The photo is of the
On the Road reader at
Olive That & More at 167 Market Street in Lowell about 2:00 p.m. today.
On the 50th anniversary of On the Road, we drove up to Lowell today and had a lovely lunch at La Boniche, sat a spell in a little cafe and listened to a chapter of "On the Road" read aloud, then ventured (driving in Lowell is always a venture/adventure) to the Bottt Cotton Mills Museum to look at the famous Kerouac scroll. Nice exhibit with lots of Kerouac memorabilia and it was good to see several generations looking at everything. I bought a new copy of On the Road, mine having disappeared somewhere between college and now.
Jack was such a fine looking man, and Lowell was his town. Still is. Beautiful early September day. We do need rain, but the sky was cloudless, a deep fall-is-in-the-air blue.
Long, long ago there was a coffee house in Houston called the Outside, and when you joined (for a buck), they issued a membership card stating that for all time you were a member of "The Outside." There were poetry readings and the smell of weed in the air, and once a big carload of Beatniks arrived from Mexico City which livened the evening up considerably. There was a black drummer called King George who played oil drums, and sometimes I would see him in Galveston, still drumming. I thought a bit about being a member of the Outside, which of course I still am, as is anyone who ponied up a dollar. I have always thought alienation was a good thing. Otherwise, what century would you be living in?
Raise your wine or beer or whiskey glass to Jack tonight, and remember your first road trip.
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