Ken Kesey (1935-2001) The Pied Piper of the Psychedelic Movement and the author of the acclaimed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. After taking Acid in the late 1950s,Kesey became enamored with the drug and its potentials. In the 1960s Kesey and his friends, dubbed the Merry Pranksters, took a 1939 International Harvester Bus, painted it in Day-Go colors and headed off to see America. The story of their adventures were told in Tom Wolfe¿s bestseller, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Acid Test referred to the second part of Kesey's adventure in which free ACID, light shows, etc. were given to members of the public who were then challenged not to freak out. In 1966 Kesey fled to Mexico to avoid a Marijuana charge but later returned and served 6 months on a work farm. While living in San Francisco and writing without much success, Kesey took a job as a night attendant in the psychiatric ward of a hospital where he observed that the system worked against the patient's recoveries. One night at work while on peyote he envisioned the character of Chief Broom who became the center of Cuckoo's Nest, which Kesey wrote while taking drugs. Published in 1962, the book was met with fine reviews and became a cult novel for those with anti-Establishment views that saw it as a metaphor for repression in America. His second novel Sometimes A Great Notion, published in 1964 was well reviewed but did not have great success. In 1967 he moved back to his family farm in Oregon where he remained for the rest of his life, writing, farming, and playing an active role in the community where he was on the school board and coached sports. He wrote several more novels, several collections of articles, children's books, edited a magazine and was an artist. One of the great characters of the American 20th Century, Kesey kept the famed bus, which he occasionally visited, hidden in his woods and refused to donate it to the Smithsonian.

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