The Roads You Take, The Ones You Leave Behind
Thinking bout the 50th Hog Farm Reunion, Wavy Gravy, and the Bus I used to live on
I joined the Hog Farm in 1969, a long time ago. I left a year later, got back on the bus for a minute here and there, spent time hanging out with the family at Pacific High School, met up with them at other stops along the journey, but as an onboard family member, I was gone. I left, but I never quit. I became an executive, an Academy member, a temple goer. I lived a hundred other layers of life, gathering identities as I went. Still, always among them, I remembered I was a Hog Farmer.
You may not know much about the Hog Farm, so here’s a short history. The Hog Farm is the longest-living commune in America, a bunch of 60s hippies welded together by common desires and trust, and time. It came together in December 66, started by a handful of people living in the hills of Sunland, California, who built a bus to replace the one some of them had once lived on. That first bus was Further, the mythic bus of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. This new bus, called Road Hog, was slowly joined by many other busses, became the traveling commune that was the free kitchen and trips tent at Woodstock. About a year after Woodstock, I met the Hog Farm in Chicago. I climbed onto Road Hog one bitterly cold afternoon, and stepping aboard altered my life.
