He was a nice man, not an a-hole. Leary was a bit of an exhibitionist and kind of phoney, to boot -- Kesey was who he was. The guy who said "totally without pretense" was right. But you can't always say that about the followers. Maybe it's just me. I spent a few weeks in all their company once after a friend took me up to at Ken Babbs' spread in Soquel, California, in the mountains above Santa Cruz. I also visited Kesey's place in La Honda after the SF acid test and Trips Festival. I got to know Babbs, the Pranksters, Kesey, Kesey and his beauteous wife (she reminded me June Carter Cash), were angels. Just downhome nice people. Sorry, but you couldn't say that about many of those Pranksters. They were always "pranking" somebody, which I didn't think was funny. They were rude, obnoxious, mean and insulting (this is not all of them -- not Ron Bivert, who was called Hassler, or Mike Hagen, a video operator. A few others were OK). But (if he reads this, guess I'll eat it), Babbs was a military man, who didn't appear to be raising his little kids very well. I remember him sitting on their bed socializing with the lights on and yelling at them for crying that they couldn't go to sleep that way. He left his nice country wife Anita to live in the same house with his snotty mistress, "Gretchen Fetchin'" (who, like Mountain Girl, never spoke to you if you were new and a stranger). He might have been Kesey's pal, but -- I could tell you stories.

Sometimes I've wondered why Kesey had to squander his writing career and hang out communally like this, but that's not recognizing who he was, and how much he meant to all of you. So that tells me something, this thread.