Lowell, of course, is where Jack Kerouac was born and raised. I already saw the San Francisco house where he wrote On the Road. And I spent a week at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. So, yes, you can say I was once pretty obsessed with him.
Once I got older, though, I realized that he was a drunk and sort of a misogynistic jerk. But I still felt I had to see the park built in his honor. So during our recent trip to Boston, I made the family get in the car and go to a random, working-class neighborhood in Massachusetts.
When we got to Lowell, it was exactly as I imagined, with brick buildings and few trees and random storefronts, which, of course, is a testament to Kerouac's writing.
That made me like him all over again.
The park, however, was a bit small. Just some marble blocks with passages from his work, most of them Lowell-related. It had just rained, so everything was slick, meaning you couldn't sit on the bench and read as it was obviously designed for you to do.
Also there were some people, maybe homeless, maybe not, sitting around drinking at 10 a.m.
It was all kind of endearing, though. It was exactly what it was supposed to be: a little place in a crummy part of town instead of some shiny, commercialized tourist trap.
There was an empty bottle of cheap vodka on the ground and I'm not sure if it was genuine or some sort of plant, you know, for extra "Beatnik" authenticity.
We stayed for a while, reading the different excerpts but Marina was upset there was no playground. Plus she kept saying she wanted to go back to Friendly's.
And then Ella got a hold of the vodka.
Yeah, time to go.
1 comment:
One can always count on Ella!
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