In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Jack’s Merrimack River, Jack’s ancient stream damn steamed river. Rough, white-capped torrents flowing without a break, coming from some unknown springs, creeks, riverlets, brooks and whatnot, storm-tossed in winter, rock-stepping rough, pock-marked with broken trees causing gushes and gaps in the steady stream, boulders pocked too up by the painted sprayed cliffs near the University, cliff names (Jimmy loves Janie, sigma phi forever, Mary sucks , complete with telephone number, the Acre rules), etched in paint (day-glo now some odd formula then) going back to Jack time, (then, Jack time, just friendly old Lowell Textile, strictly for the textile trade wonks and wanna-be, not Jack-worthy), undertow dragging against foolhardy feet for the unsteady and first understandings that the world IS a dangerous place but also, without embarrassment, that the river is the river of life. And no fears, no god fears, no mother church catholic fears, no consequence from those pagan sentiments. Bridged, river bridged, bridged at strategic points bridged, brawny steel and trestle bridged to take on all traffics rumbling across the torrent below river, granite foundations stones placed, how placed a mystery, a construction mystery that some bright Lowell Tech guy (old days now U/Mass, ah, Lowell) could figure out in a minute just like how he got that rock-bound Jimmie loves Janie rock sprayed, in such a way as to defend against rising rivers, hurricanes, wars, and other earthen disasters.
Bridged, not metaphor bridged, Jack would no heard of it, would smirk that devil’s smirk and dismiss you and your damn metaphor out of hand, would speak of golden colored bridges spanning , and name the colors, and the shades when they reflected against the day, fierce seas, name the seas, name the ships on the seas, name the parts of ships, name the horrors and beauties of the turbulent seas, would speak of traffic, of commerce of delivering goods, near and far, of bridge sounds, rumbles, honks, gnaws even, so no to some Hemingway mind-wrought big two-hearted Idaho idyllic river but real bridged, Jack London old time bridged, Call Of The Wild nights of the long knives bridged between poor, working poor, working textile poor Lowell on one side and the desperately, or repeatedly poor like clan Kerouac, chronically unemployed, semi-chronically drunk and disorderly, poor, Acre poor.
Blessed Saint Jeanbon, Ti Jean, among the brethren, cross his big god-head heart, un-anointed, hell unadorned Adonis patron saint of the Acre poor, the Acre poor, scrabbly working poor (and throw in some lumpen criminal vagabonds, scavengers, con men, lifeless corner boys , and just plain thugs to boot, they thrive in the easy pickings Acre, and a thousand other Acre places too) known to kindred poor Josh Breslin (mother, nee LeBlanc, the LeBlancs from up Quebec City way, and north Saint Lawrence north toward the Gaspe ) in the French –Canadian Atlantic Avenue Acre over in Olde Saco, Maine and well-known as well to Irish stews Peter Paul Markin down in Acre projects in Adamsville, Massachusetts way. Yes, Saint Jeanbon, patron saint muse of the Acre poor, wherever they are located. The back-biting, bitching, somewhere over the rainbow poor, the Botts diner after midnight heavy-lidded after manly bouts with fugitive whiskey bottles poor, the pick up the fags (okay, okay here cigarette butts) from the Merrimack Street ground, and cadging (while the bartender is not looking) half- finished manly whiskies (or, hell, by midnight whatever is left on napkin-soaked tables and counters), poor. And one thousand, maybe one million other unspoken, always unspoken, pathologies, tics, and whatnots, never allowed to air in the sometimes fetid (although near no oceans or marshes but from mixed and matched industrial chemicals), damn stinking Lowell industrial summer night. And cold, pale blue cold winter too, except maybe not fetid. Pick a cold word, okay.
Jack rough river, working- class Jack rough all brawny and bustle, flowing to great unseen Atlantic shores (where real fetid smells, nature smells from churned seas and drowned marshes, periodically stink the air) and from there to great American homeland England before the fall and real homeland, France, ageless France bountiful and smart long before the bloody Anglos were made hip to using spoons for porridge, before Arcadian Plains of Abraham falls and hard English burnt offering exiles. And damn cursed native tongues (patois they called it) banned just like with the gaelic Irish, the Breton wild men, and the celtic brogue Scots, what madness in Empire, that seaward sun never sets empire thumbing it beefsteak nose at culture brought from courtly France and well-bred manners. And strangers in a strange land (Longfellow homage poem exiles anyway) when Canad soils gave out, or no work prospects loomed, or the lore of two dollars a day (in real money, Anglo-derived money, damn) sent half of Quebec streaming down to the paper and textile mill towns, river towns, Olde Saco, Manchester, Nashua, and sainted, sunned, stunned, acid- stained canal strewn river flowed Lowell.
Merrimack (Jack play word Mary Mack, Markin play word Mary Mack all dressed in black), home town river of youth, callous youth, question, going into young manhood. Hanging around corner boy Leclerc’s Variety, mom and pop variety store cadging quarters from working men streaming out of the second-shift mills, occasionally stealing odd lots of penny candy (funny habit, always describing sweet tooth things, immense marbled cakes, chocolate frosted, hugh bread puddings heated and served with whipped creams, shimmering jellos of six different flavors, also whipped creamed, hearty apple pies ladened with syrupy ice cream melts and on down to mouth- watering movie time milk duds, for chrissakes, making word hungry eyes food hungry, cheap sugar food hungry), you know Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, Snickers (or, snickers), Milky Way, to avoid the heavy tariff at the Bijou Theater come Saturday afternoon double bill, double trouble, matinee specials. And Ma, Mere called so in the old-fashioned back home Montreal way from whence she came trotting for those dame yankee dollars, having to sneak quarters to Mr. LeBlanc to cover those sweet tooth penny candied larcenies . And you thought you were so clever, Jack old boy, old dog. But that was the life, the corner boy life small stealing, small cadging, jack-rolling some drunken kid for his quarters (doled out by his Mere for his penny candy Bijou extravaganzas). Boys, always about boys, and adventures and thinking, and forever writing, writing just in case.
Later dream stories, at those same corners or maybe further the river toward Pawtucketville across from Father Kerouac’s social club (and drinking bout hang-out) but always eternally corner dream stories now long gone to malls and fast food courts and no loitering, no trespassing, no skate-boarding, no breathing human unkind trances. To speak about jail break-outs, about small town prison escapes, the young always seeing even New York City as too small for their outrageous appetites, and good luck, letting Lowell sun eat the dust of your tracks fill the night air, about big time jobs and celebrity (once the word was discovered). And then the talk turned serious as the wisp of a beard showed (more than five o’clock shadows for Jack, dark, French-etched two times a day shaved Jack) turned to manly shavings and childish voice turned to deep bass, serious talk about girls, about what they were made of, and more importantly what made them tick. A lifetime of wonders and sorrows to spill the river-laden night. A clue though, a clue worth a king’s ransom would have been worth all that lucre if they could just figure out what the hell they wanted. The girls, okay. They, the corner boys, all sized, shaped, smarts, greek, French, ethnic corner boys (who else would inhabit the Acre in those days, the bloody Irish lived in Irishtown, just like they did in Olde Saco and Adamsville, down in Irishtown south Lowell way, down Maggie Cassidy way but more on that later) found out soon enough after a few bouts of love dust at the old Starlight Ballroom, now famous, town famous, since Benny Goodman and his band had set its 1939 foot in the front door and blasted everything to be-bop, beepy-be-bop don’t stop, mad man music including soon to be front singing Jack-enflamed red dress Paula. Yah, that was where she got her start (okay, okay start with Jack on moonless nights singing, singing the then known American songbook, Tin Pan Alley songbook but that didn’t count. The moonless singing that is. The afternoon red dress and high heels come hither, yah, that counted, Maggie counted too but later.)
Jack’s river of sorrow, of Mere hurts and Maggie Cassidy hurts too. (I told you I would have more on her, of lace curtain vanities and father train conductor dreams of some little white cottage, a dog, and three point four kids, nah, not Jack-sized ). Forgotten now Paula (forgotten even forgotten of red dress seductions which made him toss and turn many a night, many a night before Maggie devoured sleep). Forgotten Mere (and her old-fashioned Montreal French stories that he would use later to bulk out his own stories when his brain ran dry) , forgotten although always hovering as a stark and real cut knives presence (and mixed in as with all mothers , mothers since Eve, generous helpings of love gifts bought with shoe leather- stained hands from working at that damn old mother-twisting shoe mill) really until the Maggie fever had subsided, subsided several years, later but that is a story for another time, a time after New York City lights, Village mysteries, sea adventures and searches for the blue-pink great American West night, and of Neal Cassady cowboy west romps, and next million word adventures.
What mattered now though was that our boy, our Jack O’Kerouac, or Jack McKerouac, or Jack, hell, let’s leave it at Jack Celtic got himself all balled up over an Irish colleen, from over in Irishtown, well away from the Acre and well away from handy corner boys to hold his hand when old Maggie turned up the heat. Yes, Maggie, blessed virgin Maggie, of the pale blue eyes, of the pale blue heart, and of the lace curtain appetites. Of white picket fences, and houses, white too, to go with them, a spotted dog and a few stray whining kids to keep the cold nights warm. No sale, no Jack of the river sale, not our boy in the end but it was a close call and maybe if she had turned down those white silken stockings just once he would have wound up white fence- picketed through his heart in some cozy bungalow close by Dracut Forest.
Yes, Jack would know manly hurts after that one but not before clowning himself before her with feats of modern athletic daring against black ravens , against arch-rival Lawrence gridiron, Lawrence also of the river and of history, of strikes and struggle of a different kind, of bread and roses. Of clowning corner boy clowning, deciding stay or go, stay or go, of drunken dance floor episodes (no, not when Benny Goodman, Hail Be-bop Benny, held forth and made the Starlight Ballroom quake, but other times, other Maggie pouting times, or Maggie tired times, or Maggie “friend” times, the list was endless, and he endlessly patiently impatient as each phase of the Maggie moon turned into ashes. And into Jack death pyre.
Interlude: Jack’s low sun going down behind the river and before that the tree strewn, living tree strewn river upstream, upstream where it all began and where Jack began. Pawtucketville, the Acre, South Lowell, the trolley tracks end, and the endless winter snow walks, the endless summer river ebb walks, the fret Maggie walks, the no dime for carfare (quaint word) walk, the walk to save for penny candy walk, the million word walk, the first school dance walk, the no money for prom car (or car or license, okay) walk, the night before the big game walk, walked in Dracut Forest to avoid mad crashing fans who want to know glory, if only Jack reflected glory, yes, walk, walk too, get out of the house when Meme cursed his dark night.
But really prelude to million mile walks from New Jersey shores, looking out from broken down, oil-stained, oil smelled eastern piers and dreaming hookah Tangiers dreams, from Time Square dope blasts with every faux hipster who could afford a string tie, soft shoes, midnight sunglasses and a be-bop line of patter, pitter patter, really, from rockymountainhills walks in beloved Cassady country poolrooms and juke joints, from ghost dance walks in saline deserts channeling ancient Breton hurts and shamanic wanderlust, from dark bracero Mex walks waiting on broken down senorita love in some stinking Imperial Valley bean field, from Presidio fast by the golden gate bridge, fast by North Beach walks, from Big Sur hunger walks, from life walks, from death walks. Walks, shoe leather- eating walks, okay.
******
Jack of Lowell hometown, Jack of some Micmac-traded ancient Canad French-Canadian fur trader beyond time and back to Breton woods and great field of serf fellaheen peasants plowing, cowing, milking, harvesting, corvee-ing some milord’s land seen in some far distance, since with river running. Ownership burned out in the Yankee mill night, the time-owned night, the day too. Mainly now of triple and double-deckers squalid flats constantly changing renter-ship, constantly babies squabble in six languages, but above all patois, beautiful lilt keltic fringe hard Atlantic seas and torrents of rain Breton coast patois. And so they established an outpost here, among the mix of mill town hands, making mill things, dreaming non-mill things, and for the men working, working hard and long and then off to some card-playing (as disguise for heavy drinking) Franco-American Club, no women, no children, no kikes, no micks, no English (absolutely no English for there is a swollen bone to pick over that on one), no oppressors unnamed and unloved allowed. A man’s life as befits a man whose people came down from places deep in Quebec woods and along the mighty Saint Lawrence.
Those are ancient myths of gentile beggar fellaheen birth among the Canad and pedigree not to be touted in non-pedigree Americas, and certainly not in non-pedigree Lowells (except by certain mill owners who spoke only to god, or to Cabots maybe). And so they mix of fellaheen patois, of roasted fires, of sweet gentle wines to that good night, of sober work, of somber life explained the fate of that American mix, Lowell style. And explained too the greek, french, irish, break-out of ungrateful sons (and daughters but not as well seen). Sons with words to say, with American songs to sing, not Whitman song, that was another time, another place and another America but songs against mill stream night, songs against the death of personal dreams , of wayward sons, well-meaning wayward sons but wayward.
Ah, Lowell setting sun Lowell and its time of great decline, great decline on Jack’s birth river. The stink of tannic acid, the blue dye, the red dye, hell, the yellow dye river dying for lack of work, for worked out mills, for moved to cheap jack cheaper labor southern ports of call. And so the Lowell setting sun turned in on itself, turned to be-bop music and Botts midnight diners with guys, guys who used to work the midnight shift, and restless, now lingering over mad cups of joe to ward off the worthless sense of non-self. Fixed in place and the younger ones seeing that said no mas, not me, and spoke of flights of fancy, and of real flights, flights from Merrimack river roads to trash-strewn asphalt highways west.
Lowell, water Lowell, canal Lowell, fresh-faced farm girl Lowell hands weaving the wicked weave of the loam and then to other pursuits none the worse for wear at least that was the call, the advertised call that brought them from Acton, Concord, and Littleton farms or maybe before those places had names, town names, just Farmer Brown’s rosy-cheeked daughter from over there where that dusty road intersected the corner of Brother Brown’s land. Later gentle waters, gentle confluence waters from high hill brooks and bramble, from flow Concord, Lowell sing, not some sing-song Shepard’s sing, not some cattle- lowing sing, not some elysian fields sing but the sing of great bobbed machines whistling late into the night, hell what night, whistling into daybreak and fearful noises for those poor tenement, double and triple tenement, dwellers who form the perimeter of the mill mile, sweet cloth and money-making mill mile.
And Jack born, born and raised, to term an old phrase a mere stone’s throw away along that same river bend as it curves up the cliffs near Pawtucketville, the old time Mere and Pere French quarter where Jack would get his fill of double and triple-deckers. And rosy tales of those ancient Breton fields and thieving thrivingFrench fur- traders amid the scream of broken whiskey bottles, a few broken by him, murderous wives bent on murder for having; too many children, too many children close together, too many short paychecks and too many long grocer’s bills, too many drunken husband nights without him or with him all sex hungry and stinking of anglo whiskies or greek anise, or just murderous to be murderous in fear of the lost Hollywood dream and no chance to pull a Mildred Pierce or even a lite Lana Turner twist against some old drunken greek short order chef seaside road diner hell fate.
Jail-break midnight teenagers looking for quick quarters for the jukebox to play Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman or some latest be-bop daddy, standing around in front of the Bijou Theater or the Starlight Ballroom to see if there are any dreams being manufactured inside, and looking for a way to make sense of a world that they didn’t create. That Jack, that Jack teen age boy, teen age corner boy like all the others didn’t create, that played and that ate at him, ate at him from crawl time to crawling down the gutter time. But if you are going to bust out you had better have something more than halfback hero’s good looks, if you are going to go toe to toe with the gods (and we know he was aching, bleeding really, to go toe to toe with them, for a while anyway). So he started, started early, a million word journey use stubbled pencils, and squirrelly inks until, until he got the hang of writing non-stop with a roll of newsprint and a squirrelly old typewriter. Praise Brother Remington
And funny growth too, the sturdy, durable fleet youth, all black hair and oo-la-la French good looks, verified, verified first by wistful small-breasted French girls with long thin legs, also from the old Canad descended and maybe a few rascally fur-traders in the background too. Later wild red-headed Irish girls trying, a little, to break from heathen brown-haired sexless, sex-hate Irish boys murmuring novenas, stations of the cross, and smelling of altar wines and priest pokes would toss and turn dreaming of oo-la-la Frenchmen read about in some school girl school book, or heard on unsavory streets from the older girls, the girls who no longer have the sign of the cross when they passed Saint Joseph’s, or Saint Brigitte’s, or Saint Germaine’s or Immaculate Conception, or Sacred Heart, Saint, saint, saint, Saint Mary’s, okay, or any of the three billion (but I exaggerate) other Lowell holy, holy places where a man can turn from saint Jack to shaman Jack in a wink of an eye.
And that is when she came by, she Maggie she, but call her all girl-kind, no, womankind, with her pale white skin, her pale blue eyes, her dark hair and her well-turned ankles, and disturbed his sleep. And he never got over that, that way that she could keep him on a string while every other girl was ready to throw herself to the ground for him (in order that he could have the stamina to beat Lawrence on Thanksgiving Day, in order for him to write some little ditty for her, in order for him to dance with her at the school dance, in order, one girl claimed she had to “do it” in order to improve her voice so she could sing with some faux- Benny Goodman [all the rage then in the late 1930s be-bop night] quintet, in order, hell, at the end it was just in order to, what did they call it in Lowell High School Monday morning girls’ lav before school girl talkfest about what did, or didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday night, oh yah, to say they had been jacked by him).
Later, later when the reasons changed but the girls (no, women then) still thought jacked thoughts he feigned lack of interest, feigned writer’s cramp, feigned zen Buddhist abstinence, feigned, not so feigned maybe, drunk or drugged impotence. But no man, no real man, or fairy (term of art forgiven, please) or even lowly Time Square whores, hookers, drifters and fags (term of art, not forgiven) knew that he had had his insides torn out by old Maggie, Maggie the cat with no downy billows ending long before Tennessee Williams ever put pen to paper. So say a prayer for Jack, Jeanbon Jack, if you are the praying kind and curse hellish dark-haired Irish colleens.
Spinning wheels, million football goals scored, million girls jacked, million drinks drunk with clownish corner boys from age six on, million yards of pure textile loomed enough to satisfy even the haughtiest Lowell Textile School professor, million words written, million smokestack fumes emitted into the cold Lowell air night. Finished, town finished, Maggie finished, corner boy finished, home finished. Break out time, break out to great northern seas to write like some mad monk plastered on cheap jack vineyard wines, homemade, pressed fast and sipped fast (and on the sly). Neon sign break-out, New Jack City beckoned.
Interlude: Four in the morning cold coffee slurps, percolator (quaint word) on the stove brewing up another break- speed batch to endure hours more of non-stop, non-connected, non-punctuated writing. Writing of Trailways bus stop waits, waits for continental visions (if one does not the mind the company, the inevitable, to be kind ,too large company in the next seat), in search of that great blue-pink American West night (and later the international blue-pink night) in dirty washrooms filled with seven hundred manly stinks, and six perfumes to kill the smell, the urinate smell, street-wise rest room for weary travelers, hobos, bums, and tramps, take your pick, maybe some hung over soldier trying to decide on AWOL or frantic rush back to base and evaporated dreams, nightmares really. Of seasick sailors running overboard at the first wave heave, or first explosion in the dread Murmansk run North Atlantic icy waters night one sailor, seasick, no, sick of the sea, writing, writing in disregard of heaves, and lifeboat-worthy explosions.
Of Village flophouse lofts filled with chattering (to vanish fear)expatriate exiles, native born from Iowa, Minnesota, Denver, maybe, in ones and twos, trying to hold out against the impending red scare cold war night, the death night to destroy the promise of golden age utopias. Of Scollay Square whores ready to take your pain away, no questions asked, filled with stories, small dream from small town stories about easy lost virginity and local scandal, with jack-roller ready pimp/boyfriends just in case things got rough, or some easy dough was to be had.
Of some mad notion that writing two million words would take that pain away as easily as that whore promise, and finding some jack-roller instead when the brain ran dry, the pen ink ran dry, the newsprint roll ran out and there were no Meme or Gerald memory blasts to fall back on. Of some ache, some unfound ache to find that Adonis double (Janus, maybe, blond they say, maybe) zen master, gear master, chariot master that everybody in that Village loft, that San Francisco North Beach bungalow, that Malibu henhouse, that Tijuana whorehouse, that Tangiers opium den, hell, even that Trailways stink bathroom was waiting on.
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New York City, Time Square of course, Columbia of course(before the heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), the Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), of movies and movie theaters, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking or urine or Thunderbird wines, of drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42nd Street hurts, of Howard Johnson’s frankfurts eaten by the half dozen to curve hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, of Joe and Nemo’s two AM fatty griddle hamburgers, of fags and fairies, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell and can write too, write one million words on order, and of stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro, and not to speak of Soho or the Village. And of junkies, of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus, suffering humanity.
And of men met in New York, really Times Square jungles (post- Maggie girls, women, frills, frails, dames, bitches, etc., etc., of no serious consequence except as pillows, weeps, dreams, and such). Of word magicians, maybe not two million but enough, of great earth-devouring fags (no offense here), chain-smoking New Jersey sodomites, reading Walt Whitman by day and wine drunk and man horny at night (or maybe day too) but mainly reading and infernal writing always writing like that was all that life could be except enough experiences to write about. Of Allen om Ginsberg. Of breaking out of silly Eliot great modern bean- counting words in need of glossaries of comprehension, of jazz-inspired be-bop high white words to take the whole red scare, cold war stalinite night away, and to calm the nuclear blast headed our way, butt up (no sexual reference intended and no spite) and chronicle each and every experience with that broken down typewriter, and that roll of low-grade paper ripped out of the be-bop 1950s night. And of Adonis all-american golden boy, Neal, meets all-american dark-haired boy in some Denver saloon, or pool hall yelling, shoot pools , make some dough and off in some 1946 Studebaker in straight forty-eight hour gears-grinding search of the great blue-pink American West night, or maybe just Maggie, that eluded fugitive fragrance that he could never name of Maggie, who knows. Yes, the father that we knew, the father that we did not know. Jack, Jack of the Merrimack.
