The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (31 page)
Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
THREE NIGHTS THE HUGE WILD CARNIVAL WENT ON. IT WAS A big thing on every level. For one thing, the Trips Festival grossed $12,500 in three days, with almost no overhead, and a new nightclub and dance-hall genre was born. Two weeks later Bill Graham was in business at the Fillmore auditorium with a Trips Festival going every weekend and packing them in. For the acid heads themselves, the Trips Festival was like the first national convention of an underground movement that had existed on a hush-hush cell-by-cell basis. The heads were amazed at how big their own ranks had becomeâand euphoric over the fact that they could come out in the open, high as baboons, and the sky, and the law, wouldn't fall down on them. The press went along with the notion that this had been an LSD experience without the LSD. Nobody in the hip world of San Francisco had any such delusion, and the Haight-Ashbury era began that weekend.
The Trips Festival changed many things. But as soon as the whirlpool died down, Kesey was right back where he started, so far as the grinning lopsided frowning world of the San Mateo and San Francisco County courts were concerned. The bastids were digging in for prisoner's base. They had already dug him out of the place in La Honda. Part of the fiat of Judge de Matteis was that Kesey get out of La Honda and sell his place to somebody who had nothing to do with him or his works and stay out of San Mateo County except to see his probation officer or travel through on the Harbor Freeway or over the territorial boundaries of San Mateo County by airplane and remove himself and all his influences from said County. So Kesey and Faye and the kids moved into the Spread, Babbs's place, in Santa Cruz. Winding his way down there on January 23âthere was a warrant waiting for his arrest on the grounds of violating probation.
Well, that's their Movie, Tonto, and we all know how that one ends. Three years in the San Mateo donjon, plus the five or eight or twenty they come up with in San Francisco to teach a lesson while the iron and the spittle are hot to all the Trips Festival dope fiends. Kesey called an immediate briefing, and remember that
little abjuration a couple months ago about prepare for Mexico �
little abjuration a couple months ago about prepare for Mexico �
So they gathered at the Spread.
“If society wants me to be an outlaw,” said Kesey, “then I'll be an outlaw, and a damned good one. That's something people need. People at all times need outlaws.”
The Pranksters comprehended it all at once.
So here is the current fantasy: tonight he is going to split for Mexico. He'll go across the border in the back of Ron Boise's truck. Boise was down at Babbs's at the time, and he had a truck that served as a kind of mobile studio. It had all his welding equipment and acetylene torches and the like and he would work back there on the mud flats out back, shaping old car fenders into the erotic poses of the Kama Sutra. Finally Roy Seburn's psychedelic car, his miniature bus, had been fed to the torches back there, too, as it was broken down for good. Nothing lasts. Art is not eternal. They would head for Puerto Vallarta. He would use another Prankster's driver's license as I.D. in case he needed it down there. Meanwhile, as a cover story, one last grand prank. The Suicide Trip.
Kesey would write a suicide note. Then Dâ, who looked uncommonly like himâDee would dress up like him and get in an old panel truck that was around there and drive up the coast, toward Oregon, and pick out a likely cliff and smash the truck into a tree trunk and get out and leave the suicide note on the seat of the truck and throw his sky-blue boots down by the shore so it would look like he had dived in the water and gone out to sea, never to come back to his swamp of troubles. The idea was that Dee would look enough like Kesey, especially in a Prankster costume, so that if anybody did happen to see him driving along the way, they would remember him as someone answering Kesey's description. Let 'em unravel that one. Even if they don't fall for it, at least it might take the heat off. Why should we go to all this troubleâthe ninny
might
be lying on the bottom of the ocean, them damn dope fiends â¦
might
be lying on the bottom of the ocean, them damn dope fiends â¦
“I hope Dee doesn't do a Dee-out,” Mountain Girl said. But she was optimistic. The whole thing had a lot of
élan du Prank.
élan du Prank.
That night Kesey and Mountain Girl got stoned on grass and started composing the great suicide note:
“Last words. A vote for Barry is a vote for fun. I, Ken Kesey, being of (ahem) sound mind and body, do hereby leave the whole scene to Faye, Corporation, cash and the works (and it occurs to me here that nobody is going to buy this prank and now it occurs to me that I like that even better) ⦔
Shee-ut, this was fun. Put-on after put-on bubbled up in their brains, and all the bullshit metaphors of destiny, all the bullshit lines a good bullshit poet would come up with upon looking the Grim Creeper in the arsehole:
“Wind, wind send me not this place, though, onward ⦔
More! More! Louder music, more wine!
“ ⦠Ocean, ocean, ocean, I'll beat you in the end, I'll break you this time. I'll go through with my heels your hungry ribs ⦔
On and on it went, like a running account of the mad-drive-to-be up the coast, looking for his favorite cliff, to jump off of, presumably, the whole scene bubbling up in his brain and Mountain Girl's on the ratty rug in Babbs's living room. Hell, let's throw in some acidâthey'll
believe
the damn ninny dope fiend would take the dread LSD and break his ass for goodâand hell, slam the freaking vehicle into a tree, bleed verisimilitude all over, the California littoral:
believe
the damn ninny dope fiend would take the dread LSD and break his ass for goodâand hell, slam the freaking vehicle into a tree, bleed verisimilitude all over, the California littoral:
“ ⦠I've lost the ocean again. Beautiful. I drive hundreds of miles looking for my particular cliff, get so trapped behind acid I can't find the ocean, end up slamming into a redwood ⦔
Beautiful. Ready, Ron? He gets into Boise's truck and they head off south for San Diego, the Mexican border, Tijuana and the land of all competent Outlaws.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
W
HAT HAPPENED TO THE PRANKSTERS AFTER KESEY'S flight to Mexico was so much like what happened to the League after Leo fled in Hermann Hesse's book
The Journey to the Eastâ
well, it was freaking weird, this particular
synch â¦
exactly ⦠the Pranksters! and the great bus trip of 1964! their whole movie. No; it went on. Hesse's fantasy coincided with theirs all the way. It went
on
âall the way to this weird divideâ
HAT HAPPENED TO THE PRANKSTERS AFTER KESEY'S flight to Mexico was so much like what happened to the League after Leo fled in Hermann Hesse's book
The Journey to the Eastâ
well, it was freaking weird, this particular
synch â¦
exactly ⦠the Pranksters! and the great bus trip of 1964! their whole movie. No; it went on. Hesse's fantasy coincided with theirs all the way. It went
on
âall the way to this weird divideâ
The leader of the League in
The Journey to the East
was named Leo. He was never openly known as the leader: like Kesey, he was the “non-navigator” of the brotherhood. And Leo suddenly left “in the middle of the dangerous gorge of Morbio Inferiore,” just when the League was deepest into its Journey to the East, in the critical phase of a trip that was being alternately denounced and wondered at. “From that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes! They were
something so new and unheard-of in our hitherto perfectly united League. They were conducted with respect and politenessâat least in the beginning. At first they led neither to fierce conflicts nor personal reproaches or insultsâat first we were still an inseparable, united brotherhood throughout the world ⦔ Things got more and more bitter, and the narrator, “H.,” left after the Morbio Inferiore. And the narrator, Hartweg, left after â¦
The Journey to the East
was named Leo. He was never openly known as the leader: like Kesey, he was the “non-navigator” of the brotherhood. And Leo suddenly left “in the middle of the dangerous gorge of Morbio Inferiore,” just when the League was deepest into its Journey to the East, in the critical phase of a trip that was being alternately denounced and wondered at. “From that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes! They were
something so new and unheard-of in our hitherto perfectly united League. They were conducted with respect and politenessâat least in the beginning. At first they led neither to fierce conflicts nor personal reproaches or insultsâat first we were still an inseparable, united brotherhood throughout the world ⦔ Things got more and more bitter, and the narrator, “H.,” left after the Morbio Inferiore. And the narrator, Hartweg, left after â¦
Very weird, the
synch!
synch!
With Kesey gone, Babbs became the leader. There was no meeting, no vote, not even a parting word from Kesey. Babbs becomes the leaderâthe ⦠group mind knew that at once, without a second thought. They packed up everything at La Honda and took it up to Oregon, to Kesey's parents' home. The Archives they stashed at the Spread and, later, up at Chuck's house in Oregon. This and that they bequeathed to other heads, like the great round table with the Hell's Angels' carvings all over it. They gave that to a new psychedelic group, the Anonymous Artists of America, at a place called Rancho Diablo up at Skylonda. Whatever they could use for the Acid Tests they took along.
Babbs moved the Acid Test scene to Los Angeles and the bus lumbered on down there. They had hardly gotten there before the soft rumblings startedâ“certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes!”
Babbs gives too many orders
âKesey, the non-navigator, merely expressed a will and merely waited for it to move forward in the Group Mind.
Babbs runs this like the Army ⦠like the Boy Scouts â¦
Babbs's put-ons suddenly seemed pure sarcasm. His cryptic comments, his candor, seemed cruel. Some of the Pranksters even took to sympathizing with poor wretches like Pancho Pillow; the universally put-down acid-rapping fool, Pancho.
Babbs gives too many orders
âKesey, the non-navigator, merely expressed a will and merely waited for it to move forward in the Group Mind.
Babbs runs this like the Army ⦠like the Boy Scouts â¦
Babbs's put-ons suddenly seemed pure sarcasm. His cryptic comments, his candor, seemed cruel. Some of the Pranksters even took to sympathizing with poor wretches like Pancho Pillow; the universally put-down acid-rapping fool, Pancho.
Pancho, ever in the throes of self-laceration, was still desperate to be
on the bus.
The poor bastard spent his last earthly dime and traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles and caught up with
the bus in Lemon Grove one day. Pancho came ambling up with a huge grin of brotherhood and started to climb up the steps and Babbs met him at the door of the bus.
on the bus.
The poor bastard spent his last earthly dime and traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles and caught up with
the bus in Lemon Grove one day. Pancho came ambling up with a huge grin of brotherhood and started to climb up the steps and Babbs met him at the door of the bus.
“I don't think anybody wants you here,” said Babbs.
“What do you mean?” says Pancho. “Can't I come on the bus?”
“There's nobody on the bus who wants you on the bus.”
Pancho's grin is wiped off, of course, and his eyes start batting around like pinballs, trying to make out who is inside the busâ
you all know me, I'm Pancho!
you all know me, I'm Pancho!
“Well ⦠I know I get on some people's nerves,” says Pancho, “but I came all the way here to be with you guys, and I spent all my money getting hereâ”
“We don't care,” says somebody else's voice,
on the bus.
on the bus.
“Look,” says Pancho, “I'll shut up, I'll do whatever you want. I just want to help with the Tests. I'll do anythingâ”
“We don't care.” Somebody else's voice,
on the bus
.
on the bus
.
“âodd jobs, run errands, there must be a thousand thingsâ”
“We don't care.”
Pancho stands there, speechless, his face bursts with red.
“See,” says Babbs, “it's like I said. I don't think there's anybody who wants you on here.”
Numb Pancho backs down off the steps and trudges off in Lemon Grove.
Well, they had a good laugh over that. The freaking Pancho Pillow! A bad-trip freak if there ever was one! A breaker of balls extraordinaire! The human bummer: ::::: but it was a laugh with a metallic aftertaste, this joke on Pancho ::::::
Babbs had gotten hold of an old mansion in L.A., called the Sans Souci, a great incredible moldering old place with a dome and a stone balustrade, all crumbling and moldering, but with style. When the owner found a bunch of
beatniks
in there, he freaked, but that was later. Anyway, one day they were all in there and one Prankster said a very unPrankster thing. He spoke up and said:
beatniks
in there, he freaked, but that was later. Anyway, one day they were all in there and one Prankster said a very unPrankster thing. He spoke up and said:
“I want to voice this idea: I can't stand Margie and I don't want her around.”
Unfreakingbelievable. He was talking about Marge the Barge. So then all eyes went to Babbs, who was now thrust into the Kesey role of resolving all. Babbs turns to Marge the Barge and says:
“What do you think about that?”
Marge says: “I think that's ridiculous,” and with such quiet flat conviction that nobody else says anything.
A small momentâbut one more moment in the gathering schism, the Babbs loyalists versus the had-enough-of-Babbs. Later they would realize they were in many cases merely blaming Babbs for the mysterious sense of loss in their venture. They were casting about for an explanation, and Babbs was It. What they had lost of course, was the magical cement of Kesey's charisma. “It seemed that the more certain his loss became, the more indispensable he seemed; without Leo, his handsome face, his good humor and his songs, without his enthusiasm for our great undertaking, the undertaking itself seemed in some mysterious way to lose meaning.”
IN FACT, BABBS CARRIED THE ACID TESTS INTO LOS ANGELES with an amazing determination. The Pranksters were now out of their home territory, the San Francisco area, but they performed with an efficiency they never knew they had before. It was as if they were all picking up on Babbs's exhortation of months ago: “We've got to learn how to function on acid.” They were soaring out of their gourds themselves, but they were pulling off Acid Tests that seemed like they were orchestrated.
Babbs was in great form, as I say, and he had also hooked up with a remarkable head named Hugh Romney, a poet, actor, and comedian who had gone the whole route, starting back in the Beat Generation days and was now into the LSD thing and had “discovered the Management,” as he put it, “and when you discover the Management there's nothing to do but go to work for
it.” So Romney and his friend Bonnie Jean were now on the bus, and they all set out toânothing more, nothing lessâ
turn on Los Angeles to the Management â¦
Yesss ⦠The first Test was at Paul Sawyer's church in Northridge, just out from Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley ⦠Sawyer has never lost his willingness to experiment and is on the bus himself. And if the Sport Shirts could see these â¦
new experimental rites ⦠including music, dance, and sacrifice
âthe sacrifice?âwell ⦠it was not strictly an Acid Test, but a “happening,” which had become a harmless and un-loaded word in Cultural circles, even in Sawyer's Valley Unitarian-Universalist Church. A marvelous modern building shaped like a huge Bermuda onion, it was, forming one great towering ⦠Dome, with fantastic acoustics like it had been created for the current fantasy itself. So the Pranksters moved in and wired and wound up the place, and hundreds arrived for the “happening,” partaking of Prankster magic and pineapple chili, which was a concoction the Pranksters served, on the vile side in taste, but
pineapple chili
nonetheless, a wacky thought in itself. And Cassady had a microphone and started rapping, and Romney had a microphone and started rapping, and he was great, and Babbs and Paul Foster, flying with the God Rotor and not stuttering at all ⦠People dancing in the most ecstatic way and getting so far into the thing, the straight multitudes even, that even
they
took microphones, and suddenly there was no longer any separation between the entertainers and the entertained at all, none of that well-look-at-you-startled-squares condescension of the ordinary happening. Hundreds were swept up in
an experience,
which built up like a dream typhoon, peace on the smooth liquid centrifugal whirling edge. In short, everybody in The Movie, on the bus, and it was beautiful ⦠They were like â¦
on!
the Prankstersânow primed to draw the hundreds, the thousands, the millions into
the new experience,
and in the days ahead they came rushing in :::::
it.” So Romney and his friend Bonnie Jean were now on the bus, and they all set out toânothing more, nothing lessâ
turn on Los Angeles to the Management â¦
Yesss ⦠The first Test was at Paul Sawyer's church in Northridge, just out from Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley ⦠Sawyer has never lost his willingness to experiment and is on the bus himself. And if the Sport Shirts could see these â¦
new experimental rites ⦠including music, dance, and sacrifice
âthe sacrifice?âwell ⦠it was not strictly an Acid Test, but a “happening,” which had become a harmless and un-loaded word in Cultural circles, even in Sawyer's Valley Unitarian-Universalist Church. A marvelous modern building shaped like a huge Bermuda onion, it was, forming one great towering ⦠Dome, with fantastic acoustics like it had been created for the current fantasy itself. So the Pranksters moved in and wired and wound up the place, and hundreds arrived for the “happening,” partaking of Prankster magic and pineapple chili, which was a concoction the Pranksters served, on the vile side in taste, but
pineapple chili
nonetheless, a wacky thought in itself. And Cassady had a microphone and started rapping, and Romney had a microphone and started rapping, and he was great, and Babbs and Paul Foster, flying with the God Rotor and not stuttering at all ⦠People dancing in the most ecstatic way and getting so far into the thing, the straight multitudes even, that even
they
took microphones, and suddenly there was no longer any separation between the entertainers and the entertained at all, none of that well-look-at-you-startled-squares condescension of the ordinary happening. Hundreds were swept up in
an experience,
which built up like a dream typhoon, peace on the smooth liquid centrifugal whirling edge. In short, everybody in The Movie, on the bus, and it was beautiful ⦠They were like â¦
on!
the Prankstersânow primed to draw the hundreds, the thousands, the millions into
the new experience,
and in the days ahead they came rushing in :::::
::::: Clair Brush, for one. Yes. She was a girl in her twenties, a
pretty redhead, who worked for Art Kunkin, the editor of the hip circuit weekly, the Los Angeles
Free Press
. Her old friend Doc Stanley had called her up before the Test at Sawyer's church and said, Clair, there is going to be a happening in a Unitarian church in the Valley that you really ought to pick up on, and so forth ⦠But one of the things Clair did at the
Free Press
was compile a calendar of events for the hip circuit and this was the big season of “happenings” and she had been through all that a dozen times, and each one was always billed as the wave of the future, and was inevitably a drag. So she didn't go. Ummmm ::::: However :::::
pretty redhead, who worked for Art Kunkin, the editor of the hip circuit weekly, the Los Angeles
Free Press
. Her old friend Doc Stanley had called her up before the Test at Sawyer's church and said, Clair, there is going to be a happening in a Unitarian church in the Valley that you really ought to pick up on, and so forth ⦠But one of the things Clair did at the
Free Press
was compile a calendar of events for the hip circuit and this was the big season of “happenings” and she had been through all that a dozen times, and each one was always billed as the wave of the future, and was inevitably a drag. So she didn't go. Ummmm ::::: However :::::
::::: In hearing about it from people who did attend, though, she decided to go to the next one :::::
::::: which was set for Watts, on Lincoln's Birthday, February 12, 1966.
Watts!
the very Watts where hardly five months before the freaking revolution of the blacks had broken out, the symbol of all that was catastrophic and hopeless in American life, and
what is this strange space ship now approaching Watts, the very Youth Opportunities center itselfâYouth Opportunities!âfor the trip beyond catastrophe :::::
Watts!
the very Watts where hardly five months before the freaking revolution of the blacks had broken out, the symbol of all that was catastrophic and hopeless in American life, and
what is this strange space ship now approaching Watts, the very Youth Opportunities center itselfâYouth Opportunities!âfor the trip beyond catastrophe :::::
::::: “I think what decided me”âClair is recalling it for meâ“was someone's description of Art Kunkin's spontaneous participation and enjoyment of the evening in the church. Most of the people there were given to improvisation as required, but Arthur and I share a reserve in crowds.
“Anyway. The Watts siteâit was actually Compton, an incorporated city on the fringe of Wattsâwas chosen for reasons unknown to me. The best guesses I've heard have to do with the politics of taking such a party into the recently stricken neighborhood, as a friendship-thing; also a humorousâironical?âsite for such carryings-on.
“The building was a warehouse, part of a Youth Opportunities center, but still vacant. Theyâthe Center peopleâwere using or were going to use the building as a workshop for manual trades,
possibly automotive? Job-retraining, etc. It was legally leased for 24 or 48 hours by Kesey's group, with money, and the caretaker of the center was present at all times during the Acid Test.
possibly automotive? Job-retraining, etc. It was legally leased for 24 or 48 hours by Kesey's group, with money, and the caretaker of the center was present at all times during the Acid Test.
“Announcements were made in the usual way, Free Press and KPFK calendar, etc., and around 200 people were in attendance. When I arrived, nothing had started ⦠people were clustered in small groups, sitting on mats and blankets around the walls. The room, the main room, was huge ⦠my conception of feet, in yards and such, is bad, but I'd guess maybe 50 by 25. There was a smaller room to the east and bathroom to the west, and the large room had a corridor running along the south wall which had open windows waist-high without glass ⦠through which the scene inside could be observed.
“I had driven my car down, giving two people a ride, but I left them immediately ⦠went to join some friends who had some rosé wine and were sitting on a pad on the floor. As I said, none of the effects had started ⦠but shortly there was an announcement (I think by Neal Cassady, but I didn't know him then) that the evening would begin. Films were projected on the south wall, with a commentary ⦠films of Furthur, the bus, the people in the bus ⦠the commentary was a rather dull travelogue and the film seemed fairly uninspired and confused.
“Remember now, I'm a novice. I'd never even been âhigh' on âpot' or any kind of pill or anything ⦠my strongest experience had been with alcohol. I knew a few âheads' but didn't think much of the whole thing ⦠had tried pot a few times and nothing impressed me, except for the unpleasant taste.
“This may explain why a lot of people were digging the film, laughing, and also why a lot of people were there ⦠I'm sure that I was one of a minority who had no idea what to expect. The word must have been passed, but didn't get to me. Also I think a lot of those in attendance had heard of Kesey's things and were very aware of what was being done. Not old unworldly Clair. Story of my life.
“The film continued, some slides were shown of flowers and
patterns, this and that ⦠then a large trash can, plastic, was carried to the middle of the room, and all were invited to help themselves to the Kool-Aid it contained. There was no big rush to the refreshment stand ⦠people wandered up, it was being served in paper cups, and since Kool-Aid is a staple in the homes of Del Close and Hugh Romney and other friends of mine, I thought it quite a natural thing to serve ⦠had a cup, had another, wandered and talked for a while, had another ⦔
patterns, this and that ⦠then a large trash can, plastic, was carried to the middle of the room, and all were invited to help themselves to the Kool-Aid it contained. There was no big rush to the refreshment stand ⦠people wandered up, it was being served in paper cups, and since Kool-Aid is a staple in the homes of Del Close and Hugh Romney and other friends of mine, I thought it quite a natural thing to serve ⦠had a cup, had another, wandered and talked for a while, had another ⦔
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