I remember the night passing through Lowell, Mass., the birthplace of Jack kerouac, like it was yesterday. It was a warm summer night, and I was driving around thinking that I would see signs everywhere telling where this had happened and that had happened. But none of that was there; in fact, I stopped at a red light and asked a young couple where Jack kerouac’s grave was, and they said “who?”
I eventually found a 7-11 and just asked person after person until someone knew. I also stumbled upon this little park tucked beneath the shadows of an old textile mill turned apartment building, with these looming monoliths inscribed with samples of Jack’s work — I loved just sitting there on the bench; it was after midnight and nobody was around, and it was that late summer-night quiet, and I had a beer in a bag, and I felt like singing.
After that I drove around looking for a bar where Jack might have hung out, but everyone seemed vague and uninterested, and after many whiskies with 8 oz. glass tap-beer chasers, the kind you can only find in old neighborhood saloons, I finally got tired and just hit the Lowell Connector and left the famed Merrimack behind.