George Walker artfully maneuvered Further off the Farm onto Ridgeway Road heading toward the Tsunami Bookstore. Stephanie Kesey performed the duties of Bus DJ in the absence of its founder. She played the traditional first tune Hit The Road Jack, followed by Dylan's Everybody Must Get Stoned. The sun had already set as the Bus rolled away from the farm and around Mount Pisgah. George wheeled it through the first ninety degree left curve followed an eighth of a mile later by a ninety degree curve to the right leading to a short hill ending in another sharp left curve at the top of the hill as Pranksters chortled and gaffawed over the speakers. Whoaaaasssss and Ahhhhsss as the Bus took more lefts and rights. It rolled past neighboring farms and residences approaching Highway 58 driven by #57. The mandatory pit stop for gas didn't last long and the Bus was now cruising down the long hill on Highway 58 toward Interstate 5 where George aimed it north exiting at 30th Avenue into Eugene past Lane Community College. We rode up and over hills through residential neighborhoods where the trees had turned psychedelic with fall foliage.

The Tsunami Bookstore is the first scene of the BookVenture 2003 Tour. Cap'n Skypilot (Ken Babbs) had the Pranksters attired and assigned with scripts in hand for reading the Six Kesey Sketches that had been rehearsed and tweaked and rewritten over the past several weeks anticipating the Tour. Many of the Pranksters were well prepared, others had been handed the script a few minutes before hitting the stage. Babbs riffed on his trombone accompanied by Phil on a wire hammer device Kesey taught him to play that made twangy high pitched sounds we have all heard in cartoons when something unusual happened to one of the characters. A Prankster played bass, another a drum adding sound effects at appropriate moments. George walker played the saxophone created from an ax.

The audience looked nonplussed as ten Pranksters in yellow shirts tied at the waists with dayglo red yarn began with the sketch What's In A Name? Eight Pranksters were assigned a number to read from the script. George Walker read the part of the Reporter. An excerpt from What's In A Name? ...

Reporter: You've talked about the importance of your name, what it means, the origin; could you elaborate on that?

1 Kesey: It comes from the old German, Kannen, or in Celtic, Ken, which means to know, to know who you are, and going back farther it means to know your own sex, your testes and is a grounding thing; grounded in knowledge.

Reporter: What about your middle name, Elton?

2 Kesey: That was Grandpa Smith's first name. Grampa Smith was my mother's dad, from Arkansas where chickens are profilic and Jesse James could still run for governor and win.

3 Kesey: Grandpa Smith was a prankster, a jokester. One time he plucked a chicken but didn't clean the gullet and when Grandma Smith cooked it, dried corn and small pebbles burst all over the oven.

4 Kesey: So maybe there's something to that name, and that's why it got passed onto me.

Reporter: What about your last name, Kesey?

5 Kesey: Yeah, what about Kesey? Casey it was originally, from Ireland then over to Germany where it became Quesie, which means cheese. Could be that's why we became a creamery family.

What's In A Name? was followed by songs and chants and blurts from saxophones accompanied by bass riffs and taps on the drum. The six sketches were interwoven among story telling and readings by Kesey's long time editor David Stanford followed by Ed McClanahan, George Walker, Anonymous, Pat Mackey, Eileen Babbs and Genie Murphy. Kesey's mom, Geneva sat in the front row next to Sunshine attentively taking in every notion with Faye and MG a few rows behind.

David recounted the creative editing process he and Kesey went through starting with Caverns, the book by O.U. Levon, a collaboration with University of Oregon students. David read from the recently published raucous Jail Journal drawing both cheers and gulps of amazement from the Tsunami crowd.

An exceprt from David's chapter in Spit In The Ocean # 7 - All About Kesey;

On the parked bus one night, the interior warmly lit by a living room lamp, someone complimented Ken on the book's (Sailor Song) dedication:

To Faye -
A deep keel in the raving waves
A polestar in the dark
A shipmate

"That's the best thing I ever wrote", he said.

Ed McClanahan is a soft spoken deliberate soul emitting a warm southern charm as he read from various SPIT essays and his own book Famous People I Have Known. He too recounted stories about Ken, one of which was a 1964 dinner at Perry Lane followed by a movie that was preceeded by Kesey providing a dose from the medicine chest. Ed recalled Kesey saying... "how did you enjoy the film"as the title exploded off the screen THE END.

RD: I don't even know what the Calgary Stampede is. Is it a rodeo, or . . . ?

Anon: Yes, one of the biggest rodeos, biggest carnivals in the world! If you go in the morning they have chuck wagon breakfasts, you can have pancakes, eggs, and bacon for almost nothing, fifty cents and you get this huge breakfast. It's kinda like the Eugene Country Fair, only on a Western theme, square dances in the streets and people fiddle- playing, it was just wild and crazy. I remember it was just packed, just people-to-people, going to the fairgrounds, getting in. And then there was the Bus . . .

They had just crazy-painted it. There was no rhyme, no reason to the painting. There were no (images of) people on it, just spray paint here, then spray paint there, and it had a balcony on top, and instruments and people hanging all over, Gretchen was like hanging, her legs swinging, leaning over the rail with her hat on, and people were blowing flutes and there were drums hanging there, and people dancing all around. They were getting ready to go. But if you know the Pranksters, it takes them a long time to get going.

Everyone eats when they come to Chef Juke's house! Juke is a Burning Man afficianado, an extraordinary cook, a technology wizard, a Eugene resident Prankster. Also known as Pat Mackey, Juke, accompanied by his daughter Sofia, read his SPIT story about Ken and his relationship with children.
Once at an event at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the "Psychedelic-Era Reunion Party," he saw Sofia (then about five) in the crowd and went right over to her and took her hand and walked around admiring the scene with her. When the photographers asked him to come over to the "posing area" for a shot, he and Sofia walked over walked over and sat down together. When one of the photographers said, "Little girl, could you move over so we could get a picture of Ken?" you would have thought he had asked Ken to cut off his right arm. Ken was incensed at him for suggesting that Sofia shold move an inch just so this guy could get a "better" shot. He only said a few words to him, bu the message was clear: She doesn't have to move an inch. You can take a picture or not. That's up to you. The photographer shrunk down to about fourteen inches tall and backed off right away. He was quickly replaced by the noted rock photographer Jay Blakesberg, who took this picture. (the photo in accompanying this story in SPIT is of Kesey in a tall American flag hat with Sofia in a fairy costume sitting on his lap).

Eileen Babbs proved she is way more than Ken Babbs' wife as she brought the Tsunami audience to tears followed by a standing ovation upon reading her SPIT essay White Tent about the Kesey burial preparations at the Farm.

We drove up to the farm and there it stood - majestic, taut, glowing from the lantern light inside - a huge white tent. We could see a few dark figures silhouetted against the sides. Babbs said it looked like something out of Afghanistan. And it did. It looked like those stark white structures that rise up out of the barren landscapes in that country we were bombing the crap out of - on the periphery of our grief.

As I drove home alone that night down the back -country road, the local radio station was playing the Grateful Dead, a live show. Then a voice, slightly hysterical. It was Kesey! Talking about Bill Graham's death and his son's death. About the Dead reaching out to him in his grief and Bill Graham paying for the pedestal in Jed's memory on Mt. Pisgah. He recited the e.e. cummings poem "Buffalo Bill's Defunct":

... how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

He screamed it and I wanted to scream along with him, barreling down the dark back road from Kesey's house.

The evening ended late with a smaller group of partyers staying at the Tsunami. The Pranksters eventually left in small groups walking into the chilly Oregon night to a cozy bar down the street called the Turtle for libations and nourishment. Satiated with the Tsunami experience, we are looking forward to the statue unveiling in downtown Eugene Friday afternoon.

Click HERE to see the Statue.