Beatnick Railroad Poet

[TheOldMan]

Seems like I read that Jack Kerouac, the Man Who Defined A Generation, worked for Union Pacific Railroad.

Here's a link to a poem about railroads by Mr. Kerouac.

http://railwayearth.com/

I found some interesting things in "On The Road," Mr. Kerouac's landmark novel, about railroads.

A few years back, when Baltimore & Annapolis, reportedly had 30 employees working on their North & South Carolina, line, dba Carolina southern, I was self publishing a newsletter that I sent to various people, and included coverage of the local railroad in it.

Back then, I had thought of doing a special edition in honor of B&A dba CS's 30 employees, and centering it on Jack Kerouac's ficctional character, Dean Moriarty, but I never published that one, because I didn't know if there were many, if any railroad workers around in the mid to late 1990s who remembered the Beat Generation.

[Mr. Pick]

Interesting poem. I've read "On the Road," though it's been a few years.

[TheOldMan]

Thanks for the post, Mr. Pick.

One thing I remember from "On the Road," is narrator Sal Paradise describing having to move a refrigerated boxcar something like 100 feet or so, with what he called a "jack gadget," because there was no locomotive available to move the car.

Also, Sal & Dean Moriarity visited a large railroad yard when they were on their highway trip across the USA.

Reportedly, Jack Kerouac sued the producers of the Route 66 TV show, because he found it to be too similar to "On the Road."

I recently saw some old Route 66 shows on DVD, and was surprised to see the 2 heroes driving on a highway alongside an Atlantic Coast Line freight train.

If I remember correctly, Atlantic Coast Line ran from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Tampa, Florida, and was nowhere near Route 66.

So, why was that ACL train on the Route 66 TV show?

Maybe the heroes had travelled to Florida?

[TheOldMan]

Jack Kerouac narrated the 27 minute film, The Beat Generation, aka, Pull My Daisy, that aka title also being the title song which Mr. Kerouac wrote.

The film shows a group of beatnicks sitting around an apartment, one of them just returning from working on the Penn Central railroad.

Mr. Kerouac seems to have never gotten too far away from railroads.