The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Ken Kesey is the main character in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and was the unofficial leader of the Merry Pranksters. He was raised in Oregon and was a star athlete in his high school and college years. He entered graduate school at Stanford on a creative writing fellowship in 1958, where lived on Perry Lane, the university’s bohemian quarter. At Stanford, he began volunteering at the veteran’s hospital and taking part in psychoactive drug studies, where he first discovered LSD. Kesey also took a job as a night watchman on the psychiatric ward, which provided much of the inspiration for his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He left Stanford and moved with his wife and kids to La Honda, California, where he invited lots of other friends to move and live communally with him so that they could partake in various experiments with psychedelic drugs. Kesey finished his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, and purchased an old school bus, which he and his friends, now called the Merry Pranksters, painted in Day-Glo colors so that they could drive across the country to the World’s Fair in New York. He was arrested twice for possession of marijuana and fled to Mexico to avoid jail time. Kesey reentered the US but was apprehended by the FBI. Facing severe jail time, Kesey told the judge that he planned to tell people to stop using acid, which significantly lessened his charges.

Neal Cassady was a central figure in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test because of his closeness to leader Ken Kesey and his status as an iconic figure of the Beat Generation. He was part of the inner circle of the Merry Pranksters. Cassady had been the model for Dean Moriarty, the main character of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road, and along with Kesey, he is seen as a significant link between the Beat Generation and the hippies of a decade later. While Cassady took part in the psychedelic drug use that Kesey championed, his primary drug seemed to be amphetamines. He is given the nickname “Speed Limit.”

Ken Babbs was a central figure in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test because of his closeness to leader Ken Kesey and his role within the inner circle of the Merry Pranksters. Babbs was in the Stanford graduate creative writing program with Kesey in 1958 and served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam after his fellowship ended. Babbs took over leadership of the group when Kesey fled to Mexico, and his role running the Watts Acid Test becomes a focal point in the book’s description of the ethical problems associated with Acid Tests. In particular, Babbs spikes the Kool-Aid without telling anyone, and he behaves abusively towards a girl having a bad trip. His nickname with the Pranksters was “Intrepid Traveler.”

Sandy Lehmann-Haupt was a member of the Merry Pranksters in the 1960s and one of the first to live communally at Kesey’s place in La Honda. Sandy’s older brother had been friends with Kesey on Perry Lane at Stanford and asked him to take Sandy with him to La Honda because he was having some mental health problems in New York. He was previously working as a sound engineer and Wolfe describes him as “a genius with tapes, soundtracks, audio systems and so forth” (37). Sandy was one of the only Pranksters who butted heads with Kesey, first when he used unauthorized acid on the bus trip to New York and later when they returned to La Honda had a physical confrontation about the sound system on the bus. After he suffered a breakdown and sought treatment, he asked Kesey if he could have his Ampex sound equipment back so that he could sell it to pay medical bills, but Kesey refused. Later, he traveled to Mexico to meet up with the Pranksters and took the equipment and left when no one was around. His Prankster name was “Dis-mount.”

George Walker was an old friend of Ken Kesey’s in Oregon who moved to La Honda after Kesey left Perry Lane. He was thus one of the first members of the Merry Pranksters. An audio-visual specialist and the son of a wealthy housing developer, he helped to fund many Prankster activities. His Prankster name was “Hardly Visible.” In Chapter 22, he joins Faye (Kesey’s wife), Babbs, and Gretchen as they all head to Mexico to find Kesey. In Mexico, he married Mountain Girl so that her baby could have full Mexican citizenship rights. At the end of the book, he and Mountain Girl return to Mexico to live there.

Paula Sundsten, known as “Gretchen Fetchin,” was a key member of the Merry Pranksters who joined the group as a guest of Steve Lambrecht, just before they left La Honda on their bus trip to New York. She originally intended to just catch a ride to New York, but became so immersed with the Pranksters that she stayed on the bus and returned with them to La Honda. She became romantically involved with Steve Babbs. Gretchen accompanied Faye (Kesey’s wife), Babbs, and George Walker as they traveled to Mexico to find Kesey who was in hiding there. She remained in Mexico, in Mazatlán, with the Kesey and the group, until their return to the United States. She was briefly given the moniker “Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen,” both because of her beauty and because she once went swimming in a pond in the desert and came out covered in green slime.

Page Browning, also known as the Cadaverous Cowboy or by his Prankster name “Zea-lot,” was one of the first Merry Pranksters to join and live in La Honda. Wolfe points out that Kesey know him on Perry Lane, but as more of a “low-rent” figure who would pop up occasionally than an actual student (62). Wolfe also suggests that Kesey saw him as loyal, brave, and creative and that he had rode with the Hell’s Angels at one time (62). Page is one of the Pranksters who went to Mexico to join Kesey, although he arrived there later than the rest. (Chapter 23).

Mike Hagen was a friend of Kesey’s back in Oregon who moved to La Honda and became a Merry Prankster. Hagen was known as something of a womanizer and perhaps something more. In Chapter 10, while the group is in Canada, he brings a girl back to the bus who has run away from home and is being sought by the mounties; Wolfe describes her as “tender in age” (111). Hagen was typically in charge of running the movie camera during Prankster activities. He joined the group when they moved to Mexico, and he was with Kesey when they were stopped by a police roadblock while driving to Guadalajara and found to be in possession of marijuana. His Prankster name was “Mal Function.”

Steve Lambrecht joins the Pranksters in La Honda, just before they embark for New York on the bus. He had actually planned just to be catching a ride across country to see a girl, but he became immersed with the Prankster lifestyle and came back across the country with them. Known by his Prankster name “Zonker,” Lambrecht was the only Prankster to flee with Kesey to Mexico. (The rest eventually caught up with them there.) In Chapter 15, Zonker is the one who tells the crowd that the Beatles are coming to hang out with the Pranksters after the concert, which results in hundreds of unexpected guests that night; the Beatles do not come.

Carolyn Adams, known as Mountain Girl, was a central figure in the psychedelic movement of the 1960s by virtue of her closeness to Ken Kesey and her role in the inner circle of the Merry Pranksters. She joined the Pranksters in 1964 when she was waiting at Kesey’s place in La Honda when they returned from New York. Although no one except Neal Cassady had known her previously, she fit in immediately and became one of Kesey’s closest confidants. Adams, along with a few other Pranksters, moved to Mexico to be with Kesey on the lam and gave birth to his child while there. After the Pranksters scattered, she settled in with the Grateful Dead.