Rusty Bucket

the sun's going down, the cold's creeping in. I take my walk. the afternoon had disappeared. waves. it's february here.
my dad is slouched in his kitchen table chair. liam neeson talks about natasha on 60 minutes. i drink a gin & tonic. he already had his. it's past the time for dinner.
go to rusty bucket. few patrons at the bar. we sit at a booth. no one else around. texas chilli and a salad. white wine. the waitress cleans up as we eat. it's a late sunday night.

kerouac was 47 years old when he died living at his mom's house in florida. either '68 or '69. he was taking care of her or maybe she was taking care of him. no one seems to remember that. on the road was published when he was 35. he was already divorced by 25. the film replaces the opening line of  "i first met dean not long after my wife and I had split up," with " i first met Dean not long after my father died."
his follow up to on the road was big sur.

big sur shows kerouac suffering from his own fame and lamenting the fact that he’s no longer young.  "All over America high school and college kids thinking ‘Jack Kerouac is 26 years old and on the road all the time hitchhiking’ while there I am almost 40 years old, bored and jaded.”  kerouac wanders from a cabin in Big Sur to San Francisco and back again. his headspace builds to an  alcohol-induced nervous breakdown,  and ends with the near distant hope for healing. though Kerouac behaves much the same way as he did in on the road, he doesn’t feel the same way:  death and drinking. youth and old age.

Someone brought up kerouac to me in reference to their saturday night. i folded up my dad's walker and closed the passenger side door. the parking lot was empty. we had a good spot.

time to pour myself a whiskey.