MERRY PRANKSTERS

Page Two

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

New Orleans! Hot, steamy and sultry, combined with delightful decadence and debauchery to help create the Tennessee William's classic, "A Streetcar Named Desire". The tormented and t-shirted Stanley Kowalski hit the Broadway stage in 1947 but in 1951 made the celluloid jump to the big screen. Brando bravado blazed across the screen as he stood in the streets and yelled the now famous..."STELLA!!" Kim Hunter played a sterling Stella to Brando's Stanley, but it was Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois that had to board the streetcar named Desire, and yes, there actually was a streetcar by that name.

As electricity ignited and lighted the streets of urban America, the horse drawn carriages gave way to the automobile for those that could afford them, and electic railway cars, or streetcars that criss crossed a city like so many vericose veins for the great masses of the population. In New Orleans alone, there were over 200 miles of streetcar lines, operated by the New Orleans Railway and Light Company that connected the city's residents and business. One of them, Car #453, ran from Canal Street to Bourbon to Desire to Royal and back to Canal. It was called the Desire Corridor, and car #453 was the streetcar named Desire. Desire ran proudly from 1920 until 1948 when it was replaced by a bus named Desire.

Nostalgia for a tawdry past, and the steamy Tennessee Willams play are bringing about efforts to reinstitute the past, but the future is still unknown at this point of what will happen with the old girl. Desire was lost to the ages until someone discovered her sitting alone and forlorn at the Transit Station Streetcar Barn. Don't despair, Desire hasn't been totally forgotten in this town of Mardi Party Heartiness...there's a Stella Calling Contest everyear so a guy can still practice his Marlon Machismo....STELLA!!

KEN KESEY AND THE MERRY PRANKSTERS

The Spare Change Sixties came on like a dayglo banshee, screaming and screeching. The counter culture on the move like so many ants across the asphalt expanse of America. The East Village and Haight Ashbury, psychedelic bookends anchored on their respective fog and smoke enshrouded coasts. The ragtag army traveling by thumb, by car and in V-dub vans. One group decided it was time to load up the bus, inhale deeply and take a whole generation on a magical journey aboard a 1939 International Harvester schoolbus named "Further".

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters flew over the cuckoo's nest of the tie-dyed decade by buying an old school bus and loading it up with cargoe, contraband and contraptions including musical instruments, speakers, electronics, bong pipes and other necessities of such a journey from one coast to the other. Ken's first novel, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" was a success and in 1964 Ken and Company were ready to celebrate the publication of "Sometimes a Great Notion" with a cross country chemical mission of conquest. The old school bus was painted in brilliant flourescents with a variety of symbols, some mystic, some fun, but when viewed collectively, pure haiku. The bus was named "Further" in honor of it's ultimate destination, and at the helm was Captain Kesey, but in the drivers seat was non other than Jack Kerouac's real live Dean Moriarity, Neal Cassidy, gearjamming across the black jazz asphalt night of the continent, and all the while loudspeakers were blaring and the Pranksters pranking their way across America in a journey that would become the subject matter of Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test".

In time, Ken had to hide out in Mexico, controlled substance thing you know, and took the bus with him, but changed the name to "Furthur" to throw off authorities. The dayglo and flourescents not withstanding, the plan actually appeared to work. Eventually time passed, as time will do, and Ken settled into an argrarian/literati existence on his farm in Oregon, and "Further", the proud asphalt warrior settled into a existence of rust and weeds in the back forty.

Ken Kesey died in 2001, but the bus is about to get a makeover. Zane Kesey is having his dad's bus restored to it's Prankster heyday best and is gearing up for one more roadtrip and to go just ...a little further.

THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY

C'mon get Happy!! I'll spare you the happy smiley face, but that was the song that called all of pre-pubescent America to the tube to oooh and awe at teen dream David Cassidy. The Partridge Family lip synched their way through the trials and tribulations of the pre-disco Ice Age of the early '70's when the land was covered in a polyester glacier of bell bottoms and liesure suits, and became the television version of the Von Trapps, and entered the annals of American pop culture. Was it the redheaded Danny the Brat that drew us to the show? Shirley as Mama Patridge, all knowing and all smiling that kept us hooked? No! It was that wild 1957 Chevrolet school bus with the post-Kesey influenced paint job that rocked our polyester socks.

"Careful, Nervous Mother Driving" was on the back license plate as the grooviest family on the tube got hip and happy aboard the pablum version of the Yellow Submarine. The Partridge Family Bus was purchased by the shows producers from the Orange County School District, given an appropriate paint job for the times, a full tank of gas and a four season run on primetime television, until the show and the bus started to get low on fuel and ratings. The show was cancelled, everyone got on with their lives and loves, and the bus was sold numerous times to private owners for a variety of purposes. Eventually, it turned up abanoned in the parking lot of Lucy's Taco's in East Los Angeles and was officially junked in 1987. In 1993, David Cassidy went on a nostalgia tour in a replica of the Partridge Family bus and another bus impersonator is sitting at Universal Studio's. Other wannabe's dot the landscape and fake Partridge buses can be found in Atlanta, Georgia and even a farm field in Iowa!! It is definitely the Elvis of the bus world with more imposters and sightings than of the King himself.

THE HONEYMOONERS

Whether it's Mama Partridge or Neal Cassidy at the wheel of a bus, the busdriver is the captain of the ship on the high sea's of public transportation. The grey uniform of the Greyhound lines or the different colors of Metro bus drivers in cities across America, they rule the routes. The most famous bus driver of them all is forever preserved in bronze in the heart of New Yawk! New Yawk! The statue of Ralph Kramden, stands proudly in front of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at 40th Street and 8th Ave.

America's most beloved bus driver was created during the Golden Era of television by the Great One himself, Jackie Gleason, and though the series only lasted just over a year it's made an indelible impression and will forever be imbedded in American tv tube-pop culture. Ralph Kramden, fictional bus driver, worked for the equally fictional Gotham Bus Company with offices at 225 River Street in Manhattan. Every day Ralph would dutifully do his route, which by the way were Routes 2969 and 247, both along Madison Avenue. In addition to his bus duties, he had a wife who appeared to be the only person on the planet to actually understand this bear of a man, he was lodge member in good standing, and his best friend worked below the surface of the streets in the sewers of New York City.

Gleason died in 1987, but the image of Ralph Kramden remains, dressed in his uniform and holding his lunch pail, the 1000 pound replicated Ralph was dedicated in 2001. There is a West Coast replica as well at the Academy of Arts and Sciences, but lets face it, there's only one real Ralph and he's in New York City.

The history of the bus has it's routes roots in the mines of the Upper Midwest. A city bus in Montgomery, Alabama ignited a generation and another bus gave fuel to the Sixties and took us a little further. A street car gave us Desire and images of torn tee-shirts and a family called Partridge polyestered themselves into popdom forever. The bus is the royal carriage of the proletariat, and if Ken Kesey was the court jester, then Ralph Kramden will forever be the king.

Mike Marino is a freelance writer of offbeat travel and pop culture and the author of the pop culture dumster diving classic "The Roadhead Chronicles"

To Contact Mike:

roadheadchronicles@yahoo.com

THE ROADHEAD CHRONICLES BOOKSITE - ENTER HERE