Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac

Author:Jack Kerouac
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1988-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

5. NEW YORK SCENES

AT THIS TIME MY MOTHER was living alone in a little apartment in Jamaica Long Island, working in the shoe factory, waiting for me to come home so I could keep her company and escort her to Radio City once a month. She had a tiny bedroom waiting for me, clean linen in the dresser, clean sheets in the bed. It was a relief after all the sleepingbags and bunks and railroad earth. It was another of the many opportunities she’s given me all her life to just stay home and write.

I always give her all my leftover pay. I settled down to long sweet sleeps, day-long meditations in the house, writing, and long walks around beloved old Manhattan a half hour subway ride away. I roamed the streets, the bridges, Times Square, cafeterias, the waterfront, I looked up all my poet beatnik friends and roamed with them, I had love affairs with girls in the Village, I did everything with that great mad joy you get when you return to New York City.

I’ve heard great singing Negroes call it “The Apple!”

“There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves,” sang Herman Melville.

“Bound round by flashing tides,” sang Thomas Wolfe.

Whole panoramas of New York everywhere, from New Jersey, from skyscrapers.—

EVEN FROM BARS, like a Third Avenue bar—4 P M the men are all roaring in clink bonk glass brassfoot barrail “where ya goin” excitement—October’s in the air, in the Indian Summer sun of door.— Two Madison Avenue salesmen who been working all day long come in young, well dressed, justsuits, puffing cigars, glad to have the day done and the drink comin in, side by side march in smiling but there’s no room at the roaring (Shit!) crowded bar so they stand two deep from it waiting and smiling and talking.— Men do love bars and good bars should be loved.— It’s full of businessmen, workmen, Finn MacCools of Time.— Be-overalled oldgray topers dirty and beerswiggin glad.—Nameless truck busdrivers with flashlites slung from hips—old beatfaced beerswallowers sadly upraising purple lips to happy drinking ceilings.— Bartenders are fast, courteous, interested in their work as well as clientele.— Like Dublin at 4:30 P M when the work is done, but this is great New York Third Avenue, free lunch, smells of Moody street exhaust river lunch in road of grime bysmashing the door, guitarplaying long sideburned heroes smell out there on wood doorsteps of afternoon drowse.— But it’s New York towers rise beyond, voices crash mangle to talk and chew the gossip till Earwicker drops his load—Ah Jack Fitzgerald Mighty Murphy where are you?.— Semi bald blue shirt tattered shovellers in broken end dungarees fisting glasses of glistenglass foam top brown afternoon beer.— The subway rumbles underneath as man in homburg in vest but coatless executive changes from right to left foot on ye brass rail.— Colored man in hat, dignified, young, paper underarm, says goodbye at bar warm and paternal leaning over men—elevator operator around the corner.

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