Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters

Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters were living in a retirement village outside of San Francisco. No one thought much of Ken anymore and The Merry Pranksters were all trying to use the internet to market their individual Prankster 'characters' memorabilia to (mainly) Burning Man devotees. This had limited success as they were all advanced seniors and could not consistently figure out things like sending simple emails. Ken Kesey still had 'the bus' and was actually sitting in it when I met him. He was fuming because he had wanted surf & turf for dinner but his wife wanted Chinese take-out to eat in front of the TV. It was about 4 in the afternoon. As I sat in the passenger seat of the bus, Ken looked forlornly out the windshield at all the elderly Pranksters (many using 'bedazzled' walkers and Hover-rounds...). He said, 'This is shit.' I told him I had to agree that it was. As we watched, Abbie Hoffman made his way through the crowd to a slightly elevated  podium. He was wearing a short sleeve polyester grandpa version of his infamous flag shirt and saying, 'People... people..' into a white blow-horn. The Pranksters largely ignored him, but a few blew him raspberries and told him to go sit down. 'Ugh, this asshole...' said Kesey nodding toward Hoffman, 'simply will not fucking quit.' 'Hey,' I said, 'wanna go to surf & turf?' Kesey instantly brightened, 'Really?. 'Yeah, I'm starving- I haven't had lunch yet.', I lied. Kesey happily excused himself to let his wife know he would bring her back Chinese and left me in the bus. As I waited, an old woman kept beckoning for me to come out. I opened the door of the bus and walked toward her. Her smile was manic and her dentures kept slipping down. 'I'm Lorraine!' she said as if it should trigger my recognition. 'Who?' I asked. 'Lorraine. LOR-RAINE!' she said loudly and shook a stack of 8x10 faded color photographs of a 20-something woman wearing hippie drag and riding a unicycle. I looked from the image in the photo back to Lorraine. Indeed, they were wearing vaguely similar outfits. 'Do you want one, honey? Only 10 bucks!' Lorraine said as she shoved the trembling stack of photos near my face. 'Uh...no...thanks anyway.' I answered. 'FUCK YOU!' shouted Lorraine. 'AND FUCK BURNING MAN, TOO!'

Just then, Kesey returned. I drove him to dinner and then after we stopped at a road-side carnival so we could take a go at the roller coaster. As the coaster started it's clacking ascent, Kesey looked at me and said, 'Please don't take me back there...'.