From Bob Sarles
In '97 I was at a party thrown for the opening of an exhibit focusing on the psychedelic music era at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I directed the documentary film "Feed Your Head" that was commissioned for the exhibit (produced by Dave Cunningham). During the party someone introduced me to Ken Kesey. When Kesey was told that I was the director of the film for the exhibit, he slapped me hard on the back and said "You got the story right, not many do." Coming from Kesey, that was one of the greatest compliments I ever received.

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Running into the Hog Farm in Aspen Meadows New Mexico August 1969

By Bill Keenom

We were hitch-hiking through there on our way back to Portland from Taos, NM when this guy picked us up and said "Hey there's this trippy party up the hill from here, wannago?" We of course were up for any party, so we get there, and Ken Kesey is offering to throw our I Ching while sitting crosslegged in the bed of a Datsun pickup, drinking a bottle of Spanada and he had an American flag tooth when he smiled (and even when he didn't).

I ended up losing my vision over some dust sprinkled marijuana while on one of the buses going down the valley draw in the famous bus races chronicled in "Flashback," y'know the one with the 8mm film documenting the race. At the end of the weekend in Aspen Meadows a couple of the Hog Farm kids who had befriended us invited us to go with them to some big concert in New York. We were kinda burned out and told them, naw, we'd better continue on to Portland and rest up a bit. And of course the day we got back home, the headlines were "Half a million kids overrun Bethel New York! National disaster declared!" For once we weren't part of the problem. DAMN!!! Been kickin' myself ever since.....

Also ran into Ken at McArthur Court (UofO) during a poets' "hoo-haw" in 1990 or so. My friend Walt Curtis had been a part of Spit in the Ocean with Ken, (a tabloid type arty paper) and Walt suggested we attend this get-together. I spent just a few minutes with Ken talking about politics and history, but the thing I'll never forget was that he wore a brown tee shirt that so full of holes, it would've been turned into a cleaning rag at my house long ago. He told me he really liked that tee shirt, that it was very comfortable and had been with him through lots of happenings. I took from his reflection on his tee shirt that Ken was not only comfortable in his clothing, but also very comfortable in his skin, ready to approach the world on his own terms without bowing to any culture's dictates.

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Thanks to Hammond Guthrie for the following (via Punmaster Music Wire)

From the Kesey Memorial in Eugene:

Ken's brother Chuck noted that when he told the youngest member of the Kesey clan that Ken was gone - the youngster replied: "So now whose gonna teach us to hypnotize the chickens?"

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