Ken Kesey (1935-2001) wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and is a subject in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. To celebrate his birthday, we’ve unearthed this piece originally published in the May, 1994 issue of High Times.
A couple years back, a woman from East Germany came by the farm. She was an absolutely beautiful woman, an Olympic pentathlete, about 6’2″. This was after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Apparently, there was a lot of money left over from the Marshall Plan that had never been used.
Many people, who had never been able to travel outside of the Iron Curtain, were able to get money and travel to the United States.
She was traveling across the country and was actually studying the ’60s. She’d been wined and dined the entire way. This was during the Gulf War—Desert Storm—and she’d attended all of these conventions and honorary dinners that were being given for East Germans and ex-Communists.
Because of the war, these functions had been heavily laden with military traffic—a lot of army people. Also a lot of bad roast beef. She confided to us that there seemed to be a lot of machismo evident at these affairs—that it reminded her of what she’d read about Germany in the 1930s.
Anyway, Ken Babbs and I were driving her around, showing her places around Oregon. I got out a joint, passed it and immediately she said, “Oh, no! Oh, no! I don’t do the dope! I don’t do the dope!”
I said, “My God! You’re over here studying the ’60s and you haven’t smoked dope? That’s like being a downhill skier and hating snow. This is one of the things the ’60s ran …
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Author: High Times / High Times
