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I Work for the Railroad
I got taken up to Ken Kesey’s by Neal Cassady. I had split up with my then-boyfriend, this really nice guy named David who was an art student at the University. It was the end of the semester in June 1964 when his mom came and collected him and took him back to Kansas. I was in shock, because we had a good thing going. I rode away on my little motorcycle, as his mom was getting him to pack up his little house, and went over to St. Michael’s Alley, which was the coffee shop that everybody went to on University Avenue in Palo Alto.
Robert Hunter was the manager there at that time. He was well known for having a bad temper. I parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk and he immediately came out and said, “You’ve got to move your motorcycle, you can’t park it there.” He razzed me pretty hard, so I reparked in a better spot even though I was in a terrible mood.
I went inside and ordered a cup of coffee with a scoop of ice cream in it, because I was feeling really sorry for myself. I sit down and these two guys came in. One was an older guy, Neal Cassady, and the other was a cute younger guy with a Beatles haircut, which was really popular then. They dialed in on me at once, and within half a minute they were over at my table wanting to know if I knew where Joe was. I was thinking, “What is this, a Mad Magazine moment?”
They were looking for this guy that they knew but couldn’t find him. Neal was talking up a blue streak: “We’re going to go here, we’re going to go there. Hey, honey, you want to go smoke a joint?” I had one in my pocket and said “OK.” They ushered me outside to this little white station wagon that had a weird logo on the door. We got in and Neal was just talking and talking, but it was interesting. He was talking about instantaneous matter transmission and science-fiction stories and relating them to passages in the Bible.
He started the car up and drove a few blocks up the street, crossed the railroad tracks, slammed the car into reverse, then backed the car onto the railroad tracks and gunned it. We went north on the railroad tracks (in reverse), and it was well after dark at this point, so the headlights were on. At this point I was laughing, because these guys were the weirdest idiots I’d ever met in my life.
I asked, “Why are you driving in reverse on the railroad tracks?” Neal said, “Well, it saves the front end and it’s not my car.” In other words, it was supposed to protect the undercarriage of the car from any damage. We went five or six blocks backwards on the railroad tracks, and I was starting to panic because a train might be coming. Neal told me, “No, no, don’t worry dear, I work for the railroad. Not a problem.”
I was barely catching my breath. He swung the car off the railroad tracks and down into Lone Tree Park in Palo Alto. We got out and sat on this bench and smoked a joint. About five minutes after we parked the car, here came the train, right where we had been. I’m thinking to myself, “These guys are crazy, but I kind of like them.”
After we finished the joint, Neal said, “Let’s go drive around for a while,” and I was in that kind of mood, so I answered, “OK.” We drove around all night long with him showing off all his amazing driving skills. We wound up at Kesey’s at 4:00 in the morning, just as the sun was coming up. Neal had to get the car back: it was Ken’s car. We pulled into the driveway and it was all completely quiet. We tiptoed out of the car, and Ken came around the corner.
He took us into his little writing studio and talked to us for hours, really. I was completely smitten by that time. I was over the moon, because I had finally met some interesting people. Even though we had just met, I felt like I’d known them forever.
I was an avid reader, the biggest bookworm in the world, but I had never read any of Kesey’s stuff. I was too young, really, for his stuff. There I was listening to this famous author tell me how to construct a proper sentence. Then he pulled out a drawer full of clippings, stuff he’d clipped out of his own work and worked over. He showed me how the mice had started to chew on them. He was completely fascinating and so open to telling his writing secrets to some random stranger chick. |