I started visiting Kerouac’s grave site at Edson Cemetery in Lowell, MA in the mid-1990’s when I worked in Chelmsford, MA. I would grab a sub, ride my motorcycle over to Lowell, and have lunch with Jack at his grave at 7th Ave and Lincoln Ave.
Over the years, I started reading Beat poetry, mostly Ginsberg. HOWL really affected me, to the point that I have the word HOWL tattooed – in Albertus typeface – on my right arm. Next was a tattoo on my left arm – “Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell”. While that quote is not technically from the epic poem, it is from the introduction, written by William Carlos Williams, for the book of Ginsberg’s poems “HOWL and other poems”.
I never finished reading “On the Road”. I kind of agreed with Truman Capote when he said of the Beats “… they’re not writers. They’re typists.” I owned a copy of “On the Road”, and of “On the Road: The Original Scroll”. I perused it, but can not say I really read it. I saw the original scroll manuscript at the NY Public Library in 2007 and later at Boot Mill National Park in Lowell. Impressive.
Reading many Beat histories, including a book about the Beat hotel in Paris, visiting the there while in Paris kept me interested but I didn’t get into Kerouac. I still wasn’t reading Kerouac.
I continued visiting the grave to see what people left as offerings – booze, drugs, writings – really bad 15-year-old adolescent poetry. It was fascinating, like items left at Jim Morrison’s grave.
My job brought me to Edson Cemetery where I asked the staff what happens to the writing and items people left. I was told they occasionally collect it and the Kerouac estate takes it.
I recenty discovered most of the items are disposed now of. Such a shame.
I moved to Lowell in 2019. I live a few miles from Kerouac’s birthplace and I walk by Kerouac Park often. I eat at The Worth House and have visited the Franco American Grotto.
I decided to document the grave in photographs. I had the idea of taking a few photographs during the 100th anniversary of his birth. With my wife Francine’s encouragement, the project became a photograph every day during 2022.
I started doing test photos in November 2021, with an Anniversary Speed Graphic 4×5 camera from the 1940’s. My plan was to have photographs, a contact printed 4×5 negative on 8×10 photographic paper, for every day of 2022.
I imagined more than 365 different prints. One photograph of the grave for every day of 2022, and others showing details of interesting item found on the grave. I added in portraits of the people I met while photographing the grave. I ended up with over 2000 negatives. As of October 2024, these negatives are still being scanned.
Some larger prints – 16×20 or 20×24 – will be made and printed by Digital Silver Imaging in Belmont, MA, owned and operated by my good friend Eric Luden. I worked with Eric at camera stores in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and I was his first employee at DSI.
The final body of work will be exhibited and a book of the photographs will be published.
