Mike McCormick Stumbling Upon The Town and the City

Stumbling Upon The Town and the City

mike m ccormick

One Sunday in late April 2021, I wandered with my friend Matt as he pointed out his favorite businesses in an upscale shopping district on Bainbridge Island, a thirtyminute ferry ride west of Seattle. As we sauntered, I remembered days during my teenage years when my girlfriend and I drove out of Haverhill to Cape Ann’s seacoast towns. We browsed art galleries and boutiques. I never found anything I wanted on those jaunts.

The sun beamed brightly as we sidestepped oncoming walkers. I was ready to get out of the crowds when Matt cut a sharp turn onto a narrow passageway.

“Follow me,” he commanded. “You’ll love this place.” I was far from thrilled when I realized we were entering a used record and bookstore. Since I am close to seventy years old, I am at the stage of life when I am trying to pare down oversized collections.

A cardboard box full of discarded record albums from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s sat on a chair near the entrance. Seeing the beat up albums, I concluded that the store would have nothing of interest. I reluctantly followed Matt down a short hall into a large room with bookshelves and racks of used records. A thin, middle-aged woman greeted him from behind a glass display case. As Matt introduced me to the clerk, my eyes homed in on a book propped face forward on a shelf inside the case.

The Town and the City by John Kerouac.

I froze. I’d never seen a hardcover edition of one of my all-time favorite novels. Since discovering Kerouac’s first published novel in my twenties, I’d read and reread it countless times in a 1978 paperback edition with a green cover.

Although this was my first encounter with the hardcover, the sight of it seemed familiar. I’d seen photos of it in Kerouac biographies.

I asked the clerk if I could take a closer look.

“Certainly,” she said, as she reached for the book to hand to me.

I studied the cover. The title, printed in white blocky letters on a black field, reminded me of the introductory scripts at the start of mid-century cartoons films. Black-and-white line drawings of an imagined small town scene on a sickly green background triggered memories of a children’s book about Paul Bunyan. As I peered at the white scripted words “A novel by John Kerouac” on a rusty backdrop, I remembered that this was the only book where Kerouac did not use the name Jack.

It occurred to me that the book I held might have passed through Kerouac’s hands at a book signing. My adrenalin surged. By some stroke of luck, might this be a signed first edition?

My right hand quivered as I carefully turned to the title page.

I stared at the spaces above and below the name of the author: John Kerouac.

There was no signature.

I turned the page and verified that this was indeed a first edition. Only ten thousandfive hundred copies were printed and bound when the book was first released on March 2, 1950, exactly three years before I was born.

I flipped the book to its back cover. The black-and-white publicity photo of the twentysomething year old author in a conservative suit coat struck me as impossibly formal.

I attempted to evaluate the book’s condition. The spine seemed firm. The pages were clean. This is a lightly used book I thought. Perhaps the former owner read it once, or received it as a gift. I imagined the book wedged untouched for decades between other novels in a floor to ceiling bookshelf.

As I fingered through the pages, I pictured it on a shelf in my own basement amongst my thirty-two other books by and about Jack Kerouac.

“How much are you asking for this?”

She opened it and thumbed through a few pages. Since I am not a rare book collector and have never shopped for books as investments, I had no idea what the quoted price might be. My gut expected it’d be about three hundred-fifty dollars, though a five- or sixhundred dollar quote would not have surprised me.

“I think he’s getting one-fifty,” she said alluding to the owner who set the prices.

Her response triggered a surge of desire. I suddenly wanted the book. And, knowing I had withdrawn four fifty-dollar bills from a cash machine only a few hours ago, I had enough money in my wallet.

But should I give into my emotions and make a totally impulsive buy?

I had no desire to flip the book on the rare book market for a profit. And although I would enjoy telling Kerouac-loving friends about my find, I had no interest in purchasing the book to impress them.

The clerk held the book in both hands and looked at me as she waited for my next words.

I knew if I walked away from the purchase I’d feel remorse. Still, it seemed irresponsible and irrational to make the purchase.

“Could you hold it for a week while I decide?” I pleaded. “I will give you my contact information and if someone comes in for it, just give me a call and I’ll decide right away.”

She pulled a business card from a pile of them on the counter and handed it to me.

“That’d be fine,” she said to my relief. “Write your contact information on the back of this.”

I set the card down and grabbed a pen from a cup beside the business card stack. As I started to write she asked, “Do you have cash?”

“Yes.”

“Tell you what. How about you buy it now, and I’ll give it to you for a hundred thirty-five dollars?”

I stopped writing and looked up. I blurted, “Yes!”

After buying The Town and the City, I tried to understand the reasoning behind my compulsive purchase; I thought about what the book has meant to me.

I first read The Town and the City in Anchorage, Alaska, at a time when I missed New England. The book brought me right back to my hometown of Haverhill. Many

of the attitudes, challenges, and dreams of the people of Galloway (Kerouac’s fictional representation of his hometown of Lowell) seemed identical to those I encountered growing up. I understood that the story was thinly fictionalized; for the most part Kerouac based the book’s stories on real events and actual people including himself.

The tale of Peter Martin and his dad taking in the horse races at Rockingham Park moved me. Throughout my youth, my dad bet on Rockingham’s “daily double” through his bookie. Each day after work he poured a beer and tuned the kitchen radio to the voice of Babe Rubenstein calling the races he ‘d bet on. I listened along with Dad and imagined how he’d react if he hit the “big money.”

When I read about Peter Martin’s dad winning more than a hundred dollars on a last ditch, long shot bet, the scene filled me with pleasure. I imagined the joy of traveling to Boston for a splurge at a fancy restaurant after winning at the track. I loved Kerouac for writing the scene, for capturing and elevating an experience I might have only dreamed into literature.

As much as the Rockingham Park adventure spoke to me, Kerouac’s writing about high school football captivated me even more. From the first time I saw Haverhill High School’s football team, I wanted to play ball for them. Like Peter Martin, I struggled for years to become a better player. Like in Galloway, working-class kids in Haverhill dealt with favoritism and snobbery. Like Pete Martin, I had my most notable high school game in Galloway’s “concrete stadium” (I started for the first time in my high school football career there in a Haverhill- Lowell clash).

Kerouac, more than any other writer, captured the importance of high school football to working-class and poor teenaged athletes and their communities. He was the first writer to treat the sport as a suitable topic for serious literature. Although others have followed in his footsteps, no writer has written about high school football with as much skill or imbued the topic with Kerouac’s love and passion.

The Town and the City, like so much of Kerouac’s writing, is infused with love. The bonds between Pete Martin, his friends, his siblings, and most of all his father are palpable. Although Kerouac’s “spontaneous prose” style had yet to emerge in this Thomas Wolfeinfluenced novel, his zest and compassion for friends and family already shine.

Devouring the novel for the first time four thousand miles from the Merrimack Valley, I filled up with pride. Reading it these days, I feel as though I am looking into a mirror. I see my past as I seek clues to the man I’ve become.

That said, I still don’t yet understand my visceral urge to purchase a first edition of The Town and the City. However, I no longer think it matters. Just holding the book brings me joy.