Scott the Prankster
Dear Friends,
Cynthia Beal sent this to me about Ken Kesey's Memorial. It brought up so many memories of traveling around on the bus with those merry pranksters and hog farmers.
The time I spent with them was some of the very best in my life. I felt so incredibly at home, sage, safe, spirited, on mission, loved and loving. I have often wondered why once I left I did not return. Albeit the whole trip was not more than a few months, six at the most. The obvious part of my nature took steps in other directions....
Still it was like being home and then going back into the world, Boston, Aspen, New York, new friends, Harry MacAllister, Jim Wingers, Steven Young, Judie, Tina, Avivah, Laura Lea, new friends finding ways to be and feel at home in world which even in the best of times had a hostile edge compared that which I had felt on those buses. Freakfilled as it may have seemed to the world at large, the common connection to make the world a better place was the highest priority. It was an odd sort of Camelot.
Can you imagine, I was the straight man going a head of wildly painted school buses loaded with "freaks" in my best Brooks Brothers, wing tips, and the tabbaco pipe carried as my own youthful experiment of something more mature than my own years to announce to the little hamlets and places like Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor, Chicago, "Get ready there a bunch of long haired hippies coming to town with a new message about non drug highs!" And I loved it. I suppose ultimately the straight side got to me and I headed off to Boston, and eventually back to Boulder, and Aspen.
The last time I talked with Ken Kesey was in Boulder, probably 18 or 20 years ago. The last time I talked with Wavy Gravy was in San Francisco who chided me, "are you still interested in business, STILL!" Wavy was always sure that there was so much more to do than spend a life making a living when living a life spent on making love was so much more fun.
It has been a pleasure to walk this part of our lives with you. Making a home in our friendships is a good thing.
Florian