KEN KESEY, SOMETIMES A GREAT OREGON IN KERNVILLE

Kernville house for Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion

In some parts of America I balk at driving the back roads. I drive on, but carefully.

Those roads show more about a shared history if you look hard enough.

The Siletz Highway, OR 229 headed east off of 101 north of Depoe Bay, is one of those roads.

They drive fast on 229 and I was looking hard.

Rolling up on someone’s business uninvited is a surprise no one wants.

But Oregon back roads feel different than places like Louisiana.

Maybe it’s the lack of alligators and swamps? That Oregon is the backwoods and back roads are all there is?

Or is it the nature of Oregon business on these back roads?

In 1970 this was the business.

The family house itself manifests the physical stubbornness of the Stamper family; as the nearby river widens slowly and causes erosion, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed or wrecked by the waters or moved away from the current, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precarious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sand bags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river.

Ken Kesey, inventor of the 1960’s, magnetic center of legendary Acid Test, the post-war poster boy for party-to-the-edge, delivers hardcore Oregon backwoods.

Take the drive along the Siletz River to find the movie house.

Where can you find the Ken Kesey Museum? The Ken Kesey House?

I’m a fan of literary travel. My biggest scores are Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, and Thomas Wolfe’s Asheville, North Carolina.

And Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Why not celebrate the Big Writers, and by some accounts Kesey is one of them.

Initial reviews of the book ran to both extremes, but its reputation has aged well. Charles Bowden calls it “one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century.” In 1997, a panel of Northwest writers voted it number one in a list of “12 Essential Northwest Works”. One book critic has described it as “what may well be the quintessential Northwest novel”.

Sometimes A Great Notion may not have it’s own museum, Ken Kesey may not have a lavish memorial, but Kernville has the house.

Across the Siletz River sits the symbol of Kesey’s America, c.1964

A shattered image of social change forced on the Old Guard by their baby boomer kids.

Lifetime friends on the wrong side of a changing economy turn their backs.

The Kernville house is a reminder to “Never Give a Inch” even when you know better.

And a symbol of persistence.