Hey Jack Kerouac, Crazy Dumbsaint of the Mind

But I end up going anyway because I want to see what they're all going to do next.
After all, the only reason for life or a story is "What Happened Next?"
--Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels

Jack Kerouac ruined my life. Up until I read Kerouac I had a pretty active imagination and enjoyed writing, what I thought, was some pretty outrageous stuff. But he changed all of that. I was in High School, probably eleventh grade, when I read On the Road which was published fifty years ago today. I don't think it was assigned text. That would be a bit too edgy for the Little Rock Public School District. We did have a substitute teacher in our twelfth grade English class devote a day's lesson to Ginsberg's Howl. I almost suspect our real teacher of faking her illness and putting the substitute--a former student--up to the job.
Anyway, reading Kerouac, I felt it was so authentic, so real, that everything I wrote was fake and phony. So, I tried writing like Kerouac, from my life's experiences. And shortly after that, I stopped writing. But I didn't stop reading Kerouac. I consumed it all--Vanity of Dulouz, Big Sur, The Dharma Bums, Book of Blues, Visions of Cody (an early version of On the Road), Maggie Cassidy, Lonesome Traveler, The Subterraneans, both volumes of published letters and various works in odd compilations like Good Blonde and Others. But I think my favorite of them all is Desolation Angels.
So I say he ruined my life. But that's not true. Something in what he was saying spoke to me and I just needed to keep hearing it. He certainly gave me a sense of wanderlust. Although I never lived in San Francisco, I had several friends live there over the years and I often visit, always with a stop at City Lights Books. I did manage to live in New York City for a brief time--imagining my tiny walk-up apartment as some garret akin to a Beat's pad down in the Village--which by 1999 a real Beat couldn't even afford. In fact, while I was waiting to take possession of my Manhattan sub-let (from which I would be evicted shortly for reasons beyond my control--but it's a good story--and true!) I took the train to Boston to visit Chope and Ali for a few days. Chope loaned me his car to make the day trip over to Lowell, Kerouac's hometown. Lowell was an old mill town. The mills were all vacant. But you could still see the High School Kerouac attended looking much the same. There was also a nice memorial for the hometown boy who had created a literary and cultural sensation--large marbe slabs with long quotes from his work. 
After looking around the town, I headed out to the cemetery where the lonesome traveler was laid to rest. I had a map from the helpful people at the visitor's center, but the ground was covered with snow and ice which can make locating a headstone not only difficult but treacherous. Once I got in the general vicinity, I could tell I was getting warm by the empty wine bottles and tributes left by previous pilgrims. Still, I couldn't SEE anything that said Here Lies Jack Kerouac. I paced around a little bit on the ice and was beginning to feel pretty bummed when all of a sudden--Snap! The ice cracked below my feet and my foot sank through right on top of the marker. I knelt down and began to clear away the ice so I could read it. This was it. JOHN L KEROUAC. HE HONORED LIFE.
That's what it said there on the marker. Still speaking to me, after I'd exhausted all of his other writings. For the 50th anniversary of On the Road they've published the original scroll he wrote initially in 1951. That's what I'm reading right now. It's good to hear from Jack again.  
"Don't you know God is Pooh Bear?"