The City & the Country no.22 – The Ultimate Woodstock Event – August 26 12014

Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus – the original – (not the first one, which died after a brief life in the ’60s and is being refurbished) – the actual Magic Bus traveled in by the Pranksters – reader, if you know nothing of this, instruct yourself in the America of 50 years ago – arrived in Woodstock on a 50th Anniversary journey (anniversary of the original trip, and trip is truly the word), raising money for the refurbishment of Further (name of the bus) in its short-lived first incarnation. This, however, is the Further of the epic journey, and not a “Further II.” It is the great, the one and only. Sometimes spelt Furthur and sometimes Furthr.

En route to other parts but momentarily parked outside Oriole 9, our fashionable daytime restaurant, it briefly provided a dazzling focus for our little town, here in its main (and almost one and only) street. Its only thoroughfare, although myriad veins set off from it into the surrounding hills. The glow of the Magic Bus made it seem like an apparition, a spaceship, a Doctor Who-like vehicle from a parallel reality. And since the reality it bespoke is no more, or is barely breathing, finding it intact in a form as profuse in design as a Hindu temple (but far more colorful), in the middle of Woodstock, was both supremely appropriate, and completely strange. Like a visitor from an age more bygone than the 50 years by calendar time. Another America.