Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.
History Kesey traveled to New York City in November 1963 with his wife Faye and Prankster George Walker to attend the Broadway opening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was based on his 1962 novel. Kesey also saw the 1964 New York World's Fair site under construction. He needed to return to New York City in 1964 for the publication party for his novel Sometimes a Great Notion, and hoped to use the occasion to visit the Fair. This plan grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends, turning their adventures into a road movie, taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road. As more Pranksters volunteered for the trip, they soon realized they outgrew Kesey's station wagon, so Kesey bought a retired yellow school bus for $1,250 from Andre Hobson of Atherton, California. The license plates read "MAZ 804". Hobson had added bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a refrigerator and stove for taking his eleven children on vacation.
The Pranksters added customizations, including a generator, a sound system (with an interior and external intercom), a railing and seating platform on top of the bus, and an observation turret coming out the top made from a washing machine drum fitted into a hole in the roof. Another platform was welded to the rear to hold the generator and a motorcycle. The bus was painted by the various Pranksters in a variety of psychedelic colors and designs. The paint was not DayGlo (which was not yet common in 1964), but primary colors, and the peace symbol was not yet evident. The word 'Sunshine' was written in blue, but it was too early to have references to orange sunshine LSD or Kesey's not-yet-conceived daughter Sunshine. The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern, painting the word "Furthur" (with two U's, quickly corrected) on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. The misspelled name is still often used, as in Wolfe's book.
"And there is also the fact that there is no original bus in a sense that it was changing all the time. They would paint it wildly psychedelic one day and then go paint it black the next day if they had one particular event they wanted to have a black bus in. And immediately they'd go paint it wildly psychedelic again. There were places on that bus where the paint was literally over an inch thick." The original bus's last journey was a trip to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. After its historic trips, the bus was gutted and used around the Keseys' farm in Oregon until at least 1983. It was mentioned and pictured in an article in the May–June Saturday Review. It was eventually parked in the swamp on Kesey's farm and gradually returned to the elements, until it was dragged out of the swamp with a tractor and stored in a farm warehouse. In 2026, Kesey's son Zane announced that the bus will leave Oregon for the first time since 1969. A flatbed truck will carry the bus into San Francisco where it will be put on display beginning on September 5, 2026 for the "Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park" celebration put on by the Haight Street Art Center.
Participants
The list of participants is undocumented. They took the general name "Merry Band of Pranksters" shortened to Merry Pranksters, but many Pranksters chose not to go, and others became Pranksters only because they chose to go. Chloe Scott (founder of the Dymaxion Dance Group in 1962, age about 39) only lasted a day, because the chaos was too much for her. Cathy Casamo, friend of Mike Hagen, joined at the last minute, hoping to star in the movie they were supposedly making, but she was left behind in Houston. Neal Cassady showed up at the last minute and displaced Roy Sebern as driver, as far as New York state. Ken Babbs probably did not plan to venture past his San Juan Capistrano home. Merry Prankster and author Lee Quarnstrom documents events on the bus in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter! Jane Burton, George Walker, Steve Lambrecht, Paula Sundsten (Gretchen Fetchin), Sandy Lehmann-Haupt (sound engineer, younger brother of Christopher, and important source for Tom Wolfe's account ), Page Browning, Ron Bevirt (photographer and bookstore owner), and siblings Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, and John Babbs are also named as participants. The group decided to dress in red, white, and blue stripes (so they could claim to be loyal patriots), maybe with distinctive patterns so they'd be easier for future film-goers to tell apart. They also brought a Confederate flag. Their haircuts were conservative; long hair came into fashion with the Beatles. Tom Wolfe's book gives the misleading impression he was a participant (he met Kesey the following year). Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams Garcia (not present) is often confused with Cathy Casamo. Kesey's wife Faye is sometimes included, and Furthur-painter Roy Sebern. Robert Stone met them briefly in New York city.
Drugs Kesey had a generous supply of the then-legal psychedelic drug LSD, and they reportedly also took 500 Benzedrine pills (speed), and a shoebox full of rolled marijuana cigarettes. They were stopped several times by law enforcement, but explained to the officers they were filmmakers. LSD wasn't actually made illegal until 1966. At the time of the bus run drug use had received too little media attention for officials to be alarmed.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
