NoCal: John, Jack and Henry

City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco 2017

We missed the Henry Miller memorial because the Big Sur road was closed from a landslide. Diverted inland through the cabbage patch fields of the Salinas valley we found the Steinbeck Museum. Monterey was cold and misty along Cannery Row, Mack and the boys were nowhere to be seen, but we found Doc’s place at Western Biological Laboratories. San Francisco was steep streets and old trams. We bought books from the Beats and crossed Kerouac Alley for a drink in Vesuvio. Right place, wrong time. Down some narrow stairs in a basement like the galley of the ship was the mens toilet and written on the wall it read: "San Francisco City Lights / Many feelings but hard to express / Happiness or death / What went wrong when it was so right / The beat went on, but not the light.”

Western Biological Laboratories

Jack Kerouac Alley