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DOCUMENT 1 In the month of July 1947, having saved about fifty dollars from old veteran benefits, I was ready to go to the West Coast. My friend Remi Boncœur had written me a letter from San Francisco, saying I should come. [...] My aunt was all in accord with
DOCUMENT 1 In the month of July 1947, having saved about fifty dollars from old veteran benefits, I was ready to go to the West Coast. My friend Remi Boncœur had written me a letter from San Francisco, saying I should come. [...] My aunt was all in accord with my trip to the West; she said it would do me good. [...] Folding back my comfortable home sheets for the last time one 5 morning, I left with my canvas bag in which a few fundamental things were packed and took off for the Pacific Ocean with the fifty dollars in my pocket. I'd been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and so on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led to the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and 10 there dipped down to Los Angeles. I'll just stay on 6 all the way to Ely, I said to myself and confidently started. To get to 6 I had to go up to Bear Mountain. [...] Five scattered rides took me to Bear Mountain Bridge. It began to rain in torrents when I was left off there. It was mountainous. Route 6 came over the river, wound around a traffic circle and disappeared into the wilderness. Not only was there no traffic but the rain came down in buckets and I had no 15 shelter. I had to run under some pines to take cover; this did no good; I began crying and swearing and socking myself on the head for being such a damn fool. I was forty miles north of New York; all the way up I'd been worried about the fact that on this, my big opening day, I was only moving north instead of the so-longed-for west. Now I was stuck on my northernmost hangup. [...] 'What the hell am I doing up here?' I cursed. I cried for Chicago. Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957 DOCUMENT 2 Suddenly, I found myself in Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles across the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair1 of New York with its