Bay Area family’s old bus is centerpiece of Forever Grateful immersive exhibition at Golden Gate Park

By Molly McCrea

Hand in hand, three members of the Hobson family – Lucy, Dave, and Phil – are ready to take a trip back in time. Their portal to the past is found inside the Forever Grateful immersive exhibition that just opened at Golden Gate Park.

As they took a step into the County Fair Building at 9th and Lincoln, their eyes widened and their faces broke into huge smiles.

“I can’t believe that we owned that,” Lucy exclaimed.

“Beautiful,” her brother Dave murmured.

At the center of attention was their childhood bus, but not as they remembered it.

In front of their eyes, they saw their bus as it had transformed over the years into the legendary Furthur.

“It’s absolutely fantastic. I can’t believe it — that we owned this bus and that this bus has gone through what it has gone through,” Lucy said.

“The artwork is amazing. Some people spent a lot of time doing this artwork,” Phil noted.

“These guys traveling all over the United States and being Merry Pranksters. It’s pretty cool,” Dave concluded. 

In 1964, Ken Kesey, the author of the celebrated novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and his free-spirited friends known as The Merry Pranksters needed a bus for a mind-expanding experiment

They had seen an ad in the local papers and headed into Atherton. There in a wooded cul-de-sac, on a gravel driveway, they bought the bus from the Hobsons, sight unseen. It cost Kesey $1,250.

The pranksters painted Hobson’s yellow school bus in DayGlo colors and took off on a cross-country experiment, fueled in part by mind-altering drugs.

“I asked my dad about it before he passed away, and he said that you know, they advertised it for sale and one day a station wagon showed up and a bunch of kids piled out,” Phil recollected.

As to why the Hobsons needed a large bus, the answer is clear once you meet the family. They needed a big vehicle.

“It was an innovative idea at the time. There were no motorhomes out there,” said Paul, who lives near Denver, Colorado, as does Lucy.

In 1963, as documented in a local paper, the Hobsons’ parents, Andre and Dorothy, had 11 kids and they wanted to travel.

“We’d all jam into a station wagon and try to take a trip but it didn’t work very well,” Paul said.

The couple discovered a 42-passenger yellow school bus. It was a 1939 International Harvester that freshly retired from the Paso Robles School District and was sitting in a Gillig transit yard in Oakland.

“It had 100,000 miles on it. They had a mechanic check it out and paid $750 for it, and they put another few hundred into outfitting the interior,” Paul explained.

Their father was an accomplished and innovative civil engineer. He converted the bus into a “vacation home on wheels”, complete with bunk beds, a working kitchen, folding tables, a separate master bedroom, and a 20-gallon water tank on stilts that was bolted to the floor. 

Their mother renovated real estate properties and had a creative eye. She bought art supplies for the trip and came up with a system to make sure no one was left behind.

“We were issued numbers that we would have to count off every time we got off the bus. Every time we’d get back on, my mom would make us count off numbers to make sure she had everybody,” Lucy said.

Their vacations covered and included Death Valley, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Palm Springs, Las Vegas and even Disneyland.

On one memorable trip outside of Joshua Tree, the bus broke down and engine parts were needed. They parked the vehicle in the parking lot of a bar, and for a week, one of the sisters named Judy played the piano and entertained the patrons. 

“It was just a great adventure,” Paul said.

“The good news was we didn’t have to get back anytime soon to go to school, so we enjoyed the heck out of it,” Dave said, smiling.

“How I wish my mom and dad could see this,” Lucy murmured as she peered into the bus. 

The iconic bus will remain in the Bay Area for about a year, as experts and stakeholders discuss how to best preserve and protect the cultural treasure.

A dead ringer: Place a call in the psychedelic phone booth

While the Furthur is the centerpiece of the Forever Grateful exhibition in Golden Gate Park, the immersive experience also includes another blast from the past: some cool-looking phone booths.

The booths at the exhibit are also lit up from within in bright DayGlo colors.

Walk in, close the door, and pick up the receiver. Once you put the phone to your ear, you’ll be prompted to share a story, hear a story or you might get pranked.

“So this is a psychedelic communications network we’re encouraging people to share their stories as we building a Deadhead archive that spans generations,” explained Kelly Harris.

Harris is the executive director of Haight Street Art Center. The nonprofit is the primary organizer of the exhibition on Haight Street as well as Golden Gate Park.