by Jack Kerouac
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SAILING DAY OF ADAMS FROM NEW YORK—Quarahambo and Quarhica, savage tribes at the headwaters of the Orinoco River in the Venezuelan wilds, along the Ventuari River that has great rapids roaring in the South American jungle—I could hear the roar of wild hard waters over ancestral rock in the completely unoccupied middle of great huge South America continent, just by reading above words in Hudson Tube and pretty soon I could hear drums of the Quarhica who undoubtedly blast the Quarahambo in traditional war, the thought that savages still exist (after all our complexities and Washington mink coats) making me stare into the darkness—Today, December 10, I feel sad, in a quandary, “as before,” no-good. Spent the night mourning and slowly packing—But it all goes back to the setting sun over the Erie Yards Friday evening. I went for the beer along the most dismal the most tragic the most begrimed dark Slavic street I’ve ever seen anywhere (this mad Jersey City!) and the name of it, perfect, is PAVONIA AVENUE with fat sad short men in cloth caps and black gloves, everything black, drinking at wild hollow bare-plank dim bars or trudging across the railroad tracks with hands muffled in coat—as always overhead the great sootclouds roll in darkness and suddenly you pass the open backdoor of a locomotive roundhouse, a great loco is standing there like a supercharged super-sized but terrible—
All my boyhood in America, though, in the little blond refugee with his mother in this Erie Station lunchroom—his little sister won’t eat anything but cake—the boy is amazed by everything, the old Erie conductor having coffee and cruller (glazed), all—The mother ordered five roast beef sandwiches, she’ll be surprised at price—it will be a big story—Little girl gulps the cruller, both hands—her poor little East German palate learning things (Public Address man calls stops, including Irwin’s RIVER STREET, Paterson)—Meanwhile the Adams is pulling out without me, behind me and all those tracks on this cold whipping sea-day with the cruel towers of Manhattan flashing in the winter sun like they do where rich men live in East Fifties apartments and a Negro is slamming a garbage barrel on the sidewalk (as once, incidentally, my first view of Frisco, a colored guy banged a barrel in a foggy dawn). The mother is so hungry she ate the little girl’s beef too—the old one that is, there’s a young mother and she just smiles and doesn’t want to sit down she’s so excited. On Pavonia Avenue, meanwhile, I walked along, hit a bar, they didn’t have Den’s specific Budweiser so I had a beer and moved along in the murk—went halfmile, in a bar a Budweiser man, driver, who was real dumb and gawking in the street wanted to talk about something after giving me directions to a delicatessen but had no words so I got to delicatessen, bought two cold cases, chatted with young prop. and staggered out in the smoky slum streets that here bisected Pavonia at the railyard hell’s limit—I found a beautiful young girl in an Aiken-Street-like door looking blushy at things—found cab, rode back along hem of Holland Tunnel bound traffic, pass’t yards, saw yardlights disembodied in smoky night sending smoke halo stabs down on clutters and rails—staggered along great length of pier to gangway. Now it was evening, party was in order, but actually everybody went ashore into all these mad areas and irons of Jersey City.
— Later: And now I’m in Danny’s music store, in a booth, just took dexy, am blowing some Allen Eager and Gerry Mulligan bop—Have fifty-five dollars with which to hitch to Frisco starting matin—no bus—okay—and fifteen dexies, five bennies—till Cody—then all straight—till I then run down to Pedro, it’s Pedro, meet you in Pedro, yes it’s Pedro (home of Ray the wiper, whose job I may get)—Trying to borrow $ for bus ride to Frisco but nobody has—Here are the mad complexities: and to return: everybody went ashore, only the first assistant engineer drank with us, a big Thomas Mitchell who the night after, night of Lacoucci’s party, dug my Ma—also Mr. Smith the fat alcoholic sicksad beastly wiper had a drink—and crazy Ray—but I got stoned, yakked in poor Deni’s ear about nothing, went to sleep in cadets’ stateroom—in morn had coffee, felt guilty (for deciding to follow Adams to Frisco instead of shipping out from here pronto with mucho loot), had chat with our wonderful chief cook Frederico who’s my friend and is going to teach me cooking if I get on Adams (I’ve become the great mad Cook of THE ROAD)—of ROAD, where goest thou now?—I came home Saturday morning—but later—AND AT THIS VERY MOMENT AS I SIT HERE THE S.S. PRESIDENT ADAMS IS FLYING SOUTHWARD OFF THE JERSEY COAST.
Just as in 1942 when I shipped out for Arctic Greenland I’m now going through all kinds of mad complications, like, in Pedro I’m getting a letter from the cook written in Spanish to the Agent of M.C.S. at Frisco; already I’ve got a letter to Wilmington, Calif. agent—also I have to look up his Friend Joe in Frisco to tell him that the gabardine from Italy is ready and if Adams, because late in schedule, doesn’t dock in Frisco Antonio will mail from L.A.—I also have to look up the GUIDE to see where the S.S. Lurline is at, to locate Jimmy Low to check on Deni’s deadly enemies Matthew Peters and especially Paul Lyman (Matthew is a hipster, Jimmy a little guy, Lyman a gunman)—also, I look up a woman in Hollywood, my same 1947 Hollywood and soon. And I’ve decided to hitch-hike with my seventy dollars and hit all the bars in the snow of the great land between here and Frisco—if I freeze to death it won’t be from lack of beer and food (!)—straight for the Coast so’s to save 1000 miles of South and should be watching the roof of Cody’s house on Monday December 17 I hope, then leave around 23rd for Pedro preferably with Cody in car and kicks, so I have loot for kicks. I just saw Jody Mifflin (after long Duluoz walk along park in gray nippy day, Central Park South) and borrowed thirty dollars from her, but bus, I find, is sixty-five dollars so fuckit. Last night got hi with Danny, bought plenty dexies, bennies, all set to go. The last thing is actually putting clothes in bag and saying goodbye to Ma, dammit—but I gotta go to those brown union halls of the gray West Coast and make my way, and find my work on the run. Jody and I had long talk—perhaps she’d disapprove of these ideas of mine—I must write down books too, story-novels, and communicate to people instead of just appeasing my lone soul with a record of it—but this record is my joy. Now, Saturday morning I wrote, typed a letter to the agent in Wilmington, Calif. where I’m to meet ship and renew old strange haunting acquaintance with that L.A. that’s made me dream since, the actual ORIGIN of the B-movie and the center of the California Night, find how to reach Pedro etc. by myself on those humming sidewalks in the mild wild night (hit colored bars from here to there! blow jukes, talk up with cats!) (buy a whore or two!), the same L.A. I travailed and was hallowed by with Mexican girl 1947 when we cut along together in the unbeatable sweetness of man and woman. Let me tell a story: I’d met her on a bus and all that, and we’d decided to hitch to New York over Route 66, were out there—but wait till tape recorder! (for this particular past story). I want to start hitching tonight from in front of Lincoln Tunnel, why wait? So I will. And buy further sleeves for my heart.
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ON THE ROAD, HARRISBURG, PA.—4 A.M., just took jog in cold narrow street—bus to Frisco—all closed in New York—thinking—fast bus—Pittsburgh—Jogged across my bridge—sternwheelers of old used as tugs pushing barges in freezing Ohio River—same that will transfer its waters to the warmths of New Orleans—Long lines of freights snaking along cliffbottoms—ancient blackstone monument of some kind—I ran to P. & L.E.R.R. waiting room so ornate and dignified (the terrible name of Lehigh, the terrible name of Lackawanna, they make me think of that seven-mile hike in the misty night among the bushy crags of the horrible Susquehanna flowing in her October with flare-fires of grim locomotives across the waterbed, me and the Ghost of the Susquehanna walking, walking for the bridge that was never there Ah me) I no go in with dungarees blackjacket—new visions of Pittsburgh, old orange trolleys—skyscraper Ward Morehouse office buildings rising in the joyous winter morning—boys in a parkinglot plotting jazz—
Dug DEERTRAIL, OHIO—Long walk—hot cocoa in truck diner—
OUTSIDE CLEVELAND—A graveyard of Thirties wrecks covered with snow, like Old Cody Pomeray dead�
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CLEVELAND—Blizzard—white—ricketiness—Kitchen Maid Meats, a butcher store, with Xmas garlands—SOHIO gas station with old cars and trucks in the snow—Leader Department Store with hat, sport shirts and blankets (and Xmas Tinsel) in the window—Dark shiny plastic drugstore—Olympic Confectionery candy store—Old picketer in white and green hunting cap picketing sign says “These clothes are not union made” in snow—Andy’s Coney Island Hotdogs on trolley sidestreet with four women waiting for bus in doorway—Main leading-in street snowy, dark, mad, white-lined, American, meaningless—iron fences, porticoed mansions that are now funeral homes—puke-yellow furniture stores with bargains in big print—a huddled pedestrian in a yellow and black check hunting coat and brown felt hat walking and trying to read order slips on blizzardy sidewalk—great empty lot with snowy stones and hints of crumbled ashy timbers in the whiteness—Sunoco station, attendant bending dismally to tank, gloved—Beat-up sooty old brown-shingled Main Street house—huge smokestacks in swirling shroudy snow across the city plains—bridge over railyard with snow-covered oil cars, tanks, Xmas billboards, Pennsy coal cars, Nickel Plate coal cars, distant nameless bridges in black iron, red wood warehouses, mysterious refineries, rooftops of Cleveland Man finally—old redracked wood trailer trucks—a horse drawing a flaring stanchioned junk wagon on glistening wet paving—brownbrick truckage buildings in the storm—Allied Florist Exchange, purple brick, snow-piles, dusty front windowpanes—downtown people huddled in rainy snow under the everlasting red neon.
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IOWA, Chicago Great Western (boxcar)—Inscription on shithouse wall Grand Island, Nebr. “I was in a suck party one nite with 4 fellows we sucked cocks and fucked each other in the ass hole at the Olds Hotel one salesman come 8 times.” I want to suck 2 cocks while my cock is being sucked too” etc.—all like that, land of Bill Cody.
WYOMING—Shrouded windswept snowridge in the blue—marsh-mallow humps—a whiteness riddled with brown sage—lonely cluster of shacks—my window is clouding and icing again. Dug backalleys of Rock Springs, Wyo.—a bench along a shackwall, sign painted on wall “Don’t sit on Whitey’s bench”—cowboy with ruddy lean features walking beanpole from the bank along the railroad street of cafés and stores—Pretty Wyo. cunt in car, a rich rancher’s daughter…. Sunny valleys of snow in the great rock waste—reddish buttes—far off ravines of the world—Last night I dug the snow swept road in front, to North Platte where had three beers.
SACRAMENTO—The myth of the gray day in Sacramento—intersection, with Shell station (tan and red) on one corner, a distant palm visible in the fog over the creamy California roof—Nameless young Jap cats of California cutting by—Much traffic, a few old trees of Sacramento—Colonial Arms a brokendown wood structure—then Sacramento Public Parking Inc., a big lot with namelessly bleak two-story redbrick apartment beyond—then the people—I’m exhausted.
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THIS TRIP IN DEPTH, THEN, beginning, New York, colored queer cat with radio no battery—pull out fast—at New Brunswick wild Air Force gang in Levis get on with satchels of whiskey, wine and jewelry for wives in Colorado Springs…the leader is big handsome Ben from San Antone, his buddy is crazy snap-knife Doug with blond hair—others—Ben says he was knifed in Amarillo, an X in his back, got a buddy to hold the gang at bay with shotgun and stomped all four one by one, stomped one’s tongue out accidentally—They call their cocks “hammers,” cunt’s a “gash” and do the up-your-ass fingersign slapping finger down into palm, wham—Bus went through pretty Princeton, made me homesick for oldfashioned Eastern Xmas dammit and especially now as I sit here in Ross Hotel in sunny dull L.A.—then into Pennsylvania and hit the mountains and first snow swirls at ridge top immense truckstop—in Harrisburg I jogged in eighteenth-century streets remembering the Ghost and also it’s like Lowell—Turnpike in snow to Pittsburgh—I on dexies feel relaxed, moveless but time is long—in Pittsburgh as I say I run across Ohio River Bridge—eat my first two ham sandwiches on bus locker outdoors while Negro cleans out bus and others eat ham and eggs inside—At Deerfield I walk up and down highway in intense sunny cold of old Ohio—Then Cleveland, and bought a pint of whiskey cheap—Cream of Kentucky—Airforce boys plying me plenty good whiskey—we talk—I dog everybody straight, no more brooding or paranoia or nothing, preparing for world—(but I’ve known the world, it’s all happened before, why do I kid myself with these artificial newnesses)—from Cleveland, to Toledo (ate sandwiches) in cold downtown red neon night, I walked, ran, froze, had just hot cocoa, dug a Cody Pomeray Toledo—Then across to Indiana and the lights of Xmas trees of supper evening coming on in little towns like LaGrange and Angola (remember Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck going home to Indiana at Xmas?)—at South Bend I run, get a drink in mad little bar with young beefy sad organist up in portico and characters, old man who changes a ten for every beer—Then into Chicago and the fantastic big red neon of ITS night—around midnight—the great glitter in the cold lakeshore night (Dreiser should have seen, but he did!)—I ran for beans, coffee, bread—very, very cold on the Loop—I saw no bop, hurried—saw North Clark trucks with girlieshow flaps—Across Illinois to Davenport, where I woke up just before dawn, dug the Mississippi again, the ninth time, now flowing in winter, walked in cold dawn near oldman bar’s street where I slaked my hot thirst in summer ‘forty-seven—thought “This night has names” outside Rock Island—for a letter to Wilson—nonsense half forgotten, thing to do is GO ON—Cut along the river we did as russet East flared over frost fields to Muscatine, Keota (the Golden Buckle of the Corn Belt), Sigourney where I walked in freezing morn while others ate joyous breakfasts—in Knoxville, Ia. Negro mine operator told me his life, looked like Pa—Drank with boys—at Council Bluffs everything was gray and Western and inevitable, even rollercoasters—bam, in Omaha it’s snowing—a blizzard—dirty old scabrous shithouse character watches me shit, another sells me comb for dime, I eat sandwiches (now down to bread and boiled eggs) in Omaha doorway facing Missouri River Street down by warehouses in huge blizzard, I look real handsome passing plate glasses, like new cowboy, old scabrous finds me, wants sandwich or dime, I say “Get money from the rich!” and I’m mad but guilty, recalling Dostoevsky’s sayings—Bus slowed down plows along to Columbus and Grand Island where, while others sup, I cut around, in toilet read, take dexy—storm is thick, I dig from front window, and old men, old Nebraskans, two, one an usher now in Frisco Mission Street B-movie and knew Buffalo Bill, the other a farmer goin to Frisco or such, North Platte was where Ben threw a snowball through a small hole in wall and everybody so exuberant sailor puts arm around me as we go in bar for three beers—which start me and send me buzzing, also dexy, so from North Platte to Cheyenne the route of my great 1947 flat-truck rotgut whiskey ride with Mississippi Gene and the boys I am DRUNK and finish all the whiskey, talking to everybody, seat jumping, running out with old man to piss at Chappell, busdriver says “I know there’s a bottle on this bus—if anybody needs a rest stop speak up”—and I say “This gentleman needs to go to the restroom”—bravado at height, like I’ll use in Paree some day—next year—the Handsome Stranger that I dug first in Omaha lunchroom watching waitresses dig him, unconscious slouch hat, mustache thin, great angular Indian face, dark maroon skin texture (from cold winter’s, he no look like farmer but is), dug him in the bus chewing slowly under his personal reading light with twenty-five-cent book and little girl digging him and calling her mother’s attention to it across the aisle—so drunk that I told him all this before he got off at Chappell or Sidney, Nebr. or wherever to go to his farm where he lives alone (!) and screws all surrounding countryside women—Till at Cheyenne I was stone cold out when they woke us up to change buses because heating system no good in New York coach—So now here I am waking up somewhere in Wyoming as great sage-snow-eternities spread everywhichway (Denver one hundred miles underneath, my poor Cody Denver)—at Rock Springs I walked and decided to splurge on big eggs and potato breakfast (at the last minute as driver called
), great—next stop (went through Fort Bridger in his great land discovery country) wonderful drowsy winter afternoon Mormon town with steaming cows in corrals and silence of mountains at I believe Wasatch (dunno)—walked, dug old small covered wagons families keep in backyard, as relics of past like Lowell people keep daguerrotypes—then Ogden, which I dug, Jap hipsters, crazy bum street with Kokomo Bar at foot of which white-capped mountains rise—a town I’d heard about some, I can see it’s something—then I from window dug Farmington a little hem-of-the-mountain settlement—then at Salt Lake a major four-hour wait because of strike of drivers, which I make partly by myself walking and digging Jap pool parlor and hanging round station with the Frisco-bound sailors—and good old Airforce boys whose whiskey I’d all drunk up ere Cheyenne got off Ogden—also two old seamen bound for N.M.U. Seattle, one of ’em knew Nebraska and Wyoming years ago as circus man!—but old asshole bores like North Atlantic A.B.’s 1943—Left Salt Lake after I took three walks, long ones, at nine or so, crossed flats, began stopping every literally ten miles in Nevada for passengers to throw money on slotmachines, chief sucker my sailor pal—Wendover, Wells, Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock, stopping all the time and I walk and dig all over, and it’s deathly cold in Nevady—Finally I get to dig that crazy Reno high on dexy at 6:30 A.M. booming with roulette and house girls and me three beers and almost miss bus, and tic-kid with money so handsome and tragic at faro table, three fags watching, and soldier asking for girl at bar and Jewish New York handsome gambler with girls, and foggy streets, and those cunts it’s a sin that town—then the new fag driver with ONE glove (and the young Skippy soldier in front of me with his queer chin tweaker and lover)—up the mountain and home in Truckee, just like Lowell, gingerbread houses and five-foot snow, I took walk, my nosedried up—over Donner Pass, and down to fogs of California, Colfax, Auburn, Roseville, old loud talking W. C. Fields Sacramento lawyer with cane, and kid, my bleakness in Sacry, and over to Frisco which couldn’t be seen from the Bay Bridge though en route I tried to dig Frisco kicks in little character with cloth hat in front of me and scenes outside—Called Buckle, waited for him in saloon at Mission and Sixth—all Buckle’s till Cody showed up with ONE precious stick that rode us high-crazy-yelling-wild clear into the Little Harlem Satnite where they told us Buddy’d slashed his woman and for want of money I gave away my MexCity wallet to gal who, Five Guys Named Moe in the crazy drizzling Negress morning I screwed forty-eight hours later—Oh mad!