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Furthur (bus)
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Furthur (bus)
Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.
Kesey traveled to New York City in November 1963 with his wife Faye and Prankster George Walker to attend the Broadway opening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was based on his 1962 novel. Kesey also saw the 1964 New York World's Fair site under construction. He needed to return to New York City in 1964 for the publication party for his novel Sometimes a Great Notion, and hoped to use the occasion to visit the Fair. This plan grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends, turning their adventures into a road movie, taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road.
As more Pranksters volunteered for the trip, they soon realized they outgrew Kesey's station wagon, so Kesey bought a retired yellow school bus for $1,250 from Andre Hobson of Atherton, California. The license plates read "MAZ 804". Hobson had added bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a refrigerator and stove for taking his eleven children on vacation.
The Pranksters added customizations, including a generator, a sound system (with an interior and external intercom), a railing and seating platform on top of the bus, and an observation turret coming out the top made from a washing machine drum fitted into a hole in the roof. Another platform was welded to the rear to hold the generator and a motorcycle. The bus was painted by the various Pranksters in a variety of psychedelic colors and designs. The paint was not DayGlo (which was not yet common in 1964), but primary colors, and the peace symbol was not yet evident. The word 'Sunshine' was written in blue, but it was too early to have references to orange sunshine LSD or Kesey's not-yet-conceived daughter Sunshine.
The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern, painting the word "Furthur" (with two U's, quickly corrected) on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. The misspelled name is still often used, as in Wolfe's book.
The original bus's last journey was a trip to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. After its historic trips, the bus was gutted and used around the Keseys' farm in Oregon until at least 1983. It was mentioned and pictured in an article in the May–June Saturday Review. It was eventually parked in the swamp on Kesey's farm and gradually returned to the elements, until it was dragged out of the swamp with a tractor and stored in a farm warehouse.
The list of participants is undocumented. They took the general name "Merry Band of Pranksters" shortened to Merry Pranksters, but many Pranksters chose not to go, and others became Pranksters only because they chose to go.
Chloe Scott (founder of the Dymaxion Dance Group in 1962, age about 39) only lasted a day, because the chaos was too much for her. Cathy Casamo, friend of Mike Hagen, joined at the last minute, hoping to star in the movie they were supposedly making, but she was left behind in Houston. Neal Cassady showed up at the last minute and displaced Roy Sebern as driver, as far as New York state. Ken Babbs probably did not plan to venture past his San Juan Capistrano home. Merry Prankster and author Lee Quarnstrom documents events on the bus in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter!
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Furthur (bus)
Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.
Kesey traveled to New York City in November 1963 with his wife Faye and Prankster George Walker to attend the Broadway opening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was based on his 1962 novel. Kesey also saw the 1964 New York World's Fair site under construction. He needed to return to New York City in 1964 for the publication party for his novel Sometimes a Great Notion, and hoped to use the occasion to visit the Fair. This plan grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends, turning their adventures into a road movie, taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road.
As more Pranksters volunteered for the trip, they soon realized they outgrew Kesey's station wagon, so Kesey bought a retired yellow school bus for $1,250 from Andre Hobson of Atherton, California. The license plates read "MAZ 804". Hobson had added bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a refrigerator and stove for taking his eleven children on vacation.
The Pranksters added customizations, including a generator, a sound system (with an interior and external intercom), a railing and seating platform on top of the bus, and an observation turret coming out the top made from a washing machine drum fitted into a hole in the roof. Another platform was welded to the rear to hold the generator and a motorcycle. The bus was painted by the various Pranksters in a variety of psychedelic colors and designs. The paint was not DayGlo (which was not yet common in 1964), but primary colors, and the peace symbol was not yet evident. The word 'Sunshine' was written in blue, but it was too early to have references to orange sunshine LSD or Kesey's not-yet-conceived daughter Sunshine.
The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern, painting the word "Furthur" (with two U's, quickly corrected) on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. The misspelled name is still often used, as in Wolfe's book.
The original bus's last journey was a trip to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. After its historic trips, the bus was gutted and used around the Keseys' farm in Oregon until at least 1983. It was mentioned and pictured in an article in the May–June Saturday Review. It was eventually parked in the swamp on Kesey's farm and gradually returned to the elements, until it was dragged out of the swamp with a tractor and stored in a farm warehouse.
The list of participants is undocumented. They took the general name "Merry Band of Pranksters" shortened to Merry Pranksters, but many Pranksters chose not to go, and others became Pranksters only because they chose to go.
Chloe Scott (founder of the Dymaxion Dance Group in 1962, age about 39) only lasted a day, because the chaos was too much for her. Cathy Casamo, friend of Mike Hagen, joined at the last minute, hoping to star in the movie they were supposedly making, but she was left behind in Houston. Neal Cassady showed up at the last minute and displaced Roy Sebern as driver, as far as New York state. Ken Babbs probably did not plan to venture past his San Juan Capistrano home. Merry Prankster and author Lee Quarnstrom documents events on the bus in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter!
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