{"id":11955,"date":"2015-02-15T00:09:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T06:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atalantarising.surly.org\/?p=11955"},"modified":"2024-05-12T22:51:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T04:51:43","slug":"its-a-kerouac-thang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atalantarising.surly.org\/?p=11955","title":{"rendered":"It’s A Kerouac Thang!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a great love for buildings with faded glory<\/em><\/a><\/span>.
\nBuildings that have a sort of story lurking about their empty shells.<\/p>\n

At first, it’s just an abandon mess, a hunk, an eyesore piece of trash that irritates locals, until it fades into the scenery and becomes ignored. No one notices exactly when they slip from being trash into being a mystery. A curiosity. History. Then suddenly you can hear the ghosts whispering a story about the life that was there before you stumbled along.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6822\"<\/a>
\n(It’s the original Johnson’s Corner station, at it’s new location. I took this in Dec 2012, about a decade after it’s relocation)<\/p>\n

For 15 years I have lived by and driven past this piece of architecture daily. Its details have always intrigued me. Over the years I watched it limp along: it was the home of a couple different used car lot businesses –maybe a mechanics shop, too, my memory is a little fuzzy. I remember when the two pillars were painted with cartoonish palm trees. (Pictures here.<\/a>) And there was a miniature Model-T Ford style replica, with an oversized, white stuffed teddy bear in the drivers seat, that lived on the roof, at some point during that time.<\/p>\n

Then it was relocated and a highway was built through the property.<\/p>\n

In all the years I drove past that building I was unaware it was the very same gas station Jack Kerouac lands at in the beginning of his novel “On the Road”.<\/p>\n

While working my third shift job as a computer operator in my early twenties, I would read “On the Road” in the snips-and-snaps of down time I had in between loading and unloading big magnetic tape reels in-and-out of these hulking tape drive cabinets.<\/p>\n

I loved that book!<\/p>\n

But by the time I moved here I was in my thirties, and the story had already slipped from my mind. It never occurred to me this was the very same station! I learned about its history during local efforts to save it from being demolished. There was a successful rescue and relocation, less then five miles south of its original location. And there were many good intentions to restore the station to it’s full glory at the new location. But all of them have failed and this little treasure is crumpling away.<\/p>\n

Then Craig Stevens did this extremely cool thing! He actually made the building’s most famous ghost speak, and tell some stories:<\/p>\n