(This essay is adapted from my book,
The Gigging Life. It represents original reporting about a Ken
Kesey story that almost no has had ever heard of, but is my
favorite.)
The greatest Oregon literary gig of all
time is The Bend in the River Media Referendum. It culminated July
4th weekend 1974 in Bend, Oregon and traveled well beyond
words and stories and embraced grassroots politics and the promise of
democracy during the darkness of the Vietnam War and Watergate years.
It was a frantic, four-month, statewide
gig for a better Oregon future, funded by taxpayers, and orchestrated
by the greatest Oregon writer and impresario of all time.
Ken Kesey pulled it off, with a lot of
help from his friends and some Merry Pranksters, too. In essence, The
Bend in the River Media Referendum is the Wild West story of a lost
Merry Pranksters gig.
It has virtually disappeared from
Oregon history.
Until now:
Let Ken Kesey begin the tale. His
essay, “How it All Came Together,” opened the 126-page
Bend in the River Reality newsprint magazine published a month
after the Bend in The River Media Referendum concluded. It’s one of
the more psychedelic and prescient publications ever produced in
Oregon and virtually unread in over four decades. Very few copies
remain.
Kesey wrote:
“The madder
you get the madder you get….”
So there we are
after Sunday supper sitting around the dirty dishes and fresh coffee,
talking, me and Gary Mikklesen (Mikklesen is ten years my junior plus
his dad worked for my dad making prize winning Darigold ice cream for
the Eugene Farmers’ Co-operative Creamery but then see I worked as
second-string ice cream maker under Gary’s Dad, Mick Mikklesen,
during my adolescent son-of-the-boss years… all of which makes Gary
and me somehow eye-level on the Lane County turf) …talking about
the bleak, sad feeling of seeing things long-loved go under the
Roller of Heartless Progress, sipping coffee and griping, getting mad
and madder, wondering what could be done about the problem by a
notorious novelist gone bad and a slick-talking feed store
proprietor, done to somehow stall or at least call for a re-appraisal
of the Awful Roller, when I suddenly remember the pig farmer in
Montana…
THE PIG FARMER’S
NOTION
As a
panel-scarred veteran of numerous Humanities Conferences (the JFK
Symposium in Kansas City and the Montana Land Use Conference in
Billings, to name a couple) I have been impressed both by the
commendable wealth of information attracted to these events and by
the lamentable dearth of this wealth. The people just aren’t
getting the information. This was never made more clear than on the
final day of the conference in Billings when a raw-jawed pig farmer
in the hotel elevator asked me, “You one of them eck-ollygists flew
in here to talk to yerselfs?”
I had to admit I
was. I asked what he would do, if he were king, to change the
situation.
“Put it on
TV,” he answered. “just like they do the political conventions.
Then let the folks at home vote t’see who won. Simple….”
This project has
been our attempt to adapt that Montana pig farmer’s notion to the
Oregon situation. It wasn’t quite as simple as any of us first
figured.
THE GRANT
As Gary and I
were discussing our fantasy, the phone rang. It was Joyce Theios,
Vista Burnout, calling from San Bernardino, asking to speak to Faye
about onion sets. Faye wasn’t there but the call seemed fortuitous.
An ex-Vista Volunteer seemed exactly what was needed. I explained the
project to her and asked if she would like to be the secretary. Joyce
assured me she would help but it was to be definitely understood that
she was “not the secretary.” (In the months that followed there
were quite a number of fine folks, both yin and yang, who acted as
“Not the Secretary.”)
Joyce helped
Gary and me apply for the grant. I remember the first line of our
first application as a prime example of how not to mince words:“Dear
Humanities People: we need a hundred thousand bucks. . .” We then
submitted a revised budget for 87 thousand. Then 75. And finally—with
the help Bill Korns, Phil George, Bob Wynia, Jim Williams, Kathi
Wagner, Barbara Platz and Chuck Ackley—we were allotted $12,000,
as planning or “seed money,” by the Oregon Committee for the Arts
and Humanities.
Joyce was the
one who first heard from Chuck Ackley that our fantasy had actually
been funded. She told me over the phone that the Humanities people
considered us a definite gamble but nevertheless a gamble definitely
worth taking. After she hung up I called Gary at his feed store in
Crow: “Mikklesen, we got trouble. . . “
ADULT
OUT-OF-SCHOOLERS
I found out one
of the stipulations of the grant was involvement with a recognized
Humanist and an “adult, out-of-school public.” Gary had covered
this in the application by saying we would hold a bunch of what he
called “town meetings” with me acting as the honcho Humanist.
“Honcho what?”
I demanded in dawning aghastment? “You mean we have to hold
meetings all over this mother state! Who’ll come?”
“Wall-l-l-”
Mikklesen mused over the phone, “—if you don’t think we got the
juice to draw a crowd—.”
“But even so,
what’ll we do with them? We ain’t the King Family. . .”
“Why, chief,
didn’t you say you used to do a little magic show, silks and ropes
and so forth…?”
THE GLARE OF
DEMOCRACY
Eventually I did
remember the trick we had used in 1972 when we were trying to get the
Peoples’ Party going—to hold nominations and elections as a way
of involving the audience. It had been far more effective than the
usual one-way political bombast. So what we did at each Oregon
meeting was have me get up front at first and run thirty or forty
minutes of rap off the top of my shiny head, then open the floor to
nominations. When the blackboard got full someone always closed the
nominations and we heard from each candidate in turn.
Looking back, I
judge this part of the project my favorite—listening to these
nominees speak, feeling for them, seeing them thrust without
preparation into the glare of democracy at its starkest, and watching
them at first blink and bumble and blush then, finally, grandly,
bloom in its light.
After the
speeches we would elect however many the gathering thought right,
those elected to be delegates at a Council. All we could tell them
was that this council was to convene in Bend on the 4th
of July where they would address themselves to the issues concerning
the next 25 years of our state’s future, then present
these issues to the public via some kind of exciting new ballot. The
meetings broke up with everyone confused but enthused.
Someone could write a book about the
unlikely and inspiring story of the Bend in the River Media
Referendum. It most assuredly deserves a book-length treatment
because nothing comparable exists in the annals of American history:
a celebrated novelist gigging across his state on the taxpayers’
dime, at the tail end of the criminal Nixon Era, to rap with citizens
and envision a new path for a better Oregon in 2000.
Unfortunately, this short essay will
have to suffice for now. But it’s a story ready-made for an author or
filmmaker.
The chief source for the following
account of the Bend in the River Media Referendum is the Bend in
the River Reality, a truly remarkable piece of counterculture
journalism, some newspaper clippings, and interviews with David Dumas
and Walt Curtis, both participants in the community meetings and the
culminating event in Bend. It was Walt Curtis who said, that on the
drive over to Bend with Kesey, Kesey said in the back seat, “Oregon
is the citadel of the spirit.” That’s what he was feeling after
spending four months talking with so many Oregonians and listening to
their concerns and desires for their state’s future.
The central idea behind the Bend in the
River Referendum was to give the people the, “magic scepter of
democracy,” as Kesey described the grassroots process that called
upon Oregonians to gather across the state in their communities and
talk, and better yet, listen to one another.
The process entailed holding meetings
in Portland, in Eugene, Corvallis, Albany, Salem, Springfield,
Ashland, The Dalles, Coos Bay, Newport, Astoria and Fossil (!), where
attendees identified and discussed the issues and then cast ballots
to prioritize them for further discussion. Kesey hosted these
conclaves.
At the meetings, delegates were also
selected to represent their cities at the Bend in the River Media
Referendum over the July 4th weekend. The plan was to
tally all the ballots from the meetings and devise a working agenda
for the final gathering. In Bend, delegates would meet in groups on
specific issues and make policy recommendations. (It should also be
noted that after these meetings, held in venues such as churches,
fairgrounds, schools, libraries and colleges, Kesey and crew would
repair to a local watering hole and invite anyone who wanted to join
them. Can any Oregon writer do that sort of thing today?)
Who came to the meetings? Ken Babbs,
writing in The Bend in the River Reality, described them this
way: “They were young, but not all; there were long hairs but
short-cuts too. They wore overalls and business suits, granny gowns
and chic pantsuits. Some carried babes in arms. They came on foot and
bike, in pickups and Torinos.”
Accounts of the initial community
meetings in Eugene and Portland portray confusion, a penchant for
digression, and a distinct counterculture flavor. It is clear from
reading Bend in the River Reality that Kesey and crew knew
that their ad-hoc, freewheeling approach wasn’t going to fly in the
hinterlands, or even in Portland. This wasn’t the Oregon Country
Fair. They tweaked the space ship, reeled in the sky pilot, and
tightened the focus for future meetings. Apparently, the
modifications worked.
Concurrent to the community meetings
effort, the Bend in the River organizers also published a ballot in
many newspapers across the state and urged people to participate in
the process even if they didn’t attend the meetings. All they had
to do was fill out the ballot, tear it from the paper, and mail it to
the Bend in the River headquarters in Eugene. Eventually,
participants returned some 5000 ballots.
One hundred and seven delegates
convened at Central Oregon Community College in Bend to stage the
Referendum. There were early disagreements on procedures, agendas and
wording on abortion rights that threatened to disrupt the
proceedings, but they dissipated and the gig went on. Dr. Andrew Weil
showed up to talk about the medicinal benefits of plants used by
Native Americans. David Brower railed against nuclear power. Former
US Senator Wayne Morse, the Tiger of the Senate, trying to regain his
seat, gave a fiery speech on the perils of secret government.
Delegates formed groups on the following issues: Land Use, Health,
Education, Energy, Nuclear Power (moratorium), Amnesty (for Vietnam
War draft resistors), Computers (data collection!), Economy,
Communications (the role of the public trust in media). Fifty-nine
credentialed members of media came from all over the West, including
a writer from Rolling Stone and photographer Annie Lebowitz.
Interestingly enough, neither the Oregonian nor Oregon
Journal sent any reporters to the event. They probably considered
the whole thing too hippie and out of touch with reality.
Which it was and was not. That was the
whole point.
The Referendum culminated with a
90-minute show Sunday morning promulgating the policy positions on
the issues. It was aired live on Oregon Public Broadcasting. The
Merry Pranksters live into the living rooms of Oregonians!
Prior to the broadcast, Kesey gave a
quick lecture on manners and timing and warned that the Bend in the
River concept was on trial and Middle America was watching. Imagine
that! Ken Kesey warning his tribe to behave!
The show began. Kesey appeared and
explained the spectacle about to unfold. People at home were asked to
improvise ballots and mail them in later. Then the discussion about
Oregon’s future began. Ninety minutes later, after a closing Om
chant for all Christian Middle Oregon to ponder, the show ended. It
largely went off without a hitch.
There is probably nothing comparable to
that live program in the history of American television, at least how
it was detailed in the Bend in the River Reality. Someone
captured it on tape. The tape has gone missing. I know it’s out
there, in a Eugene basement or Springfield attic. Someone find it and
throw this artifact up on YouTube.
David Dumas recalls how The Bend in the
River Media Referendum ended:
On the last day,
after the media event ended and the news people were gone, the
Pranksters set up the gymnasium for a party/dance that I would
describe as a cross between a square dance and an acid test. Kesey,
playing the high priest, was breaking open chemical light sticks and
anointing everyone. I was wearing an old maroon sweater with jeans,
and Kesey came over and covered me with eerily green florescent
galaxies. Glowing, we formed a rumba line and snaked our way around
the auditorium.
A month later, Kesey and crew published
Bend in the River Reality: The BITR END and distributed
it via the mail and other unknown methods. Kesey concluded the
publication with a poem. Its second part read:
The people have
a wisdom no government can equal. The people are the computer, and
technology needed to tap this human resource bank is minimal.
The people are
not dumb.
The people can
run the ship through the rapids ahead better than any group of
elected officials.
The officials
need only gather the information and mount the argument and present
them to the people; the people will do the deciding. . .
It can be done
soon. It must be prepared for now.
Because if the
people aren’t driving there is always the possibility that some
maniac might grab the wheel.
Official
channels, like the Media Referendum, must be made available to the
people as a means of impeaching any part of the system that has gone
awry—any time.
It can be done.
It must be prepared for.
The gig was over. But it was also not
over. It’s never over.
Whether The Bend in the River gig made
any difference how Oregon ended up 45 years later is a matter for
further inquiry, conjecture and debate. It is no coincidence that in
the aftermath of that extraordinary gig, the thousands of Oregonians
it directly, organically engaged with peace, love and a willingness
to listen and learn from all walks of Oregon life, coupled with the
progressive measures enacted during Governor Tom McCall’s second
term, a zeitgeist for improved livability was seeded. Over time,
those seeds germinated, and later grew Oregon into one of the most
desirable places to live in the country. It’s the story of modern
Oregon.
