What is so odd about the Odd Fellows? Back in January I posted this prophetic post. ‘The Literary Bohemian Crusade With Grail’.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/18/the-literary-bohemian-crusade-with-grail/
When I read Kesey’s mural was going to appear on the Odd Fellows building, I knew several portals were opening. This morning, Zane Kesey posted pics of his fishing trip. He left Depoe Bay and went under an arch out to sea. He did not know the fishing trip from the movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was filmed here. McMurphy introduces his odd crew of madmen, as Doctors. The Pranksters are born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Order_of_Odd_Fellows
I wrote this post at a low point of my life, when I felt forsaken. But, this is how the story goes, just when all seems lost, Perceval beholds the Grail.
At the end of my novel ‘The Gideon Computer’ Berkley Bill Bolagard is reunited with his book collection he thought he had lost. We had rare books in our home growing up thanks to my ancestors who conducted secret rituals non-members are not privy to, but, there I am, the Master Augur making a templum before a two-dimensional book-case.
The Pontifex Maximus is a ‘bridge builder’. Ken was a bridge builder to other dimensions. My Janke kindred built a theme park for the Oddfellows. Ken made a theme park in Springfield and Eugene – that spread all over the world! Consider Kesey Enterprises.
“The Jankes turned out to be entertainment entrepreneurs as well. They bought up a dozen acres on the south side of Belmont Creek and established Belmont Park and picnic grounds. Patterned after the beer gardens of their German heritage, it offered a 300 person dance pavilion, a carousel, a running track and walking trails, an ice cream parlor, plenty of picnicking space and of course drinks – beer and plenty of sarsaparilla (which might have been spiked with cocaine in that era). The Jankes made a mutually profitable deal with the Southern Pacific to run weekend picnic special trains from the city to Belmont Park. The place often hosted large crowds, with one notable affair being 8,000 people for an Odd Fellows fraternal gathering.”
https://bestshowevereugene.wordpress.com/venues/mcdonald-theatre/
A curtain hangs on the side of the Odd Fellows Hall that will part at 5:30 P.M. today. This image of Ken was taken at the Calliope Company warehouse where the Pranksters lived for a month. Ken is looking at the city my ancestors help build. I can see Oakland across the bay, reflected in the pupil of his eye.
And, the books fly off the shelf. The air is filled with the sound of rustling wings as the pages of time are turned. What a long strange trip it has been.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
https://rosamondpress.com/2011/08/03/stuttmeister-tomb-in-colma/
Two days ago I found what constitutes the Literary Bohemian Holy Grail. I found an essay by titled ‘Kesey and Pynchon – A Trip to the Wasteland’.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rbph_0035-0818_1986_num_64_3_3552
What the author contends is the novels ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘The Crying of 49’ by Thomas Pynchon are Grail Romances replete with Grail Knight and the Fisher King. Alas I have a credible author and scholar who I can refer to in regards to I owning credibility and being able to point to how two writers – who do not know each other – have arrived at similar conclusions. Consider Ken Kesey’s Search for Merlin in England which my newspaper has reported on.
The Holy Crusade and the Holy Grail go hand in hand. Islamic terrorists killed writers and cartoonist in Paris. I am a cartoonist who began a cartoon in 1986, titled ‘My Christ Complex’. That same year I began ‘The Gideon Computer’ after my childhood friend, Nancy Hamren, suggested I author the history of the Hippies because I could recall so much. I chose to write about the Last Hippie of the future, who helps destroy the shame-based computer that goes after all the Free Souls and Free Thinkers. I got sober when I noticed my novel was coming true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4NRIDjRjk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuocCi2kLjg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DSMalgcwWk
https://www.facebook.com/SpringfieldOR?fref=ts
Today’s Twin Pines Park in Belmont, a refuge for kids, families and the arts, conceals a rowdy past. Here’s an easy cache to introduce its history.
In the 1870s, Belmont was a whistle stop on the Southern Pacific railroad, an aspiring suburb to San Francisco and a base for tycoons like William Ralston who had built country mansions in the canyons and hills to the west. In 1876, two German immigrants brought some industry to town. Carl Augustus Janke and his son Carl Ferdinand founded the Belmont Soda Works just north of The Corners (now Ralston and El Camino). The Jankes manufactured a variety of fizzy drinks, most notably sarsaparilla, and delivered them to San Francisco and points south along the railroad.
The Jankes turned out to be entertainment entrepreneurs as well. They bought up a dozen acres on the south side of Belmont Creek and established Belmont Park and picnic grounds. Patterned after the beer gardens of their German heritage, it offered a 300 person dance pavilion, a carousel, a running track and walking trails, an ice cream parlor, plenty of picnicking space and of course drinks – beer and plenty of sarsaparilla (which might have been spiked with cocaine in that era). The Jankes made a mutually profitable deal with the Southern Pacific to run weekend picnic special trains from the city to Belmont Park. The place often hosted large crowds, with one notable affair being 8,000 people for an Odd Fellows fraternal gathering.
With drink and crowds came trouble. Drunken brawls were not uncommon, and on one occasion a shoot-out between gangs left a man dead (some modern problems are not new.) A private jail was installed at the park, beneath the dance hall floor, and the Southern Pacific put special police on its excursion trains. But as Belmont and other Peninsula settlements grew, the weekly influx of rowdies was seen as a problem that outweighed their commercial benefits. Under pressure from the locals, the railroad cancelled its party train specials by 1900. Belmont Park went into a quick decline, and was mostly subdivided for other uses. The present park and the civic center are part of its remains, with little to show of its checkered past.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on rosamondpress and commented:
On April 16th I took a bus full of seniors to Depoe Bay where the fishing scene from ‘One Flew Over the Coo-Coo’s Nest’ was filmed.