His Shoes and a Note

​Fourteen of us got busted at Ken Kesey’s house for pot. We went to court, and our lawyer made a deal where we all got off except Ken. The reason was that Neal Cassady had already been busted twice for felonies. In California if he went down for another felony, he’d be in jail for another ten or fifteen years. So they made the deal that Ken would take the rap and the rest of us would go free.

​When it came time for Kesey to show up in court and get his conviction, he didn’t show up. He “committed suicide.” He left his shoes and a note on the beach in California and disappeared. What really happened was a buddy of his drove him down to Mexico in an old truck. We knew about it, but the rest of us were still doing the Acid Tests in LA. We had the bus down there, we had a place to stay, and we were doing these shows every Saturday night. The Hog Farm had joined up for that.

​LSD was going to become illegal the next day in California. So after the Acid Tests, we jumped on the bus and headed down to Mexico. We went way down in Mexico, on the ocean. We stayed there six months till our visas expired and we came back along with Kesey. During that time my first wife came down with my kids to visit. My second wife was down there and gave birth to our daughter Casa. Mountain Girl birthed Sunshine Kesey in Mexico. They’re about a month apart in age.