I came on this picture tonight of a young Jack Kerouac enlisting in the U.S. Naval Reserve, a chance encounter - those searching eyes suddenly looking out at me not only from his own past but from mine: a thread of a small, happy voice singing over the throb of a truck engine its very own version of a song. 'Hey, Jack Paddywack, I think I'm your mother...'
We were on the road in those days, too, a small family in a portable world on wheels driving down red, dusty roads under eucalyptus trees in Spain, in Portugal, in France. We had pots that clattered from hooks on the walls of the wooden kitchen in the back, a stove pipe that ripped leaves from overhanging branches if we weren't careful, and a tape machine in the cab with Natalie Merchant and her many maniacs adding to the soundtrack. Do you know the song our three-year old daughter, strapped safe into her special seat looking out at the big world, was singing? (I'll post it at the end of this)
I was more Kanga to her Roo in those days, a wonderful time when everything was a giant discovery, and as we drove along I told her about Jack Kerouac, how he'd written a book I'd loved when I was still young but a lot older than her: and how this song had a twist, listen,the singer is thinking about his mother.... and then she sang along. 'Hey Jack Paddywack, I think I'm your mother!'
She was a wonderful three.year-old and now she's a wonderful seventeen-year-old, and the very evening a tired surf on the web brings me to Jack's intelligent, sensual gaze is the one at the end of hours spent with her looking into university courses. It's a long road we've been on since we lumbered down those hot dusty tracks. She's learned to fly, and is ready to take off on her own wings.
