THE LAST DAYS OF JACK KEROUAC (in Florida)

Jack Kerouac will forever be identified with the Beat Generation of San Francisco and for his classic book On The Road that captured the hectic days of the 1950s. Some may recall that Jack came from a French-Canadian family in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts.

But most people dont realize that Jack spent most of the last years of his life in Florida. He moved to Clouser Avenue in the College Park section of northwest Orlando, Florida, to be near his sick mother Gabrielle. It is here that he wrote The Dharma Bums in 1957-59 while On The Road was becoming a hit. Today, the house has been rescued from demolition and is a writers retreat with four writers selected to reside in the house for three months each year.

I met Jack in the stacks at the University of South Florida. It was by sheer luck that my former Victorian English novel professor Edgar Hirshberg was with him and saw me. I think he knew I grew up in Massachusetts (Framingham) and maybe could relate to Kerouac. Not much for I am not Catholic, but I sensed some things. It was clear that the author was in poor health due to his alcoholism and fatalistic about his mothers heart condition. I later found out he had split with his long time friend Allen Ginsberg perhaps over the Vietnam War for surprisingly Kerouac was a hawk on the conflict.

Kerouac has once had an apartment in Saint Petersburg, but he had moved with his third wife Stella Sampos and his mother into a three bedroom house on the Northside. His intense writing fans are trying to make his residential property a writers retreat. Its size and location would eliminate the idea of a museum.

But not far away is the Flamingo Bar where Kerouac was a regular customer. It has become a Pinellas County shrine to the author, who died at St. Anthonys Hospital at the young age of 47. He is buried in the family plot in Lowell.