Furthur

Furthur was a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964, for $1,250 from Andre Hobson in Atherton, California. The bus was stripped down and remodeled inside and out for a psychedelic excursion across the country with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters on board. The destination sign on the bus was painted to read "Further." When Kesey went to Mexico to avoid drug charges, the Pranksters took the bus down to see him, re-painting the manifest to read "Furthur" in a deliberately meek attempt at disguise. This latter spelling is the origin of the popularly misspelled name.

Beat legend Neal Cassady was the driver of the famous bus on its original trip to New York for the opening of Kesey's new book, "Sometimes a Great Notion". The trip was filmed by the Merry Pranksters. Other Furthur trips included an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1966 and Woodstock (without Kesey). More can be read about the adventures of the Merry Pranksters on Furthur in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test".

The Smithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus, but Kesey refused to give or sell it to them. In true form, Kesey attempted to prank the venerable Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus. They didn't fall for it.

Ken Kesey parked the bus in a swamp on his farm in 1990 when he acquired a new bus.

In November 2005, Furthur was pulled out of the swamp by Zane Kesey and a group of the original Merry Pranksters with the intent of restoring it. The estimate was around $100,000 would be needed to fix the badly rusted body, re-do the interior, restore the flooded drivetrain, and repaint the famous exterior. However according to key-z.com, Zane Kesey's site, the project is stalled and looking for a new group of volunteers to take it over.

Both buses currently reside at Kesey's farm (where his widow still lives) in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.

The two top photos are of the bus built by Kesey and the Pranksters in 1999.

In popular culture

The bus is mentioned in the song "The Other One" by the Grateful Dead, "the bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began...there was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land."

An allusion to the bus appears in the Steely Dan song "Kid Charlemagne", where it is referred to as a "Technicolor motor home".

The bus, along with the Acid Tests performed by its occupants, was featured in the 2007 movie "Across the Universe". Though accurate in detail, it was a Blue Bird school bus, rather than an International Harvester, its name being "Beyond".

External links

* [http://www.pranksterweb.org/further.htm Merry Prankster history page]
* [http://www.key-z.com Archives on Furthur with film footage from trips available for sale]
* [http://www.nofurthur.com/historic.html History at the NoFurthur site]
* [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002728584_keseybus09m.html Seattle Times article on Furthur's restoration]