A private joke of the American writers of the Beat generation, to which the novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, including the original Grateful Dead, were also eventually privy, is that Neil Cassidy, the romantic adventurer that they idolized and celebrated in many of their works, was actually a basset hound. Cassidy did, however, work as a railroad brakeman, as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg have reported, and also drove Kesey's famous bus under a special dog license from the State of Oregon.