In 1992 I was working for Jerry Brown when he ran for President, sought the Democratic nomination against Bill Clinton. I was National Grassroots Director, and directed the campaign in Oregon.

By the time the campaign got to Oregon we were in bad trouble. We had long lost the momentum that we had earlier, when Jerry beat Clinton in 5 of 6 states, our campaign was all but over. Only the true believers stayed, and showed up.

Even so, we pulled larger crowds everywhere in Oregon than Clinton did.

Jerry was making a sweep down the I-5 corridor. We had nearly 13,000 people in the rain in Portland (always the rain in Portland, I was there early and the old hippie who owned the billion-watt PA we were using goes, "Do you mind if I play some Dead to see how it sounds?" "Of course not, I love the Dead." He plays "Box of Rain" out into the shining square with raindrops glistening down the covers of the speakers).

Jerry went on to make stops in Corvallis, Albany; I headed straight down to do advance work in Eugene. There are already nearly 2000 people milling around, five hours ahead of when he is scheduled to speak. Ken Kesey is lined up to be the warm-up speaker. I tell the local people, "great work" and go off to find a sandwich and a beer. A few hours later the crowd has doubled. It's a college town notorious for acoustic rhythms and granola lifestyle. No less than the Wall Street Journal referred to it as "the last refuge of the terminally hip."

Half an hour before Jerry is scheduled to go on the field is packed, maybe ten thousand people. Students in tie-dye and Birkenstocks, professors in beards and corduroy, guys in suits, ladies in sweats, little kids, members from a local commune dressed only in white sheets and each one marked with names of the deadly sins (I remember "avarice"). Absolutely surreal, post mortem politics.

Someone introduces me to Kesey and I go something like, "It's a great honor to meet you, Mr. Kesey, I love your work," etc. His eyes are pinwheeling out of his head and he is wearing a star-spangled straw hat. He says that he is pleased to meet me too, and gives me a calendar with pictures of his bus to give to Jerry. He wanders off, trying to start arguments with the students, especially the ones who like him.

The phone rings, it's for me. Jerry is going to be about three hours late.

As usual.

He's always stopping and getting into good conversations. You can't get mad at him, no one works as hard as he does. I get tired looking at his schedule: wake up 4:15 a.m., wheels up 4:45 a.m., five airports and eight cities later wheels down for the last time 10:30 p.m., to bed, 2:45 a.m.

Like that every day for 18 months.

Kesey is ready to go on. "Umm, Mr. Kesey, we have a problem...Jerry is running a little late, nothing to worry about...he usually runs late, but we're going to have to hold off for a little while-"

"How late is he?"

"Three hours late, even later than usual. He um, you know, loves Oregon-"

"Ah, three hours! No problem! I can hold this crowd for three hours!" I nod, thinking that his sense of time is hopelessly warped but I don't have much choice. The natives are getting restless and the sight of Big Ken taking the podium busts the tension wide open into a sort of localized pagan celebration.

Kesey starts out some story about waiting in line at a liquor store, listening to the radio, really wanting to drink some Schnapps. He weaves his web, always coming back to the scene in the liquor store. We should enjoy scenes like that, he says, enjoy getting ready to do things that we enjoy. He's not talking much about politics for the most part, then all of a sudden he goes for Clinton's jugular.

"You know, my friends," (general murmuring of agreement in the crowd), "Bill Clinton's lips represent an evolutionary ideal! Those lips are the direct result of generation after generation, hundreds of generations since the dawn of time....all ass-kissers! Bill Clinton's lips are the perfect lips for kissing ass!!!!!" (the crowd is going wild) "But you better watch out my friends, because it's not my ass, or your ass, that those lips want to kiss. They want to kiss the ass of EXXON and General Electric, and-" (pandemonium drowns him out as he stands there wild and bright-eyed in his star-spangled hat and white suit).

He eventually went back to talking about trying to buy Schnapps and standing in line at the liquor store-

Jerry showed up. I whispered quickly to him, he smiled. "How long has he been on?"

"A little over three hours." No one had left. "I think they're ready for you."

"No, I want to hear this for awhile." Kesey kept going on, eventually looked over and saw Jerry. Jerry waived him on. Kesey went on another half hour or so, then introduced Jerry....to ten thousand fever pitched believers, exhausted but not subdued.

************************************************

During the years that I lived on the McKenzie River, twenty-five miles east of Eugene at the foot of the Cascades, I saw Kesey a few more times; at Grateful Dead shows and at political rallies and fundraisers.

One of the fundraisers was at The Good Times, a blues bar owned by my landlord, and where I once worked the door for a few weeks while I was looking for a real job. It was a fundraiser against an initiative by the evangelical Christian right to limit the rights of homosexuals.

It was a rainy (Oregon) Sunday night, and the event drew maybe 200 people, which I knew was good for a Sunday night at The Good Times, usually we got maybe 20 people for open mic night, and every week the same ones.

Kesey showed up carrying a plastic fish, and settled in at the bar for a few glasses of red wine before his speech. People in the crowd edged in two or three at a time for a few minutes in Kesey's court, then moved on.

I reminded him of the "evolutionary ideal" elements of his speech and he laughed heartily, "Ha! Yeah, I caught hell from the local Democrats for that one! What did they do-?" he turned to his friend, "they didn't invite me to a party or something they were so mad about that!" He laughed some more, mumbling asides about what kind of parties they had anyway.

I got my five minutes or so in and moved along. After his speech he came over and we spent 45 minutes or so talking about various casual things.

In his speech he said that he'd just got back from Poland. "Do you know who the most popular bands in Poland are?" he asked. We didn't.

"Deep Purple and Bad Company!" We laughed, we all have Deep Purple and Bad Company records in the garage, or in my case, the living room. "They don't know what the sixties were," he concluded, "they just know that they need to have one!"

sometimes I have a great notion to go home