I was born and raised in Monroe, the seat of Union County, North Carolina. That makes me, as an indulgent friend once put it, a “country boy.”

In the 4-toe stock there is a wide gap between the lowest rough and the smooths which come from the same parents.

… But such is life — hard upon hard from ord to end; and if I had not been made of the best of neat-leather, the longer in water the tougher, I would have melted away with my tears long ago!

Only by using his free-flow style of “kickwriting” did Kerouac believe he could capture the vibrancy of the man that inspired the book, his friend Neal Cassady.