The Purple Decades (23 page)
Read The Purple Decades Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
And then, at the Agency, the Americans began to treat him as one of them. There was this stupid moment when Aâ, an American who ranged just above him, was going off on holiday, and he said to him, very solemnly, in front of several Englishmen:
“Think about Pube-Glo for me while I'm gone.”
Not “think about the Pube-Glo account” or “work on the Pube-Glo campaign,” but think about Pube-Glo, with that pure, simple American double-think loyalty to the product itself. He had to stand there, in front of other Englishmen, and solemnly agree to think about Pube-Glo. What was worse, he would have to show some evidence of having thought about Pube-Glo when Aâcame back, which meant he would actually have to spend time out of his life thinking about this vile fake-erotic concoction named Pube-Glo.
The hell of it was, he gradually found himself thinking English, not necessarily wisely, but rather fundamentally. Two New York Italians came over to take overâ“hype up” was the term transmitted from New Yorkâthe art department, and he looked at them. They were dressed in flash clothes, sort of Sy Devore of Hollywood style, wearing tight pants like a chubby hairdresser, and right away they began changing this and that, like some sort of colonial inspector generals. They were creeps even by New York standards. Even? Where was his love of that delicious, cynical ⦠baldness â¦
Part of it was back in New York trampled to death. Jaysus, he didn't want to say anything, but the more he went to New York ⦠sometimes the whole ⦠attitude in New York was hard to take. He was in New York, staying at George's big apartment on East 57th
Street, and he had to get out to the airport. He had two huge heavy bags because it was just before Christmas and he was bringing back all sorts of things. So he half trundled them out to the elevator, and at length it arrived and he said to the elevator man: “Could you give me a hand with these, please?”
Street, and he had to get out to the airport. He had two huge heavy bags because it was just before Christmas and he was bringing back all sorts of things. So he half trundled them out to the elevator, and at length it arrived and he said to the elevator man: “Could you give me a hand with these, please?”
“I'm sorry, Mac,” the elevator man said, “I can't leave this elevator. My job is running this elevator. It's against the law, I can't leave a running elevator,” and so forth and so on, even after he had dragged the bags on himself, a lecture all the way down.
At the ground floor the doorman opened the door for him but looked at the bags as if they were covered with flies. Outside it was slushy and rainy, and there was a pond of slush out from the curb. So he said to the doormanâthis time summoning up the ancient accent of British command:
“Could you get me a cab, please.”
“No, I couldn't,” the man says, with just a hint of mockery. “I would, Buddy, but I can't. I can't get no cab on a night like this. You'll have to take your best shot.”
Finally he flags down a cab, and both the doorman and the driver watch, with great logistic interest, as he navigates the bags through the pond of slush, getting his shoes and socks wet. In the cab he tells the man he wants to go to the airport, and he answers, in a hideous impersonation of a Cockney accent:
“Ow-kay, guv.”
Then he turns up the car radio very loud to WQXR, the classical music station, apparently to impress him. The piece is something horribly morose by that old fraud Stravinsky.
Â
Back in London he learns that a few changes have taken place. The Hon.âââ, a melon-jawed ball of fire who is 31 and once had a job doing whatever it was, somewhere, has been brought in at a high level as a “consultant,” and so has young Ladyâââ. Meantime, Peter âââ, an Etonian, an Oxonian, first cousin of Lordâââ, has suddenly been elevated to his level after ten months with the firm. And gradually it becomes obvious. Advertising may be a new industry, it may be an American art, it may be a triumph of the New World, but in the competition for new accounts, the clientsâEnglish new money as well as foreign clientsâthey want to be dealing with an upper-class Englishman, want to feel they are buying upper-class treatment for their £20,000 or whatever, want to let their blood vessels dilate and their egos dilate over lunch at the Connaught with upper-class Englishmenâ
âbut wait a minute, it can't
all
go back to that, he will hang in there, try to get that inviolable feeling again, the best of both worlds,
and here amid the lyre-splat chairs, the bullion-fringe curtains, the old blacky Raeburn-style portraits, Roger! Have you met George? Cyril! Have you met George? Keith! Have youâ
all
go back to that, he will hang in there, try to get that inviolable feeling again, the best of both worlds,
and here amid the lyre-splat chairs, the bullion-fringe curtains, the old blacky Raeburn-style portraits, Roger! Have you met George? Cyril! Have you met George? Keith! Have youâ
âand Peter. Pe-t-e-r ⦠he watches Peter's lip curdle. It is as if it is taking forever, as in a Cocteau film, old George's eyes are frozen in the panic-grinning bobble, andâoh God of Fabrilex!ânone of these smart bastards are coming over for sherry after all, are they, ever, ever.
The Generation Gap
On Parents Day
Â
“Puh-leeze, Mummy, nobody wants to hear about coke, Acapulco, or Fleetwood Mac.”
I
couldn't tell you for sure which of the Merry Pranksters got the idea for the bus, but it had the Babbs touch. It was a superprank, in any case. The original fantasy, here in the spring of 1964, had been that Kesey and four or five others would get a station wagon and drive to New York for the New York World's Fair. On the way they could shoot some film, make some tapes, freak out on the Fair and see what happened. They would also be on hand, in New York, for the publication of Kesey's second novel,
Sometimes a Great Notion
, early in July. So went the original fantasy.
couldn't tell you for sure which of the Merry Pranksters got the idea for the bus, but it had the Babbs touch. It was a superprank, in any case. The original fantasy, here in the spring of 1964, had been that Kesey and four or five others would get a station wagon and drive to New York for the New York World's Fair. On the way they could shoot some film, make some tapes, freak out on the Fair and see what happened. They would also be on hand, in New York, for the publication of Kesey's second novel,
Sometimes a Great Notion
, early in July. So went the original fantasy.
Then somebodyâBabbs?âsaw a classified ad for a 1939 International Harvester school bus. The bus belonged to a man in Menlo Park. He had a big house and a lot of grounds and a nice set of tweeds and flannels and eleven children. He had rigged out the bus for the children. It had bunks and benches and a refrigerator and a sink for washing dishes and cabinets and shelves and a lot of other nice features for living on the road. Kesey bought it for $1,500âin the name of Intrepid Trips, Inc.
Kesey gave the word and the Pranksters set upon it one afternoon. They started painting it and wiring it for sound and cutting a hole in the roof and fixing up the top of the bus so you could sit up there in the open air and play music, even a set of drums and electric guitars and electric bass and so forth, or just ride. Sandy went to work on the wiring and rigged up a system with which they could broadcast from inside the bus, with tapes or over microphones, and it would blast outside over powerful speakers on top of the bus. There were also microphones outside that would pick up sounds along the road and
broadcast them inside the bus. There was also a sound system inside the bus so you could broadcast to one another over the roar of the engine and the road. You could also broadcast over a tape mechanism so that you said something, then heard your own voice a second later in variable lag and could rap off of that if you wanted to. Or you could put on earphones and rap simultaneously off sounds from outside, coming in one ear, and sounds from inside, your own sounds, coming in the other ear. There was going to be no goddamn sound on that whole trip, outside the bus, inside the bus, or inside your own freaking larynx, that you couldn't tune in on and rap off of.
broadcast them inside the bus. There was also a sound system inside the bus so you could broadcast to one another over the roar of the engine and the road. You could also broadcast over a tape mechanism so that you said something, then heard your own voice a second later in variable lag and could rap off of that if you wanted to. Or you could put on earphones and rap simultaneously off sounds from outside, coming in one ear, and sounds from inside, your own sounds, coming in the other ear. There was going to be no goddamn sound on that whole trip, outside the bus, inside the bus, or inside your own freaking larynx, that you couldn't tune in on and rap off of.
The painting job, meanwhile, with everybody pitching in in a frenzy of primary colors, yellows, oranges, blues, reds, was sloppy as hell, except for the parts Roy Seburn did, which were nice manic mandalas. Well, it was sloppy, but one thing you had to say for it; it was freaking lurid. The manifest, the destination sign in the front, read: “Furthur,” with two
u
'
s.
u
'
s.
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They took a test run up into northern California and right away this wild-looking thing with wild-looking people was great for stirring up consternation and vague befuddling resentment among the citizens. The Pranksters were now out among them, and it was exhilaratingâlook at the mothers staring!âand there was going to be holy terror in the land. But there would also be people who would look up out of their poor work-a-daddy lives in some town, some old guy, somebody's stenographer, and see this bus and register ⦠delight, or just pure open-invitation wonder. Either way, the Intrepid Travelers figured, there was hope for these people. They weren't totally turned off. The bus also had great possibilities for altering the usual order of things. For example, there were the cops.
One afternoon the Pranksters were on a test run in the bus going through the woods up north and a forest fire had started. There was smoke beginning to pour out of the woods and everything. Everybody on the bus had taken acid and they were zonked. The acid was in some orange juice in the refrigerator and you drank a paper cup full of it and you were zonked. Cassady was driving and barreling through the burning woods wrenching the steering wheel this way and that way to his inner-wired beat, with a siren wailing and sailing through the rhythm.
A
siren?
It's a highway patrolman, which immediately seems like the funniest thing in the history of the world. Smoke is pouring out of the woods and they are all sailing through leaf explosions in the sky, but the cop is bugged about this freaking bus. The cop yanks the bus over to the side and he starts going through a kind of traffic-safety inspection of the big gross bus, while more and more of the smoke is billowing
out of the woods. Man, the license plate is on wrong and there's no light over the license plate and this turn signal looks bad and how about the brakes, let's see that hand brake there. Cassady, the driver, is already into a long monologue for the guy, only he is throwing in all kinds of sirs: “Well, yes sir, this is a Hammond bi-valve serrated brake, you understand, sir, had it put on in a truck ro-de-o in Springfield, Oregon, had to back through a slalom course of baby's bottles and yellow nappies, in the existential culmination of Oregon, lots of outhouse freaks up there, you understand, sir, a punctual sort of a state, sir, yes, sir, holds to 28,000 pounds, 28,000 pounds, you just look right here, sir, tested by a pure-blooded Shell Station attendant in Springfield, Oregon, winter of '62, his gumball boots never froze, you understand, sir, 28,000 pounds hold, right hereâ” Whereupon he yanks back on the hand-brake handle as if it's attached to something, which it isn't, it is just dangling there, and jams his foot on the regular brake, and the bus shudders as if the hand brake has a hell of a bite, but the cop is thoroughly befuddled now, anyway, because Cassady's monologue has confused him, for one thing, and what the hell are these â¦
people
doing. By this time everybody is off the bus rolling in the brown grass by the shoulder, laughing, giggling, yahooing, zonked to the skies on acid, because, mon, the woods are burning, the whole world is on fire, and a Cassady monologue on automotive safety is rising up from out of his throat like weenie smoke, as if the great god Speed were frying in his innards, and the cop, representative of the people of California in this total freaking situation, is all hung up on a hand brake that doesn't exist in the first place. And the cop, all he can see is a bunch of crazies in screaming orange and green costumes, masks, boys and girls, men and women, twelve or fourteen of them, lying in the grass and making hideously crazy soundsâchrist almighty, why the hell does he have to contend with ⦠So he wheels around and says, “What are you, uhâshow people?”
siren?
It's a highway patrolman, which immediately seems like the funniest thing in the history of the world. Smoke is pouring out of the woods and they are all sailing through leaf explosions in the sky, but the cop is bugged about this freaking bus. The cop yanks the bus over to the side and he starts going through a kind of traffic-safety inspection of the big gross bus, while more and more of the smoke is billowing
out of the woods. Man, the license plate is on wrong and there's no light over the license plate and this turn signal looks bad and how about the brakes, let's see that hand brake there. Cassady, the driver, is already into a long monologue for the guy, only he is throwing in all kinds of sirs: “Well, yes sir, this is a Hammond bi-valve serrated brake, you understand, sir, had it put on in a truck ro-de-o in Springfield, Oregon, had to back through a slalom course of baby's bottles and yellow nappies, in the existential culmination of Oregon, lots of outhouse freaks up there, you understand, sir, a punctual sort of a state, sir, yes, sir, holds to 28,000 pounds, 28,000 pounds, you just look right here, sir, tested by a pure-blooded Shell Station attendant in Springfield, Oregon, winter of '62, his gumball boots never froze, you understand, sir, 28,000 pounds hold, right hereâ” Whereupon he yanks back on the hand-brake handle as if it's attached to something, which it isn't, it is just dangling there, and jams his foot on the regular brake, and the bus shudders as if the hand brake has a hell of a bite, but the cop is thoroughly befuddled now, anyway, because Cassady's monologue has confused him, for one thing, and what the hell are these â¦
people
doing. By this time everybody is off the bus rolling in the brown grass by the shoulder, laughing, giggling, yahooing, zonked to the skies on acid, because, mon, the woods are burning, the whole world is on fire, and a Cassady monologue on automotive safety is rising up from out of his throat like weenie smoke, as if the great god Speed were frying in his innards, and the cop, representative of the people of California in this total freaking situation, is all hung up on a hand brake that doesn't exist in the first place. And the cop, all he can see is a bunch of crazies in screaming orange and green costumes, masks, boys and girls, men and women, twelve or fourteen of them, lying in the grass and making hideously crazy soundsâchrist almighty, why the hell does he have to contend with ⦠So he wheels around and says, “What are you, uhâshow people?”
“That's right, officer,” Kesey says. “We're show people. It's been a long row to hoe, I can tell you, and it's
gonna
be a long row to hoe, but that's the business.”
gonna
be a long row to hoe, but that's the business.”
“Well,” says the cop, “you fix up those things and ⦔ He starts backing off toward his car, cutting one last look at the crazies. “ ⦠And watch it next time ⦔ And he guns on off.
That was it! How can you give a traffic ticket to a bunch of people rolling in the brown grass wearing Day-Glo masks, practically Greek masques, only with Rat phosphorescent
élan,
giggling, keening in their costumes and private world while the god Speed sizzles like a short-order French fry in the gut of some guy who doesn't even stop talking to breathe. A traffic ticket? The Pranksters felt more immune than ever. There was no more reason for them to remain in isolation while
the ovoid eyes of La Honda suppurated. They could go through the face of America muddling people's minds, but it's a momentary high, and the bus would be gone, and all the Fab foam in their heads would settle back down into their brain pans.
élan,
giggling, keening in their costumes and private world while the god Speed sizzles like a short-order French fry in the gut of some guy who doesn't even stop talking to breathe. A traffic ticket? The Pranksters felt more immune than ever. There was no more reason for them to remain in isolation while
the ovoid eyes of La Honda suppurated. They could go through the face of America muddling people's minds, but it's a momentary high, and the bus would be gone, and all the Fab foam in their heads would settle back down into their brain pans.
Â
So the Hieronymus Bosch bus headed out of Kesey's place with the destination sign in front reading “Furthur” and a sign in the back saying “Caution: Weird Load.” It was weird, all right, but it was euphoria on board, barreling through all that warm California sun in July, on the road, and everything they had been working on at Kesey's was on board and heading on Furthur. Besides, the joints were going around, and it was nice and high out here on the road in America. As they headed out, Cassady was at the wheel, and there was Kesey, Babbs, Page Browning, George Walker, Sandy, Jane Burton, Mike Hagen, Hassler, Kesey's brother Chuck and his cousin Dale, a guy known as Brother John, and three newcomers who were just along for the ride or just wanted to go to New York.
One of them was a young, quite handsome kidâlooked sort of like the early, thin Michael Caine in
Zulu
ânamed Steve Lambrecht. He was the brother-in-law of Kesey's lawyer, Paul Robertson, and he was just riding to New York to see a girl he knew named Kathy. Another was a girl named Paula Sundsten. She was young, plump, ebullient, and very sexy. Kesey knew her from Oregon. Another one was some girl Hagen of the Screw Shack had picked up in San Francisco, on North Beach. She was the opposite of Paula Sundsten. She was thin, had long dark hair, and would be moody and silent one minute and nervous and carrying on the next. She was good-looking like a TV witch.
Zulu
ânamed Steve Lambrecht. He was the brother-in-law of Kesey's lawyer, Paul Robertson, and he was just riding to New York to see a girl he knew named Kathy. Another was a girl named Paula Sundsten. She was young, plump, ebullient, and very sexy. Kesey knew her from Oregon. Another one was some girl Hagen of the Screw Shack had picked up in San Francisco, on North Beach. She was the opposite of Paula Sundsten. She was thin, had long dark hair, and would be moody and silent one minute and nervous and carrying on the next. She was good-looking like a TV witch.
By the time they hit San Jose, barely 30 miles down the road, a lot of the atmosphere of the trip was already established. It was nighttime and many souls were high and the bus had broken down. They pulled into a service station and pretty soon one of the help has his nose down in under the hood looking at the engine while Cassady races the motor and the fluorescent stanchion lights around the station hit the bus in weird phosphorescent splashes, the car lights stream by on the highway, Cassady guns the engine some more, and from out of the bus comes a lot of weird wailing, over the speakers or just out the windows. Paula Sundsten has gotten hold of a microphone with the variable-lag setup and has found out she can make weird radio-spook laughing ghoul sounds with it, wailing like a banshee and screaming “How was your stay-ay-ay-ay ⦠in San Ho-zay-ay-ay-ay-ay,” with the variable lag picking up the ay-ay-ay-ays and doubling them, quadrupling them, octupling them. An endless ricocheting
echoâand all the while this weird, slightly hysterical laugh and a desperate little plunking mandolin sail through it all, coming from Hagen's girl friend, who is lying back on a bench inside, plunking a mandolin and laughingâin what way â¦
echoâand all the while this weird, slightly hysterical laugh and a desperate little plunking mandolin sail through it all, coming from Hagen's girl friend, who is lying back on a bench inside, plunking a mandolin and laughingâin what way â¦
Outside, some character, some local, has come over to the bus, but the trouble is, he is not at all impressed with the bus, he just has to do the American Man thing of when somebody's car is broken down you got to come over and make your diagnosis.
And he is saying to Kesey and Cassady, “You know what I'd say you need? I'd say you need a good mechanic. Now, I'm not a good mechanic, but Iâ” And naturally he proceeds to give his diagnosis, while Paula wails, making spook-house effects, and the Beauty Witch keens and goonsâandâ
“âlike I say, what you need is a good mechanic, and I'm not a good mechanic, butâ”
Andâof course!âthe Non-people. The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell you they weren't qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do just that thing anyway. Kesey decided he was the Non-navigator. Babbs was the Non-doctor. The bus trip was already becoming an allegory of life.
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Before heading east, out across the country, they stopped at Babbs's place in San Juan Capistrano, down below Los Angeles. Babbs and his wife Anita had a place down there. They pulled the bus into Babbs's garage and sat around for one final big briefing before taking off to the east.
Kesey starts talking in the old soft Oregon drawl and everybody is quiet.
“Here's what I hope will happen on this trip,” he says. “What I hope will continue to happen, because it's already starting to happen. All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we're going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing.”
“Bullshit,” says Jane Burton.
This brings Kesey up short for a moment, but he just rolls with it.
“That's Jane,” he says. “And she's doing her thing. Bullshit. That's her thing and she's doing it.
“None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody's thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that's what he's going to do on this trip, kick asses. He's going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, âI'm sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I'm not sorry I'm an ass-kicker. That's what I do, I
kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip.”
kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip.”
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Haul ass, and what we are, out across the Southwest, and all of it on film and on tape. Refrigerator, stove, a sink, bunk racks, blankets, acid, speed, grassâwith Hagen handling the movie camera and everybody on microphones and the music blaring out over the roar of the bus, rock 'n' roll, Jimmy Smith. Cassady is revved up like they've never seen him before, with his shirt off, a straw version of a cowboy hat on his head, bouncing up and down on the driver's seat, shifting gearsâdoubledy-clutch, doubledy-clutch, blamming on the steering wheel and the gearshift box, rapping over the microphone rigged up by his seat like a manic tour guide, describing every car going by,
“âthere's a barber going down the highway cutting his hair at 500 miles an hour, you understandâ”
“So remember those expressions, sacrifice, glorious and in vain!” Babbs says.
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