Up until now, it may have been the most famous unpublished novel of the 60s. I mean, talk about your pre-publication buzz: 43 years must set some sort of a record, doesn’t it?
And that 43-year figure is based on the fact that the first public mention of Merry Prankster Ken Babbs’ novel about the Vietnam War was in the pages of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which hit the streets in 1968. Truth be known, Babbs had completed his first-round manuscript years prior to that, which would mean the basic story has been on paper for the better part of 50 years.
But no matter – regardless of how long you want to say the wait has been, it’s finally over. Who Shot The Water Buffalo? is about to be released, making Ken Babbs (in his own words) a “rookie author at the age of 75.” (The faithful will point out that Babbs has co-authored a number of books over the years, but Water Buffalo is his first “solo flight.”)
Babbs served in Vietnam in 1962-63 as a helicopter pilot, returning home to a life-long tour of duty as the Merry Pranksters’ “Intrepid Traveler” – Ken Kesey’s can-do “Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right!” lieutenant. More importantly, Babbs and Kesey were joined-at-the-imagination kindred souls, sharing a friendship that extended beyond the miles traveled aboard the Furthur bus and even beyond their explorations of the uncharted galaxies of the mind.
In the years since Kesey’s passing in 2001, Babbs has lived a quiet life at his home in Oregon. Making use of the internet to keep the Prankster spirit alive, Babbs has established the Sky Pilot Club (you can find “Kapnken” on www.skypilotclub.com ) and doles out regular updates, missives, and observations of the world around and within us.
We recently had the opportunity to chat with the “rookie author” – a conversation laced with humor, insight, and the whole truth. Not only did we discuss his new novel and his Vietnam experience, but we also got the latest update on Ken’s chickens, a sneak peek at his next writing project, a little window into who inspired him as an author, and some helpful hints on how to handle commercial airline travel. It should be noted that the hardest part of transcribing a conversation with Ken Babbs is knowing when to use italics – the man speaks (and no doubt thinks) in italics a good part of the time. We hope this interview is as entertaining to read as it was to do.
Ladies and gentlemen … boys and girls … children of all ages … we present to you a few minutes of merriment and wisdom with the Sky Pilot himself – Ken Babbs.
BR: Hey there, Ken.
KB: Hi, Brian – how goes it?
BR: Well, it’s blowing a gale of wind on this end of the country today. You suppose this is the same breeze you had a few days ago?
KB: Oh, I bet. (laughs)
BR: I think you mentioned in an e-mail that the chicken coop took a beating earlier this week, but I wasn’t clear – were the chickens themselves okay?
KB: Oh, yeah – the chickens were fine. They escaped out of the opening as the coop blew over. I put it back together and they came right on back in. They were pissed, though. (laughter)
BR: You’d just gotten those chickens, right? That was quite a test for them right off the bat.
KB: (laughs) Yeah, well, we had it pretty easy – we only lost our power for three days. Some of the people around here had trees fall through their houses.
BR: Oh, man.
KB: Yeah …
BR: Well, on a more serious note than the chickens: I was going to ask you to say something about Owsley Stanley who died a few days ago, but then I just read that photographer Brian Lanker passed away this past week as well … I know he was a good friend of yours. I got to thinking that as we get older, we could spend a lot of our time paying tribute to all the family, friends, and acquaintances that we’ve lost … maybe we’ll just let Owsley and Brian go in peace with good wishes.
KB: You’re not kidding – that’s exactly right. The ranks thin … and the ones who remain have to keep carrying the torch.
I did put a little story about Owsley on the website today. And I’m writing one as we speak about Brian Lanker.
BR: Oh, great. I look forward to reading them both. We have a great picture of Ken Kesey taken in his later years; Ken’s in the foreground, looking at the camera and you can just make out the silhouette of the Furthur bus through the trees behind him. It’s actually a poster, with Ken’s “the answer is never the answer; what’s really interesting is the mystery” quote.
KB: Yeah!
BR: And I’m thinking that’s one of Brian Lanker’s photos, isn’t it?
KB: It sure is. Brian took a lot of pictures of Kesey. He was a good friend.
One time Kesey and I put together a Furthur calendar and Brian took all the pictures for that. I wish that calendar was still around, ‘cause it was an amazing thing. We wrote a little quote for each day of every month. I think it came out in 1981.
BR: Well, there has to be some somewhere …
KB: I don’t have one … I don’t know what happened to mine. (laughter)
BR: Jeez, if anybody should have one …
KB: Maybe Zane’s got one. (laughs) [Note: Ken Kesey’s son Zane operates Key-Z Productions, a source for all things related to Ken and the Merry Pranksters.]
BR: Well, look – I promised you I’d try not to let things stray too far off the intended course here, so we’d better get into talking about the book.
KB: Ahh – the book. (laughter)
BR: To lay a little groundwork, for those who don’t know, Who Shot The Water Buffalo? is set in early-60s Vietnam. I thought we might start by talking a bit about your own Vietnam experience.
KB: Sounds good.
BR: You joined the college NROTC program in what year?
KB: I think it must’ve been 1955 – the fall of ’55. I was going to engineering school – Case Tech in Cleveland, Ohio – and I couldn’t hack the math … I knew I had to get out of there.
I wanted to transfer and I saw this notice on a bulletin board about NROTC scholarships: tuition, books, and 50 dollars a month. I applied, got it, and went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Went there for three years; had one year left on the scholarship, so I went to Stanford in Palo Alto, California and spent a year in graduate school in the writing program. That’s where I met Kesey.
BR: And this is where I’m showing incredible restraint by saying, “There’s a story for a different day.”
KB: Yeah – you’re not kidding. (laughter)
BR: I think it needs to be pointed out that at that time, the NROTC program was simply a way to fund your college years. You weren’t walking around with this weight on your shoulders, thinking, “Oh man – this is all well and good for now, but as soon as I graduate, they’re putting a gun in my hand and sending me off to who knows where …”
KB: Aw, no – this was in 1955 and there was no idea that there was going to be any kind of war. Not only that, but the draft was in full force, so everybody had to sign up when they turned 18 and go in as something. I thought, “Well, I’ll get my school paid for; I’ll go into the service as an officer; I’ll do my three years; and my obligation will be taken care of.”
BR: So when you graduated, you came out of the NROTC program as …
KB: Second Lieutenant.
BR: But it still wasn’t a sure thing that you’d be going overseas at that point, right?
KB: Oh, no – that was in spring of 1959 and it was, you know, a peaceful time. I took the physical and went to flight school down in Pensacola, Florida. I was there when Kennedy was elected in 1960 – the country was really riding a wave of enthusiasm at that point. After flight school, I was sent out to California to join a squadron. The orders to go to Vietnam came right out of the blue in 1962.
BR: And what did Vietnam mean to you at that point?
KB: Well, we were some of the first to go over as a complete unit; up until then, it had all been advisors going over as individuals. We were there to support the South Vietnamese in their struggle with the Viet Cong.
We weren’t really supposed to be participating in the war … not until they started shooting at you. (laughs)
BR: Yeah … I guess that kind of changes things, doesn’t it?
KB: Right, right. (laughs)
BR: See, I don’t know what the mainstream knew about Vietnam at that point. It certainly wasn’t the scary thing that it became …
KB: No, not until 1965 when we put that big surge of troops in there. I think it was around 500,000 that got sent over at that point; they split the country up into the Marine area up north and the Army in the south.
Things started heating up and just kept getting worse and worse. And our government was just drafting people and throwing them over there. Which also meant that more and more families were involved; which meant there was more and more anguish here in the country; which in turn meant there were more and more people protesting in this country: “What the hell are we doing in Vietnam? They didn’t attack us …”
BR: And by the time there was mainstream awareness, we were already several years into it …
KB: Every time the military has to have a boogieman – and back then it was the Communists – the “Red Horde.” (laughs, then shifts into total “war hawk” voice) “If we don’t stop ‘em in Vietnam, next they’ll be in the Philippines – and before you know it, they’re in San Francisco, raping the women and having those little Commie bastards all over the place!”
BR: So we’d better nip it right in the bud …
KB: (still in war hawk voice) “You ain’t a’kiddin’, buddy: we gotta stop it right here before it spreads any further. And besides that, we can try out all our new toys!”
BR: Exactly.
KB: (in character, but overtone of disgust creeping in) “I mean, we’re not killin’ any white people …”
[His voice trails off and we sit in silence for a moment or two.]
BR: Goddamn … it really was the mindset for some, wasn’t it?
KB: (sighs) Yeah …
BR: How long were you in Vietnam?
KB: We went there in the summer of 1962 and left in ’63. At first, we were in the Delta down in the south part of the country; then we moved north up to Da Nang.
BR: And you were flying the H-34D “Dawg” that you write about in the book?
KB: Oh, yeah – walkin’ the Dawg.
BR: Now I’m going to jump ahead in time here, but I’ll fill in the gap in a minute. There’s that great scene in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test where Wolfe asks you what it was like in Vietnam. And you take him into the back of the garage where the Pranksters are working on Furthur and you point at this cardboard box full of typewritten pages sitting on the floor. “Lying there amid all the general debris and madness” is the way that Wolfe describes it. And you point at the box and say to Wolfe, “It’s all in there.” Now supposedly, that was the first draft of the manuscript for this novel – is that right?
KB: That’s true – and that was the first mention of the book ever in the world.
Not only that, but I asked him, “Here, you want to read some of it?”
And Wolfe said, “Well, yeah!” So I reached in, grabbed a chunk, and told him, “Here – you can have it.”
He said, “You mean … keep it?”
And I said, “Sure!” He couldn’t believe it. (laughter)
BR: And how many chunks did you give away over the years?
KB: (laughs) Well, that’s the only time that I ever did that … but I did have a Xerox copy that I sent to Gordon Gunter, one of my squadron buddies, because he wanted to read it. And it’s a good thing I did, because as time went on, I lost that original manuscript and the book was gone.
BR: No!
KB: (laughs) Yeah, but Gordon sent the Xerox copy back so that I’d have something to work with when I started to rework the book.
BR: We should all thank him – he’s the hero. So, to fill in the gap, when did you write that first draft? You must’ve tackled it soon after you came home from Vietnam.
KB: Oh, I’d been writing it in Vietnam while I was there and sending it home. When I got back, I went through it and put it together in what I thought was a book – a manuscript.
In the fall of ’63, I sent it off to Kesey’s agent, Sterling Lord in New York, who I knew. The following summer was when we took the bus trip to New York and while we were there, I met with Sterling. We went over the book and he told me what he thought it needed and gave it back to me.
I brought it back home, but by then we were so into making the movie of the bus trip and working on that … we’d kind of moved away from writing and were busy being movie makers. I just let the book sit.
Also, after making the trip and hearing the plight of the country, I didn’t think that anybody would want to read the book. At that point, there wasn’t any movement against Vietnam … it seemed like most everybody was kind of for whatever the government and the military did, you know? They were in charge; they knew what they were doing; they were making the right decisions.
I didn’t feel like the flavor was right at that point. It wasn’t until a little later that I did … a “little later” turned out to be about 45 years. (laughter)
BR: So when did you begin to retackle the book in earnest?
KB: About 3 years ago, I decided I’d better get on that thing … as I get older, there’s things I need to finish up or I’m going to run out of time.
BR: Why? Where are you going?
KB: Well … (laughs) I thought I’d take another little trip eventually. A road trip – a real road trip. (laughter)
BR: Don’t you be going anywhere, dammit. (laughter)
KB: You know, as you get older, the sand keeps running faster down through the neck of the bottle. All of a sudden you realize, “You better get goin’ here, boy!” (laughter)
And I’m really glad I did. It was a lot of fun going back and getting into it again … keeping that original 1962 voice of the narrator and all the happenings – keeping it all there so that it’s a period piece.
BR: When you first started writing the story in Vietnam, were you thinking in terms of a published book, or was it more a way of handling being there … of pumping the emotional bilges?
KB: (laughs) I like that – good phrase. But yeah, I always intended for it to be published … wanted to get into the “big leagues” of writing. (laughs) So now I’m going to be the oldest rookie in publishing – 75 years old in my rookie season. Satchel Paige was only 49 when he broke in with the Cleveland Indians … (laughter)
BR: Well, all right. (laughs) Of course, you know what the wiseasses are immediately going to say: “Well, this is all well and good, but what are you going to do next?”
KB: (laughs) Oh, I’ve already started my next book.
BR: Great! I wasn’t going to ask, myself …
KB: No, I’m gladly touting it. It’s about all the adventures that Kesey and I and the Pranksters and all our friends had together.
BR: Oh, man … if anybody’s going to write that book, it’s got to be you. That’s great.
KB: That’s what I figured – I’ve got to get this out of my system, too.
BR: Okay – I’m going to fight the urge to talk more about that. Let’s get back to the Water Buffalo here. (laughter) Were your two main characters – Tom Huckelbee and Mike Cochran – there from the beginning, when you first started the book?
KB: Oh, yes – all the characters were there right from the beginning.
BR: When I’ve written fiction, I always have folks asking me where the characters came from – was this one supposed to be so-and-so, or was this one a version of me or whatever. Should I even ask you about the inspirations for Huckelbee and Cochran?
KB: That’s a good thing to talk about, actually. Good writers create their characters. Look at all the characters Shakespeare had – you can’t say that any one of those was Shakespeare. So what you try to do is create characters that aren’t you, because you don’t want people saying, “Well, this is you … and this is you …” or the people in the book are this person or that person. You can have a lot of incidents and scenes that people you knew were in at some point … but they are not the ones in the scenes.
In this book, being there in Vietnam gave me the background and the actual place and the war and everything to put these characters into … but no, they are their own thing – their own people.
BR: Even before Huckelbee and Cochran leave to go to helicopter flight school, there’s that great scene with their landlords – Admiral Jenkins and his wife stivvering around the house, juiced to the gills in the middle of the hurricane.
KB: I love that story. (laughter)
BR: I do, too. That had to come from somewhere …
KB: Well, there was a hurricane that came through Pensacola while we were there. We had to fly all the trainers out of Pensacola – hundreds of ‘em – up to Memphis until the hurricane left. Then we flew them back again. (laughs)
BR: I liked the moment when the Admiral is trying to pin Cochran down with a “what if” scenario: he’s up in the air with a 500-lb. bomb, searching for an enemy ship. Doesn’t find it; is heading back to the carrier when he sees a hospital ship below him. Gets an order over the radio to bomb the ship, as it’s supposedly the enemy in disguise.
KB: Right!
BR: And the Admiral’s pressing him for an answer – and Cochran smacks his fist on the table and bellows, “I’d drop the bomb!”
KR: Right, right!
BR: And then he says, “But I’d miss.” (laughter) That was the book’s first instance of … of Prankster thought, I guess I’d call it.
KB: It’s the moment when you realize that these characters are different from just straight, following-the-orders, gung-ho Marines.
BR: And it was a great way of doing it – not out-and-out insubordination –
KB: No, no. (laughs)
BR: That’s also when Cochran sidesteps another “what-if” from the Admiral by announcing that he’s going to be flying helicopters rather than jets. It takes Huckelbee by surprise, but he immediately throws in with him. Did you know right from the beginning that you wanted to fly helicopters yourself?
KB: No, I never decided until after I was through basic training and into advance training that I didn’t want to fly jets.
BR: And why?
KB: I don’t know. We had the chances to fly them and try them out, but … I just didn’t care for ‘em. I’ll tell you: flying a P-28 prop-driven reciprocal-engine plane was the best ever. Jets were just … you just push the throttle and go, you know. You could do all kinds of maneuvers with them, but … I don’t know why. I just didn’t care for them.
BR: The scenes in the book when they’re flying and you’re writing about the handling of the helicopters –
KB: Uh-huh.
BR: There’s a passion there that could only come from someone who had been there and done it. I don’t care how much research anyone did – they couldn’t write like that unless they’d felt it themselves.
KB: Well, thank you. I’m glad that came through. I did love to fly the helicopters – they made you work; you couldn’t screw off.
BR: Each chapter begins with a running stream of thoughts from a wounded Huckelbee. He’s in a haze of pain and medication and just rapping – it’s almost poetry at times. Is that how the book was structured when you first wrote the manuscript?
KB: I don’t think so – that’s something I did in this final version.
I did it that way deliberately: the italicized section is Huckelbee awake and talking to the doctor; the main section of each chapter is when he’s gone under and it’s like a movie he’s seeing in his mind.
BR: Huckelbee gets introduced to a taste of opium early on – dispensed by a doctor to treat dysentery, actually. But in the story, alcohol seems to be the mind-bender of choice.
KB: Absolutely – there were no drugs at all in our squadron or anywhere that we were … no pot smoking. Nothing.
But there was booze – oh, fucking-A, man! (laughter)
You come back from 10 days in the machine … you’re going to have a few drinks. (laughs)
BR: I’ll tell you something that was creepy to read: the scenes with Hanoi Hannah. I see her as the Vietnam equivalent of Tokyo Rose –
KB: Absolutely.
BR: Man, what was it like to have her voice coming over the radio in your headsets, talking about that day’s mission? I mean, that wasn’t just general propaganda: she’d be spec’ing specific squadrons and where they were headed … that had to be a hell of a feeling for you.
KB: Well, I’ll tell you: Vietnam was a psychedelic experience without drugs. And part of that experience was Hanoi Hannah – she was right there!
It was too bizarre … but everything was like that. You took it with a grain of salt and laughed at it, but still … it was like, “What the fuck’s going on here? They know what we’re doing before we do it!”
Of course there were Vietnamese everywhere: in and around the camps, working in the kitchens, everywhere … there was information going out all the time.
BR: It was eerie just to read, man.
KB: And she was a real person, too.
BR: There’s a scene late in the book – the Marine Corps birthday, I believe …
KB: That’s right; it’s always the biggest day of the year for the Marine Corps.
BR: And they’re celebrating in the officers’ club – an open-sided thatched-roof building there in the camp. When you wrote about Cochran – in his wild-ass-looking flight suit all painted up, the crazy helmet made from half a basketball, and his black-rimmed eyes – taking the stage and reeling off poetry and jokes and the band’s making the occasional punctuation here and there … that gets pretty surreal. A little bit of Acid Test there?
KB: (roars with laughter) Well … I don’t know. Oh … (laughs some more) … that’s good.
Well, a lot of that was in the original manuscript, you know.
BR: So it was written when you were still in Vietnam – long before the real Acid Tests.
KB: Oh, yeah. What’s going on there – say, in the arty thing of writing this book and art in general – is the ability to break out of the mold of conventional thought and sentence structure. Go completely wild – like in music: blow unknown notes, okay?
BR: Yeah.
KB: But within the context of the song that’s being played – and then come back to the original melody after you go out there. This is something I’ve always been part of; that was the Pranksters’ theme – being able to do that.
I got a lot of that from Jack Kerouac. When On The Road came out in ’57, it just knocked everybody’s socks off – the way he wrote. He just let it go. It was like jazz, only it was writing. It was inspirational for me.
So I’ve always tried to write like that – not let it confine me.
You take these people who consider themselves to be part of the “literary world” – they have to write in a certain way and all that. I don’t give a shit about any of that. (laughter)
To me it’s the story and the telling of the story – and to blow as loud and crazy as you can. You’re writing this for the reader; I’m not writing it for myself. I’m writing it for others to read and enjoy it and dig it.
BR: That’s a great way of putting it – the jazz analogy. We know what the melody is – the main theme – but now we’re just going to go out there.
KB: Yeah, right!
BR: And we’ll find our way back when it’s time. (laughter)
KB: Yeah – we’re gonna go cra-zy for a little while! (laughter)
BR: And those scenes where Kerouac wrote about being in the jazz clubs –
KB: Oh, boy!
BR: That remains some of the best – the best -music writing –
KB: Ever!
BR: Absolutely. Nothing –
KB: That’s right!
BR: – has ever captured that feeling like that.
KB: The part where they go to hear George Shearing … great stuff.
BR: Yeah! And Dean always manages to work his way right up front, going, “Yass! Yass! Yass!”
KB: Oh, yeah – he’d stick his head right in the horn! (laughter)
BR: Oh man … thank you. I could talk about that all night. (laughter) I know what I wanted to ask you: do you remember when it changed for you in Vietnam? Did you have a point when you asked yourself, “What the hell are we doing here?”
KB: Yeah – it took about six weeks to figure out it was a complete waste of time. (laughs)
BR: So what took the rest of the world so long?
KB: Because they weren’t there doing it! (laughs)
But the thing about it is, this is all coming through me. There were many great military people over there who saw it as an important job – and they were really crushed by the fact that they couldn’t complete it and do it right, you know? Of course, that probably meant totally demolishing the whole country …
There really are good people who will stand up when you need them to. The problem is, they’re being sent to places where it’s just being wasted … it’s a terrible tragedy.
BR: Oh, I totally agree. At the same time, I wouldn’t want a sector of the public to shun Who Shot The Water Buffalo? because they think it’s simply an anti-war book … it’s not anti-military; it’s pro-humanity, in my opinion.
KB: Exactly. These are characters who happen to be in this particular situation – but it could be any war, anywhere. It didn’t have to be Vietnam; it could’ve been in Homer’s time; it could’ve been in ancient Greece. But these are guys in this situation and this is how they happen to go through it.
BR: I hear you.
KB: You know, talking about Kerouac being a big inspiration … I also remember when Catch-22 came out while I was over there. I read that and said, “Aw, shit – that’s the book I wanted to write!” (laughter) “You beat me to it!” (laughter)
But it was the same thing: a tremendous inspiration to see how you could write about war with that kind of imagination. Let’s face it – we’re dealing with fiction; we’re dealing with flights of the imagination … in the case of Catch-22, it was B-24s rather than helicopters. (laughs)
BR: Did the ending to Who Shot The Water Buffalo? change over the years?
KB: Well, the basic ending was always the same, but I kept working on it to make it richer and better – focus on what was important and take away what detracted from it.
The book deliberately starts off just kind of ordinarily moving along; but as Vietnam gets crazier, the book gets crazier. The two go together. And I wanted those last two chapters to be the peak of the book.
BR: And I can honestly tell you as a reader – I don’t give a damn about whether I was going to be writing about the book or not – you held me until the very last word.
KB: Oh, good. I’m so glad to hear you say that.
BR: And I’m not just saying it –
KB: I know, I know. That’s why I’m happy to hear it. Thank you.
BR: Well, it’s not a compliment – it’s a statement of fact. (laughter)
KB: Okay, then. (laughs)
BR: Have you been back over to Vietnam since 1963?
KB: No, I haven’t. It’d be kind of interesting to go, if you could stand the weather. (laughs) But, no – I doubt that I will. I hate to fly, for one thing.
BR: Wait! You?
KB: Yeah, well if I was the pilot, it’d be different. (laughter) But there’s the whole airport thing and then the seats are so uncomfortable … it’s bad. All that’s good about it is the fact that you get somewhere quickly.
BR: It’s true. And it’s worse if you’re tall –
KB: Oh, yeah! And the guy in front of you leans his seat back …
BR: And I’m looking down right in his face! (laughter)
KB: I know! Every time they do that, I go “AAAAAAAAAHHHH!” real loudly and everybody jumps. (laughter)
“Oh, God – my knees! He broke my knees!” (laughter)
BR: Does it help?
KB: Naw. (laughs) Anybody who cared wouldn’t lean their seat back to begin with. The people who give a shit won’t do it. It’s too rude. (laughs)
BR: So, I’m assuming you’ll be going out on the road in the coming months to talk about the book.
KB: Well, so far we’re just putting together the West Coast tour. We’ll see how that goes and then hopefully I’ll head out to Colorado where I have a lot of good connections; the mid-west – including my old alma mater; down to Lexington, KY where I have some good writing buddies; and then end up on the East Coast with a grand finale in New York City.
BR: Cool- sounds great. I guess we’re near the end here, Ken … is there anything you want to say to the folks back at home?
KB: “The folks back at home.” (laughs, then takes a deep breath)
Be watching up in the sky
Any time of day or night
For the flying of the pilot
Soaring out of sight …
SKYYYYY PILOT!
(laughter)
BR: All right! The theme song!
KB: Yeah! (laughter)
BR: Ken, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us; thank you for writing this book; and, most of all, thank you for forging ahead, turning on some lights, and leaving the doors open behind you over the years.
KB: You’re welcome, Brian. And thank you – this has been fun.
