"That's the show. Jack Webb was irate over the growing use of drugs in L.A. 'They've got a bus,' he told his partner Frank. 'A school bus?' Frank says. 'All painted up in weird colors. It's been driving down Sunset Boulevard with a sign on the side that says, CAN YOU PASS THE ACID TEST?' Frank shakes his head. Bomb-ba-bomb bomb...
"What are you, uh - show people?"
A siren? It's a highway patrolman, which immediately
seems like the funniest thing in the history of the world. Smoke is pouring
out of the woods and they are all sailing through leaf explosions in the
sky, but the cop is bugged about this freaking bus. The cop yanks the bus
over to the side and he starts going through a kind of traffic-safety inspection
of the big gross bus, while more and more of the smoke is billowing out
of the woods. Man, the license plate is on wrong and there's no light over
the license plate and this turn signal looks bad and how about the brakes,
let's see that hand brake there. Cassady, the driver, is already into a
long monologue for the guy, only he is throwing in all kinds of sirs: "Well,
yes sir, this is a Hammond bi-valve serrated brake, you understand sir,
had it put on in a truck ro-de-o in Springfield, Oregon, had to back through
a slalom course of baby's bottles and yellow nappies, in the existential
culmination of Oregon, lots of outhouse freaks up there, you understand,
sir, a punctual sort of a state sir, yes sir, holds to 28,000 pounds, 28,000
pounds, you just look right here, sir, tested by a pure-blooded Shell Station
attendant in Springfield, Oregon, winter of '62, his gumball boots never
froze, you understand sir, 28,000 pounds hold right here - " Whereupon
he yanks back on the hand-brake as if it's attached to something, which
it isn't, it is just dangling there, and jams his foot on the regular brake,
and the bus shudders as if the hand brake has a hell of a bite, but the
cop is thoroughly befuddled now, anyway, because Cassady's monologue has
confused him, for one thing, and what the hell are these...people
doing. By this time everybody is off the bus rolling in the brown grass
by the shoulder, laughing, giggling, yahooing, zonked to the skies on acid,
because, mon, the woods are burning, the whole world is on fire, and a Cassady
monologue on automotive safety is rising up from out of his throat like
weenie smoke, as if the great god Speed were frying in his innards, and
the cop, representative of the people of California in this total freaking
situation, is all hung up on a hand brake that doesn't exist in the first
place. And the cop, all he can see is a bunch of crazies in screaming orange
and green costumes, masks, boys and girls, men and women, twelve or fourteen
of them, lying in the grass and making hideously crazy sounds - christ almighty,
why the hell does he have to contend with ... So he wheels around and says,
"What are you, uh - show people?"
"That's right, officer," Kesey says. "We're show people.
It's been a long row to hoe, I can tell you, and it's gonna be a long row
to hoe, but that's the business."
"Well, " says the cop, "you fix up those things and..."
He starts backing off toward his car, cutting one last look at the crazies.
"...And watch it next time..." And he guns on off. ~Tom
Wolfe