Home Arts & Entertainment Neal Cassady, Kerouac's muse, celebrated at Beat Museum

Neal Cassady, Kerouac's muse, celebrated at Beat Museum

Written by Bruce Bellingham

Tuesday, 28 February 2006

A collection of aging hipsters, North Beach denizens and Beat culture devotees crowded into the new Beat Museum on Grant Avenue last month to celebrate what would have been Neal Cassady's 80th birthday. He was the model for Jack Kerouac's hero of On the Road, Dean Moriarty. Cassady was also a fascinating subject for other writers, such as Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, Herb Gold, Hunter S. Thompson and Allen Ginsberg, with whom he had an on-again, off-again affair for over 20 years. He once lived with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco. They wrote a song about Cassady, "That's It for the Other One." He was also a writer but all of his work was published posthumously, including a memoir, The First Third. No one at the gathering on February 8 would imagine Cassady would be alive for his 80th birthday party. He garnered a reputation with his friends as "the fastest man alive." Cassady seemed to be in a hurry to die. In 1968, four days short of his 43rd birthday, he passed out in a cold rain by the railroad tracks near San Miguel, Mexico after consuming a fistful of Seconals, washed down with a lot of booze. He died in the hospital. He was an outlaw for the get-go. Cassady was arrested, portentously, as a teenager for "joyriding." Two of his children, daughter Jami and son John Allen, attended the Beat Museum soiree. They both have vivid memories of their dad in the car. Speed was often a matter of concern. "I don't know why my dad seemed to have a fear of brakes and, as a kid, I'd say to him, ‘Dad, the brakes are our friend.'" Jami has a similar recollection: "Dad would take me to ballet class in Los Gatos, drive me down Highway 9 with no brakes until we'd somehow screech to a stop in front of the school." Cassady would drive the famous psychedelic bus for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. There's a story that he conspired with Wavy Gravy, the counter-culture clown, to kidnap Tiny Tim, the warbling ukulele player of the 1960s. You remember "Tiptoe Through The Tulips," right? Wavy showed up at the birthday party and was greeted with enthusiastic applause. He told stories to a hushed group that included a reporter from an Italian newspaper. "I got to ride shotgun with Neal many times," Wavy said. "Behind the wheel, he'd peel an orange, roll a joint or just speak to the Oldsmobile. He really was the fastest man alive." Herb Gold was there, too, just back from a series of appearances and readings in Germany. Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg and the whole panoply of Beat Movement characters fascinate Europeans. Cassady's widow was not at the party. She was also in Europe. "My 82-year-old mother is in the U.K. tonight," explained John Allen. "She's traveling with the Kerouac scroll." Kerouac wrote On the Road on a continuous block of paper, about 120 feet long. It's been on a worldwide tour for a couple of years. In 2002, it was purchased by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay for $2.43 million. When Jack Kerouac died in 1969, he left an estate worth about 100 dollars. Northside Arts & Entertainment editor Bruce Bellingham is one of San Francisco's best loved scribes and the author of ”Bellingham by the Bay: Bits, Bites, Adventures in Radio and Real Life.”

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