What you could call my life on the road began when I first met
Dean Moriarty, not long after my wife and I separated. Before
that, I often dreamed of going West to see the country, always
planning but never going. Dean is the perfect guy for the road
because he was actually born on the road, when his parents were
passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, on their way to Los
Angeles. First reports of him came to me through Chad King.
Chad showed me some letters from Dean, written in a New
Mexico jail for kids. This is all far back, when Dean was not the
way he is today, when he was just a mysterious jail-kid. Then
news came that Dean was out of jail and was coming to New
York for the first time; also there was talk that he had just
married a girl called Marylou.
One day in college Chad and Tim Gray told me Dean was
staying in rooms in East Harlem. He had arrived the night before
with beautiful little Marylou. They got off the Greyhound bus at
50th Street, went around the corner to Hector's cafe and bought
beautiful big cream cakes.
All the time, Dean was telling Marylou things like: "Now,
darling, here we are in New York and although I haven't quite
told you everything I was thinking when we crossed the
Missouri River, it's absolutely necessary now to postpone all
those things concerning our personal love, and at once begin
thinking of work-life plans . . . " That was the way he talked in
those early days.
I went to their little apartment with the boys, and Dean came
to the door in his shorts. Dean had blue eyes, and a real
Oklahoma accent. He had worked on Ed Wall's farm in Colorado
before he married Marylou. She was a pretty blonde, with long