The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Kesey’s home in La Honda is secluded, which makes it a perfect setting for psychedelic experiments with drugs and the audio/video recording devices that Kesey loves. While some of the Perry Lane friends make the short trip from Palo Alto to visit, the group that primarily stays with the Keseys in La Honda were other friends. These include George Walker, an audio/video specialist from back home in Oregon; Neal Cassady, a celebrated figure of the 1950s Beat Generation; Page Browning, the Cadaverous Cowboy who had been a member of the Hell’s Angels; Kenneth Babbs, a fellow graduate student at Stanford who had served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot; and Mike Hagen, another old friend from Oregon who brings multiple girlfriends along.

The Perry Lane crowd feels a little out of place at La Honda, not only because of class differences but also because Kesey has transformed from being one of their equals into an organizer and leader. It becomes clear to them that Kesey has a master plan to move them to La Honda “in tents and so forth, transplanting the Perry Lane thing to La Honda” (61-62). According to Wolfe, the Perry Lane crowd’s disenchantment with Kesey’s controlling manner never developed into an open breach, but they grow uneasy about the situation (62). Wolfe writes that “they get the feeling that Kesey was heading out on further, toward a fantasy they didn’t know if they wanted to explore” (62).

Wolfe begins Chapter 6 explaining that the original fantasy, in the spring of 1964, was that Kesey and a few others would take a station wagon and drive from La Honda to New York for the World’s Fair. They could shoot some film of their acid trips along the way and be on hand in New York for the publication of Kesey’s second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion (67). This fantasy, however, changes drastically when Kesey buys a 1939 International Harvester school bus and the Merry Pranksters begin painting it in psychedelic colors and wiring it for sound with powerful speakers and a microphone system to go with their video recording equipment. After naming the bus “Furthur” and taking it for a test run in northern California, Kesey and the Merry Pranksters set out for the east with Cassady assigned to driving duties. After only 30 miles, the bus breaks down in San Jose, so they make a pit stop at Ken Babb’s nearby home for repairs. While waiting there, Kesey gives them a final briefing, saying that he wants everyone to be out front and do their own thing (73). He argues that “everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there’s not going to be anything to apologize about” (73).

On the second day, Kesey decides they will stop in Arizona to take their first acid trip and shoot a movie (74). One of the Pranksters immediately notices not only that their acid usage will be authorized by Kesey, but also that “there is an inner circle and an outer circle” concerning who stars in their movie productions and who works (75). Soon, everyone on the bus had a nickname, with Kesey the “Swashbuckler.” Cassady, their driver and a heavy amphetamine user, is the “Speed Limit.” Babbs is the “Intrepid Traveler.” Mike Hagen, the camera man, is “Mal Function.” Steve Lambrecht, a newcomer catching a ride to New York, is “Zonker,” and Paula Sundsten is “Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen,” both because of her beauty and because she had submerged herself in a pond in the desert and came out covered in green slime. Another member, who tags along with Lambrecht, goes unnamed officially but later becomes “Stark Naked” because she undresses while on acid. When they reach Houston, Kesey stops at his author friend Larry McMurtry’s house, where Stark Naked jumps off the bus completely nude and grabs McMurtry’s small son in her arms, having mistaken him for her own son. Wolfe explains that at that time, they all knew that “she had gone stark raving mad” (86).