these children even at this age like a time warp vibration from the Salem witch hysteria, the primordial cry of
Die
,
Infidel
âand yet he can't leave them with that. So he rises up and faces the crowd and says,
sobs
, wheels around in his seat, sees a group of teenagers behind him, from Salt Lake City, looks into their faces, reads the horror that fills themâ
The Flag!
âthen feels the manic energy from the crazed thing that has been packed into these children even at this age like a time warp vibration from the Salem witch hysteria, the primordial cry of
Die
,
Infidel
âand yet he can't leave them with that. So he rises up and faces the crowd and says,
âNow wait a minute. That flag is a symbol we attach our emotions to, but it isn't the emotion itself and it isn't the thing we really care about. Sometimes we don't even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols. I remember when I was at school, we used to sing
America the Beautiful
and somebody would walk down the aisle carrying the flag. I always wanted to be the one who carried the flag down
the aisle but I never was. Now, what was I really feeling? Patriotism? Or was itâ
America the Beautiful
and somebody would walk down the aisle carrying the flag. I always wanted to be the one who carried the flag down
the aisle but I never was. Now, what was I really feeling? Patriotism? Or was itâ
But he doesn't get to finish. A voice cries: “Do it!”
âwhat?
“Do it!” It's Mountain Girl, beaming at him from her folds of purple, quite delighted with the turn of events.
Before he knows it, he is leading them all in the singing of
America the Beautiful
, and
O beau-ti-ful for spa-cious skies
rings out in the hallâas he holds the flag staunchly in his hands and marches up the aisle and then down the aisle, signifyingâwhat? Ne'mind! But exactly! Don't explain it.
Do it
!
America the Beautiful
, and
O beau-ti-ful for spa-cious skies
rings out in the hallâas he holds the flag staunchly in his hands and marches up the aisle and then down the aisle, signifyingâwhat? Ne'mind! But exactly! Don't explain it.
Do it
!
LIKE MOST CONFERENCES, THIS ONE HAD A CAREFULLY PREPARED and printed schedule of meals, talks, seminars, group activities. The Pranksters made a good quick hash of that. They had no schedule and intimated nobody else should, either. The Sport Shirts would have a big seminar planned to capture the imagination of the Youthâsomething on the order of Student Rebellion in an Age of Mediocrity: Challenge and Responsibilityâonly at the appointed hour the Youth, the student rebels in an age of mediocrity, would be down by the beach, down around the damnable bus, where the Pranksters had their own program, and no schedule, friends and neighbors, everything happens at the hour of
Now
and all can join in the game of Power:::::
Now
and all can join in the game of Power:::::
Somebody wins the Power and orders a game of football to be played on the beach, only with the Hermit as the football. Presently a whole group, Pranksters, ministers, conferees, are picking up the giggling Hermit and handing him off like a quarterback would and scrambling for him like a loose football, and so on. But soon the grief of itâ
allegory!
âbegins to sink in, this making of a human being a counter in the power game, always the weakest ⦠Ahhh! One of the young ministers, one of the Young Turks, now has the power, and he orders that all go into the surf of the Pacific and wash one another's feet. Ritual of humility,
allegory of life, but not a word of explanation need be spoken, and they all just sit down in the surf and wash one another's feet, and the Hermit's most meticulously, and the Pranksters really groove with this. They think this is great. And the kids now look at the Young Turk whose inspiration it was in a new light. He has made it. The Pranksters approve of him!
allegory!
âbegins to sink in, this making of a human being a counter in the power game, always the weakest ⦠Ahhh! One of the young ministers, one of the Young Turks, now has the power, and he orders that all go into the surf of the Pacific and wash one another's feet. Ritual of humility,
allegory of life, but not a word of explanation need be spoken, and they all just sit down in the surf and wash one another's feet, and the Hermit's most meticulously, and the Pranksters really groove with this. They think this is great. And the kids now look at the Young Turk whose inspiration it was in a new light. He has made it. The Pranksters approve of him!
The Young Turks spent more and more time with the Pranksters, late into the night, while the music played on the bus, and the Pranksters brought huge strands of kelp out of the ocean and flailed it about and beat the sides of the bus with it, like a huge drum, and played the Power game and took the Now Trip and played the non-games of life, and kept rapping away, but more than rapping,
being
, being
alive
âthe Young Turks were truly on the bus. From the lack of sleep and the pace and weird shaking of the foundations, they began to feel the
mysto
thing most profoundly.
being
, being
alive
âthe Young Turks were truly on the bus. From the lack of sleep and the pace and weird shaking of the foundations, they began to feel the
mysto
thing most profoundly.
Paul Sawyer was walking back to go to bed about 7 A.M. one morning after an all-night stand with the Pranksters when he was met by a delegation of conference officials. They wanted to have it out. They wanted to ask Kesey and the Pranksters to leave. Kesey might be sincere, they said, and he might not. But in any case he was disrupting the conference and causing a schism in the conferees, and setting an atrocious example for the Youth. It seemed that Dr.â, one of the Church's greatest liberals and a leader in the civil-rights movement, had already left the conference in protest and taken a couple of other ministers with him.
âWait a minute, says Sawyer. We called this conference to shake the foundations. And, well, now they are beginning to shake, and it's time to see whether we have the courage of our convictions.
âWell, yes, Paul, but there are these
things
they are doing, and the park officials are quite upset. First of all, there is a very strong suspicion that they are indulging in marijuana. There is a very peculiar smell around that bus. But let us leave that aside. In any case, the bus is a very definite health nuisance, all those people
living together on that bus by the side of the water. It isn't sanitary. But let us leave that aside, too. There is also the incident of the shower room. Park personnel caught two of these â¦
Pranksters
taking a shower together, a man and a woman, in the men's shower room. Now
we
might overlook that sort of thing, but what kind of an example is that for the young people? And this one they call Mountain Girl. Every time she sees Dr. George Washington Henry, who is after all one of our most distinguished Negro ministers and thinkers, she yells out,
“Watermelon Henry!”
things
they are doing, and the park officials are quite upset. First of all, there is a very strong suspicion that they are indulging in marijuana. There is a very peculiar smell around that bus. But let us leave that aside. In any case, the bus is a very definite health nuisance, all those people
living together on that bus by the side of the water. It isn't sanitary. But let us leave that aside, too. There is also the incident of the shower room. Park personnel caught two of these â¦
Pranksters
taking a shower together, a man and a woman, in the men's shower room. Now
we
might overlook that sort of thing, but what kind of an example is that for the young people? And this one they call Mountain Girl. Every time she sees Dr. George Washington Henry, who is after all one of our most distinguished Negro ministers and thinkers, she yells out,
“Watermelon Henry!”
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