Another legacy of the Beats bites the dust. Kesey was an interesting novelist and prose stylist, and owed much to Kerouac. His "Furthur" bus concept made this link explicit with Neal "Dean Moriarty" Cassady as the driver, though Kerouac wanted nothing to do with this crowd (their use of the flag as seat cover deeply offended him, and he solemnly folded it up in front of the acid-drenched kids who worshipped him). Tom Wolfe turned Kesey into a cartoon character, perhaps with some help from Kesey himself, but I don't think he was taken too seriously after that.
I did like one of the slogans on the bus: "A Vote For Goldwater Is A Vote For Fun!"
DP