Calling Ken Kesey

"Oh yeah, he did say something like uh ... oh, what did he say? Something about 'keep changing' or 'keep on' or just, maybe it was ... "

"Keep moving?" I'd say when I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Yeah, that's exactly what it was! 'Keep moving,' that's exactly what he said!"

"How come I remember this and nobody else does?"

"My memory's getting bad: A lot of the '60s information's gonna be lost to history," says dad cheerfully.

Keep moving.

Now, fast-forward 20 years in my family's history. My dad, in spite of himself, has settled down a bit. But he has managed to pass his free spirit on to my brother Ethan, just as Kesey inherited the wild and curious spirit of William Burroughs, among others. I saw the appeal of the Kesey story as a fable, but Ethan came to totally embody the phrase "Keep moving". He was always the kid who talked to strangers wherever he could find them, and refused to go to bed at a reasonable hour. All his teachers described him as "hyperactive." By the time he was 18, Ethan had been to Thailand and the Bahamas and had crossed the U.S. by motorcycle. But the Kesey legacy of carefree, Prankster-style life can also have a darker edge. Kesey's the man, after all, who may be best known for a variety of seemingly crazy exploits and his first novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." And, two decades on, that's where my brother Ethan has taken the family mantra "Keep moving."

All alone on the waters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, Ethan is trying to find work fishing for king salmon. On a flat-bottomed steel boat, the most comfortable place to sleep is standing up on deck, even when it rains, and the summer nights are bright as day. He has very little money, and the fishing season is getting worse. His captain has a mandatory 48-hour stay ashore, and my brother takes the time to check himself into a hospital for a painful shoulder. Turns out his arm has popped out of the socket from weeks of hauling nets. The doctors tell him to rest for two weeks. But he's afraid the salmon will rush on without him and he turns around and leaves the hospital the next day. Has to keep moving.

By this time the only boats still in the harbor are the ones belonging to the losers, the captains nobody else wants to fish for. Ethan immediately gets a job for one of these guys, and lasts one day before he asks the second captain to bring him ashore because they "don't communicate well." The next thing we hear is from the sheriff of the village of Naknek, who sees Ethan walking on the roof of a salmon cannery in the middle of the fully lit night. The sheriff pursues him, but Ethan eludes capture. My little brother is now a fugitive from justice. A young woman taxi driver, who doesn't know what she's getting into, happens by. She sees Ethan and pulls over. He opens the car door. Then he shuts the door. Then opens the door. Then shuts the door. The driver, whose name is Krista, says

"Do you know where you're going?"

And my brother gamely answers, "I'm in a movie with Ken Kesey."

Next Page: I like to think that Kesey would have done what my dad did

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