Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac

skidoo and ready to roll.”
    â€œWell oil her up, we ‘ll be outa here by eight and maybe go down to the Keiths’ for a game.”
    â€œ Ah ben mué, les cartes, son pas assez bon pour la soif pour mué , (ah well me, cards, they’re not good enough for thirst for me.”)
    â€œ Ben mué too shpeux usez un bierre , (well me too I can use a beer,”) both of them suddenly reverting to Frenchy slang since nobody’s there to hear them anyway, just as you might expect the Greeks that you could see across the way thru the great dirty wire windows, breaking from their usual Greek to talk some English for the benefit of business there “ska ta la pa ta wa ya” here we go again, the great raving patois of Lowell on all sides, Polocks on Lakeview Avenue and Back Central, and practically pure Gaelic or at least lilting lyric Gaelic English on the Highlands and down town—Syrians to boot, up the canal somewhere—And your old New England Yankees eating Indian Pudding for desert in old stately houses with lawns, on Andover, Paw-tucket and Chelmsford, with names like Goldtwaithe and Smith—And thin noses and thin lips and read Walden by the fireplace on howling nights—
    Eight o’clock Pa and Manuel close up shop and go across the street to the Jewel Theater for a chat with the manager Sam, the cameras are running off the latest photopaly replete with thrills and fast action and gray rain streaming across the screen and the piano rumbling suspense thunders in the pit, the oldtime movie stars with their prim painted lips set grim—“We grow through suffering,” is written for what says the hero in flickery letters, “Jesus God,” says a bum in the seat, “by now I oughta be as big as the side of the house”—Sam gives them an introductory warming nip that goes like a prairie fire thru Manuel’s belly, then they get back in the contraption and go bouncing down Merrimack to the Square, as acquaintances shout “ Weyo , Emil, when you gonna enter in the races? Buy yourself some goggles and a hat that comes down over your ears! Manuel’ll get you in the river, give im time!”—
    â€œHo Emil, how’s the boy?”
    â€œHo Slattery—still swingin em?”
    My father is a popular fellow around Lowell, in insurance he’s buttonholed practically every small (and some big) businessman in town and extolled the virtues etc. etc. of seeing that your grave doth not rot in vain and you leave your successors some of your ghostly change—Then as a printer, to get ad-work, he’d followed up old acquaintances and hotfooted everywhere and was a proficient, nay much more proficient with the non French usually Irish segment of his customers, a proficient persuader and general good-time Charley—“Ha ha ha!” rang his harsh laugh, and you heard him cough as he left thru the door, bound for another—
    They go rattletrapping in the strange comic French Movie contraption down past the City Hall and for want of shamelessness go sneaking thru the back streets to avoid the great Main Kearney Square where all Lowell’s in the lights—The clock, the Chinese restaurant, the Number One soda-fountain, the trolley stops, the big stores, the newspaper—They go instead around by Kirk street and down a railroad switch alley for the mills, across spectral-in-my-mind Bridge Street where stands the great gray warehouse of eternity and into the little alley that runs between it and the stagedoor side entrance of the B.F.Keiths theater.
    â€œIf you want your moonshine there he is now, old Henry—I’ll meet you backstage.”
    Emil goes under the iron fire escape and’s just about to disappear inside when some of the vaudeville performers who have gathered in the warm night for a smoke, call him over—As one-time ad man making up the B.F.Keiths Vaudeville ads he is wellknown by a lot of the