she realized she needed to make a change. It was difficult, but it was worth it," says Carolyn Garcia. Instead, she entered into an affair with Ken Kesey, the famed novelist and leader of the Pranksters, with whom she eventually had a daughter. "We were delighted. What she didn't realize, until Neal had peeled off the road and started driving the wrong way down a railroad track, was that he was none other than Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's 1967 Beat classic "On the Road.". It was the honorable thing to do and it should be honored. It's so sad.". No Result . A long, strange trip led Mountain Girl to Kesey's final home. I had no idea what he was doing. The first time any of Kesey's literary mob ever saw Carolyn Adams, late of Hyde Park, N.Y., she was seated in a Palo Alto cafe, reading a book when Prankster and Beat icon Neal Cassady and a handsome young blond guy with a Beatle haircut named Bradley picked her up and invited her for a ride. Not even when she and Jerry, after two children and 15 years together, got married on New Year's Eve 1981, between sets at the Dead's traditional New Year's show. If you were behaving badly, she'd tell you that, too. She quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and became romantically involved with Kesey, having a daughter together named Sunshine. "I tried not to ask too many questions, because I know how it is. He is her "handmaiden.' None of the various women and children in his life could dispute that. ", And so Mountain Girl became a handmaiden to genius, a term she calls "horrible, but true." But part of it was MG and the family and wanting to embrace that. That is really something." I know shes been working on her memoir. But basically, she was assigned to the traditional women's stuff of keeping a home, albeit a very large and unruly one. He loved to engage all sorts of people in all sorts of conversation and brief relationships. The future Mrs. Garcia was taking guitar lessons at Dana Morgan's Music Store in Stanford, California, when she heard Jerry's voice coming from the next room. "[4] Journalist Tom Wolfe described his first impression of a teenage Adams as "a tall girl, big and beautiful with dark brown hair falling down to her shoulders except that the lower two-thirds of her falling hair looks like a paintbrush dipped in cadmium yellow from where she dyed it blond in Mexico. Moan Desolation Row Looks Like Rain The Winners Victim Or The Crime Wasserman Bass Improvisation No. "I was a total tomboy. I mean, yuck! KLCC Staff visits Springfield 2-17-17KLCC Celebrates 50 years with a series of visits to our outlying communities. Mountain Girl had already had one abortion, during which she vividly recalls tripping on ketamine, which was used as sedative. Meanwhile, Koons Garcia's attorney, Paul Camera, has indicated that he will advise his client to appeal. Says Rock Scully, the Dead's road manager for many years, "Jerry Garcia was married to his guitar and the muse and his human relationships suffered for it. I think everybody had a crush on her.". But the event ended in tragedy when a member of the Hells Angels, the notorious biker gang who were hired to provide security, stabbed a concertgoer to death at the foot of the stage. Like Mountain Girl, he was looking for family. She reconnected with Garcia a couple years later after leaving Kesey in Mexico, where he was hiding out to avoid U.S. drug charges, and returning to San Francisco with her daughter Sunshine.. There was no uncertainty about that.". It's got little mottos written all over it." "You might say I was in denial," she says. The free concert, scheduled for December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California, would include performances by the Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones. "There were a lot of them around," she says. The first time Mountain Girl climbed onto the mythic bus, she was 18. Instead, it brought the year and the decade to a dark and violent end. he asked me. "And then all of a sudden it was too much. Jerry and Carolyn were married by a Jewish friend who was also a Tibetan monk in a ceremony missed by most of the band members. ", When I ask her how she felt about the name, she tells me she didn't like it because she didn't choose it. By the time she walked into the Dead's kitchen, Mountain Girl had attained iconic status, although it was not her way to pay any attention to it. But as the Dead began putting out records, Garcia spent most of the time on tour. All there was was Synanon, and I wasn't going to call them!" What is your perspective on how it has evolved? This year it also served as a major platform for charitable endeavors. It was sort of the unfortunate consequences of my actions, my procreative act. I did try to run their sound board for a while, but I wasn't good at it. It was never a mistake.". The mythology of the time, and the dynamic young woman at the heart of it, was written mostly by men Wolfe, Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady all of whom fashioned themselves as the hypermasculine heroes of their own stories. ", "Bill is a wonderful man," says Sunshine Kesey, who, with her halo of white-blond curls resembles her father, Ken Kesey. Following Jerry Garcia's death, Carolyn Garcia was involved in litigation to obtain payments as per their divorce settlement agreement, ultimately agreeing to a $1,250,000 settlement to avoid further legal costs. Kesey seemed weary, a cruise director at the end of a long and tiring voyage. Jerry holds Sunshine Kesey as Mountain Girl looks on at the Heliport, the Grateful Dead's rehearsal space in Sausalito. I was not seeking the spotlight. And perhaps the Prankster thing had gotten a little stale for her at that point.". That is really something." "I just couldn't deal with it," Mountain Girl says. "I haven't had another relationship really since then. "She didn't say anything of any note except to acknowledge my presence. ", It was not difficult to get Mountain Girl away from Kesey, says McIntire. "I began to realize the dangers of celebrity that had to do with the Grateful Dead attracting a lot of people to themselves who were unconventional. For Carolyn Adams, encountering Kesey and the Pranksters was like coming home, as if she'd been looking for people like them all of her life. The Bus, with "Furthur" written like a title across the top. ", "Don't kid yourself," says Jon McIntire. Trixie Garcia, her youngest, has come up from Oakland. "Where did you come from?" The bus, however, was in a hiccupy mood and would only get moving 25 miles an hour up the hill, choking and gasping, overloaded and full of very high Pranksters.". I had a new baby. Tiffany Eckert 12 of 15 The Simpsons family are from Springfield, Oregon Matt Groening 13 of 15 By then, things at their Stinson Beach aerie, Sans Souci, on a ridge high above the beach, had gotten pretty weird. It's a piece of my childhood. Dawn was breaking as they arrived at a ranch in La Honda. ", The Pranksters, ever dutiful, came to his aid. As it was, he always knew he could come home and there would always be a place for him, no matter how weird it got out there. Despite their open relationship, he was jealous. "After he had left and moved in with Deborah. "You could buy bennies over the counter in Mexico, and I think he'd been doing more than his share," she says. That was the world. And then one day, he just kind of up and left. But in the six months they'd been gone, something had changed. [6], She had a relationship with another Prankster named George Walker, who would become her husband in 1966. They were monumental. "Jerry decided to spend more time away from the house and in his studio. "[1], In early 1964, she met Neal Cassady, who introduced her to Ken Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name "Mountain Girl" because she was a "little bit wild. REVIEWS. The real story of Mountain Girl, as I've learned after months of talking to her, is far more complex. It seems like theres often a charitable component. It would have been like a ballplayer missing a game. A month after the Grateful Dead's summer 1995 tour concluded, Garcia died at a rehabilitation facility in August 1995. Our room at the top of the stairs was small, a comforting retreat, with a huge flag covering one wall, and a window looking out over the weedy garden. Carolyn Elizabeth Garcia (ne Adams; born May 7, 1946), also known as Mountain Girl, is an American Merry Prankster and the former wife of Jerry Garcia, the lead vocalist and guitar player with the American rock band, Grateful Dead . It was before the age of security gates, and all sorts of bizarre hangers-on started planting themselves in the Garcia parking area. Again, it was time to extricate herself and rescue her children. "That was just a zap! While that led to a lengthy period of cohabitation in which Carolyn Garcia played an integral role in her husband's recovery, they gradually drifted apart once more when Garcia began an extramarital relationship and fathered a child with Manasha Matheson. But Ive gotten more confident as far as using my creative impulses or intuition to help guide the look and feel of some of the brand licenses and products. While she was fast approaching her due date, Kesey was off dealing with his lawyers. "They gave you enough so that you were transported to the geometrical universe where everything was in squares and triangles," she says. Surrounded by towering redwoods, the place seemed to be recovering from an epic bender: cars and motorcycles everywhere, the ground littered with assorted detritus. Obviously, were not huge, but it would be nice to do something like that one day. I want to be a pioneer!" Occasionally, Mountain Girl would ferry the kids away to Oregon and once, during one long separation, took them all the way back East to be near her parents. Growing up, all this visionary artist stufflike psychedelic art, comic book artserved as my inspiration. Sunshine Kesey is one of renown author and merry maker, Ken Kesey's, children. "Later MG told me that when she met Jerry," remembers McIntire, "she recognized in him that his music was the stuff of greatness. So that kind of separated me. His pedal steel and a chair the only furniture. "I was taught every plant name as we passed it on a hike," she says. To what extent do you currently explore your own creative expressions? In those early days, she didn't take special note of Garcia. The seeds of hippiedom - question authority, love the one you're with, share and share alike - were fueled by marijuana and psychedelics and accompanied by the twang of guitars and banjos. With the best of intentions and the best of relationships, things can go terribly wrong. ", But Mountain Girl and Jerry remained intertwined through it all. A large mandala is painted on the living-room floor. He had a very bright, engaging repartee going all the time, which I just loved. he says to me, looking out, holding out some grimy bennies in his palm. Adams was offered a job in the Stanford cafeteria, but drawing on her knowledge of science she hustled one in the organic-chemistry lab instead. [1] She attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park. And now, The Bus was retired. We tried to keep the mess to a minimum. Through her window she saw legions of young people with long hair and colorful pants, smoking, dancing, playing guitar. "That was my golden destination.". Courtesy Sunshine Kesey After moving in with Garcia, Mountain Girl became the "den mother," as she puts it, of the Grateful Dead: cooking, cleaning, rustling them out the door on time. By then she was five months pregnant. His eyes smiled. They just fell in love. But they wanted to do something to make things better, to restore new life to the countercultural movement to which they had helped give birth. Mountain Girl, second wife of Jerry Garcia, holds her daughter, Sunshine, backstage at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. If Mountain Girl wanted to come, she better hitchhike down to LA fast, before they split. The windows are busted. The world of celebrity branding can be kind of a gross place, which is why were careful with selecting our partners, she adds, Were not interested in crappy microwave color-changing Elvis cups. As the '80s approached, the whole Dead zeitgeist was getting way out of control. "It's a perilous society if you don't look a certain way," he said. He put the mojo on me. Getting into the cannabis industry was something I was determined to do. So I never really knew where she stood on anything. By the time she returned, her confidence was at an all-time high.She had had an opportunity to develop her own talents, including a gift for writing, in a brief sojourn at an eastern college. Bill is finally the right person for my mom. But as Jerry's addiction worsened, MG took the girls and moved to a farm in Oregon, where some of the other Pranksters had moved. Not a subscriber? ", The closer she grew to Jerry, the further she drifted from Kesey. For MG, which is how her intimates shorten her name, the Pranksters were her college, the University of Fun. Mountain Girl (Carolyn Elizabeth Garcia) with her three daughters, Sunshine Kesey,(daughter of Ken Kesey), Theresa Adams "Trixie" Garcia, Annabelle Walker Garcia. That was his happiest space. "That's the coolest thing I ever saw. But when choosing partners, products and people that are gonna go out there and represent Jerry, its important to pick the right people. Once again, Carolyn took her children away to Oregon, to a newly purchased patch of verdant acreage in the Willamette Valley. she recalls with a laugh. They wound up at Kesey's spread at 5 in the morning. "He'd fill it with music, drugs, girlfriends, whatever. Its nice to lose yourself in a piece of art. Two years later, she got the dreaded call: Garcia had died of a heart attack at a drug-treatment facility. Theres so much scrutiny and I just wanna enjoy it. The mythology of the time, and the dynamic young woman at the heart of it, was written mostly by men Wolfe, Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady all of whom. But at the same time, he had a family and was "very married, with the cutest three little kids you ever saw in your whole life. I would go home and make some orange juice and he'd show back up again, sleep for a couple of days and recharge. ", Her parents didn't know she was pregnant, so she was stuck with the Pranksters. Kesey wasn't dead. Meanwhile, Mountain Girl took her three girls to Oregon. Some of it is just knowing my dads personality and what things made him uncomfortable because he was a stylish guy. Mountain Girl and Garcia divorced in 1993. ", Today, 60 years since she took that ride with Neal Cassady, Mountain Girl is still forging her own path. From her parents, young Carolyn inherited an adoration of nature. MG, as her family and friends call her, is finally ready to be the author of her own story. I am quite certain that it was a comfort to him as well as to me. The farm hasn't changed much. I was obliged to hang onto Bradley. "You could come stay with me," he said. It's a familiar story from a revelatory point of view: her own. After leaving Kesey in Mexico, where he was hiding out to avoid US drug charges, Mountain Girl returned to San Francisco with a newborn and an uncertain future. I didn't know how to ask for help. ", "If you're involved with somebody with a talent like Jerry's, the richness of his gift to everybody was so powerful, you have to give them a lot of latitude to express that gift," she says in retrospect. Her entomologist father was 40. Garcia to Deborah Koons and Mountain Girl back to Oregon and the big, rugged logger she had met, Bill Burwell. KLCCs Tiffany Eckert speaks to Sunshine Kesey, daughter of Ken Kesey, about their family life, Keseys wrestling start at Springfield High School and his indelible mark on a generation. In her unpublished memoir, she writes: Jerry and I were head over heels in love, and radiant with happiness. 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