Ken Kesey's original bus rises from the swamp

Ken Kesey's original bus rises from the swamp

Sunday, November 06, 2005
JOHN FOYSTON

Four decades ago, the late Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters rolled across the country as psychedelic shock troops in a brightly painted bus called Furthur. Recently some remaining Pranksters -- plus kids, companions, young acolytes and dogs -- met at Kesey's farm to help his son Zane make Furthur roll again.

The Pranksters were lysergicized proselytizers, the transition from the Beats to the hippies, a rainbow-hued crew seeking to wake America from two decades of self-satisfied slumber. They were harbingers of a tectonic shift in American culture -- a shift that doubled back on them in the early 1970s, submerging the subculture once again.

Furthur is one of the enduring symbols of that time. But it was road-weary and 50 years old when Kesey towed it to oaky, bottomland at his farm near Eugene. He built a replica from a newer bus as the original languished in the swamp, and Kesey, who died four years ago following liver surgery, stoutly resisted all suggestions to move it.

That's why the most recent journey on a late October day was more significant -- heavier, even -- than its distance might imply: Zane Kesey and crew towed the bus just a couple hundred yards from the swamp to a flat spot up by the barn.

Short as it was, it was a journey that many of the Pranksters never thought they'd see. "It's sweet to see it back out of the swamp," said Prankster Mike Hagen, a quiet man who uses the word 'sweet' often and can even get away with the occasional 'far out.' "Who would've believed it?"

"I don't know what Kesey would think about it, but we can't worry about that now. I've been trying to e-mail him, but the server must be down," joked Ken Babbs, who knew Kesey for 43 years. "It's been a miraculous day because we had no idea what would happen. We didn't know if the brakes were seized and the wheels would even roll. We didn't know if it would break in half when we got a chain on it, but the vibe was right."

What happens next is the question. "Our goal is to restore the bus and tell its story," said David Houston, who owns Barney's Beanery, a famous Los Angeles restaurant. "This is a priceless piece of American history."

Lit by full sun for the first time in years, Furthur looked the part. Festoons of moss drooped from its flanks; ferns grew from its fenders; mice had colonized the interior, which was stripped bare except for the driver's seat where Neal Cassady often sat. Furthur's once flamboyant, fanciful hide is faded and rusted making it look like the relic of a lost civilization that it is.

But it's beautiful and imposing for all that -- or because of it: it's a faded Renaissance fresco or an aging beauty still possessed of the most amazing cheekbones. It's imposing because history happened here. This was the locus of many lives and so much energy that you want to encapsulate it -- moss, rust and all -- in a block of Lucite and appreciate it as the cultural artifact it has become.

"This feels like a perfect time for a new subculture," said Stephen Greene, Houston's partner in the possible restoration of Furthur. "It feels like something was pulling it out of the swamp. Since Jerry Garcia died, another of the doorways to a different culture closed. We want to restore Furthur and take it on the road for kids to learn different ways to live and how to take care of each other. "

But which Furthur do you restore? Set aside the problems of restoring a machine ravaged by age and you face a philosophic question -- Furthur was the constantly evolving work of dozens of creative souls. As inspiration enshrined, its livery might change overnight and then again in a month or a year.

"Oh, I remember when it was that color, I think I painted that," said Mountain Girl, a longtime Prankster and mother of Kesey's daughter, Sunshine. "I remember every one of these flakes." She pored over multicolored paint chips that flaked off the bus when it was pulled out from between two trees that tightly flanked it.

(So tightly that the trunk of one had to be notched to allow the open bus door to pass without snagging. "Those trees didn't used to be that big," a bystander said.)

Mountain Girl (her driver's license may show a different name, but the world knows her as Mountain Girl and her friends call her MG) looked up as people pushed the bus around a corner to ready it for the tow up the hill.

"We used to do that a lot," she said. "We used to have to push it to get it started when the starter motor didn't work. Usually one of three things -- the starter, the brakes or the clutch -- was always either busted or just fixed and ready to go out again in about three days. We got to know every junkyard and parts store in the West."

Zane Kesey allowed two days to extricate Furthur, but it was out of the swamp shortly after noon of the first day. Which is not to say the operation went off with military precision -- that's just not the Prankster way.

No, the scene down in the swamp (a mercifully dry swamp, thanks to a lack of rain) was marinated in the same cheerful anarchy that Kesey and the Pranksters brought to those long ago Acid Tests. "No control freaks," Sunshine Kesey said. "Keep it loose. Dad encouraged randomness."

Dogs and kids romped, mostly ignoring the trampled blackberry vines. Characters milled about -- young neo-hippies, one of whom later unslung a mandolin to sing "All You Need Is Drugs"; a documentary film crew; silver-bearded Prankster Izzy Whetstine in Technicolor tie-dye: Zane Kesey in purple tie-dye of his own; and Phil Dietz, who calls himself the last Prankster and who tapped a hand drum as people took a strain on the ropes and chains.

Picture this: Zane Kesey on a small farm tractor hitched to a Chevy flatbed where seven people crouched to increase traction. A yellow tow strap hitched the truck to chains looped around Furthur's rear axle. But it wasn't enough to overcome years of immobility.

So they lashed a thick rope to the tow strap, and people grabbed the robe in a tug-of-war with Time itself. Black smoke snorted from the tractor's stack, the truck's engine revved and its rear wheels spun, then bit. The pullers put their backs into it and Furthur inched backward as David Tipton walked alongside and shouted steering commands to Prankster George Walker in the driver's seat.

"Is there a new plan?" Izzy Whetstine asked Hagen as the crew readied for the third and last attempt.

"It's a constantly moving plan," Hagen said.

"Was there an old plan?"

"It was old the moment it became a plan."

But Kesey's daughter was OK with the plan, whatever it may be. "My dad would've been thrilled that there's a new surge of energy behind the bus," Sunshine Kesey said. "It's not necessary to leave it as a story of the past because he wanted other people to take the craziness on the road.

"To him it wasn't just the bus, it was the action of people coming together to make something happen. His philosophy was live in the moment and call the dance."