It was after hearing Hunter S. Thompson speak at the Hilton. The bus, the newer one, of course, had been parked in front of the Hilton. I was walking home when it pulled into a parking lot so Kesey could fix something on the roof of the bus. I ran over and jumped on. I got a little bit of flack from some people on the bus, and when Kesey got back on he looked at me and said, "You don't want to end up out in the country with strange folk." I just shrugged and sat there, so with Kesey's nephew, Kit, at the wheel, off we went. Kesey, Dr. Thompson, Ken Babbs and some others started a game of poker at a table in the back. Ray Charles sang "Georgia On My Mind" over the sound system. Someone handed me a jug of koolaide. Maybe 20 to 30 minutes later we pulled up to Kesey's farm in Pleasant Hill, sheets of rain coming down, and the bus was backed into a huge barn. Giant movie lights were rolled out and lit up the colors on that bus in an amazing display, made all the more spectacular by the growing effects of the contents of that jug I took a large swig from. Kesey stepped down and eyed me a little suspiciously, but we just nodded to each other. It would take me another hour to type out what all I saw and heard, but the short version is we (a group of about 10 or so) sat around Kesey's kitchen table listening to him speak of many things, sometimes making a silver dollar appear and disappear in his hands. Dr. Thompson kept handing me shots of Wild Turkey. "Go ahead, son. Tastes like turpentine," he said. At one point Kesey had us follow him out to another barn where one of the groupies was given a bottle of milk to feed to his new calf, Bismarck. Later on, as I was really coming on, I ventured out to the bus barn and onto the bus where Kesey and Thompson were sharing a joint. I was handed the large roach as they got off, so I sat in the drivers seat and finished most of it. I still have the very tip end of it in an antique jar embossed with "Young American Liniment, New York". Around 3 or 4 in the morning someone offered to drive us back into Eugene, so I crammed in the back, Thompson in the front seat, and we drove to the Hilton. I shook Thompson's left hand (his right was wrapped in an ace bandage) and said goodnight. He said, "Goodnight, son." Then I continued my walk home. This was the high water mark of my otherwise uneventful life.
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