The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

One day in Mazatlán, Browning and Babbs spot a Mexican man in a suit taking photos of them, so they go over to confront him. He gives them an odd story about being “secret agent numero uno” with Mexican Naval Intelligence, there looking for Russian submarine activity (332). He is there again the following day, so they invite him to talk at a nearby restaurant in hopes of getting more information, which Kesey attends as well. They drink beer and he begins telling them about some of his famous cases, but they all had to do with marijuana rather than naval intelligence. Kesey tells him that they are leaving and going back to California soon and invites him to their farewell party. Wolfe explains that this party “began the first Mexican Acid Test” (337).

Although the mysterious man does not show up, the Pranksters hold the Acid Test, a small one by their standards, in Manzanillo the next day. They leave town the following day. The next Test takes place at a restaurant in Guadalajara, where they notice more well-dressed Mexicans, one of whom turns out to be “the local jefe of detectives” (338). The Pranksters then move up to Aguascalientes near Mexico City where the next Test is planned. While all of the Pranksters except Hagen are off soaking in a local mineral spring, Sandy straps his large Ampex sound machine, the one which Kesey refused to relinquish to him months prior, to his motorcycle and takes off for New York. According to Wolfe, to the Pranksters, “there was not the slightest doubt in the world that the equipment was the Pranksters. Not Prankster Sandy Lehmann-Haupt’s but the Pranksters’” (340).

They hold a couple of more Acid Tests around Mexico City, but they lack the “astounding gusto” (342). Wolfe points out that they saw more and more carloads of well-dressed Mexicans following them. This leads Kesey to decide it is time to “take the Outlaw prank to its ultimate, be a Prankster Fugitive Extraordinaire in the Baskin-Robbins bosom of the U.S.A.” (343). Kesey’s idea is that if he goes back to the US brazenly enough, “big enough and bright enough,” they will never see him (344). He chooses Brownsville, Texas, for reentry because most heads reenter near Tijuana. He rents a horse, dresses as a country-western musician named “Singing Jimmy Anglund,” (344) and claims that he has no visa or identification because he had been mugged the night before.

Wolfe begins Chapter 26 by again writing in verse with a poem concerning Kesey’s reentry to the US. Once back in California, Kesey hides away at a friend’s house in Palo Alto, planning to become “a kind of Day-Glo Pimpernel, popping up here and there, right out in public, then vanishing, reeking legend in the wake” (349). Wolfe explains that the Acid Tests had caught on with college kids, and San Francisco State University was the epicenter for acid heads (350). Kesey first comes out of hiding to attend a three-day Trips Festival there, and soon word trickles out to the Haight-Ashbury district that he has returned. Kesey and the Pranksters had been so cut off from society in Mexico that they did not know how Haight-Ashbury had also been transformed into an acid-fueled carnival atmosphere, which was all born out of their original Acid Tests. According to Wolfe, “the cops knew drunks and junkies by heart,” but they had no idea of how to handle the “hippie-dippies” of Haight-Ashbury (352-53).

Wolfe describes the new culture and inhabitants of Haight-Ashbury as the “Probation Generation,” as opposed to the Beat Generation or Silent Generation, because so many of the kids had been busted for grass and wound up on probation (360). He writes, with a nod to Kesey, that there is no way of stopping this cultural change centered around acid, and that the movement needs a leader, “a visionary who could pull the whole thing together” (361). This leads to the underground summit between Kesey and Owsley, who was then known as “the White Rabbit,” in which Kesey expresses his desire to go “beyond acid.” (363). At this point, Kesey begins showing up in public even more. He goes on local television, saying that he intends “to stay in this country as a fugitive, and as salt in J. Edgar Hoover’s wounds” (367). Within an hour of his interview being televised, Kesey is with Hassler on the Bayshore Freeway with cops in hot pursuit. Kesey bails from the car when they are pulled over and makes a run for it but is apprehended quickly.

With the new charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Kesey’s felony count rises to three. Wolfe argues that “it will take a miracle to even get him out on bail,” but his lawyers tell the judge about his “beyond acid” vision and say that he has returned for the very purpose of telling LSD users to move on from it (371-72). With some of his old Perry Lane friends staking their homes on it, Kesey makes his $35,000 bail after only five days in jail and has his federal unlawful flight charge dropped (372). As word circulates about Kesey’s charges being dropped and his “beyond acid” message, many in the psychedelic movement see him as a “cop-out” and start looking for a new visionary to follow. Kesey appears on a TV show about “The Danger of LSD,” and gives his message that the psychedelic movement needs to move beyond acid, but he stops short of agreeing that it is dangerous.

When Kesey and the Pranksters are approached by reporters concerning their Acid Test Graduation, all that they get as a response to their questions is “never trust a prankster” (380). This cryptic answer sets Haight-Ashbury into a frenzy as heads start thinking that Kesey’s “beyond acid” message is a prank. The Pranksters schedule the Acid Test Graduation for Halloween night at Winterland Arena, the biggest arena in the city, but the plans fall apart when the promoter cancels it for fear of a debacle and the Grateful Dead cannot get out of an already contracted show. Instead, they decide to hold it in the Warehouse, the abandoned pie factory garage. The Graduation seems to be a success at first, as heads from all over show up, as do some celebrities, and even a number of reporters for television and radio. However, it soon goes in a strange direction when Kesey begins a rambling speech. People leave as the Prankster Inner Circle form a circle on the floor “waiting for the energy” (398).

Wolfe argues that “back among the acid heads of San Francisco there were two or three days of post mortems after the collapse of the Prankster Winterland fantasy and the strange night in the garage” (403). The communal mind of acid heads settles on the idea that Kesey is indeed copping-out and just trying to stay out of jail (403). The Pranksters move on to Babbs’s place in Santa Cruz and attempt to play a musical gig at a psychedelic night spot called The Barn. Another band is performing there also, leading some of the Pranksters to disrupt the first band’s set with strange noises over their microphones. When it is officially the Pranksters turn for the stage, their weird performance of noises, belches, barking dogs, and contrived spoken word lyrics completely turns off the crowd and people start filing out, including even some of the Pranksters.

According to Wolfe, Kesey went on trial for his second marijuana possession charge on November 30 and the following April, he lost his appeal of the original possession charge. In total, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, six months on a county works farm, a $1,500 fine, and three years’ probation (413). Before his sentence began, Kesey and Faye moved back to Oregon and the other Pranksters scatter: Cassady and Walker have left for Mexico, Mountain Girl joined the Grateful Dead group, Babbs and Gretchen went to San Francisco, and Black Maria and Foster went off to a commune in Los Angeles (413-14). Wolfe ends his work explaining that some of the Pranksters still occasionally find their way to Oregon, where the bus remains parked outside Kesey’s house (414).