On the Road

It was on this date in 1957 that the seed was planted that would later blossom into what came to be called flower children. Once Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published it was just a matter of time before the youth of America discovered the wanderlust that has driven this nation of drifters to wander ever westward until we wound up in San Francisco with flowers in our hair.
Old Jack drank himself to death on the East coast. His demons wouldn't let him let go of his past and his Roman Catholic guilt tripping. A complicated anti-hero, he despised the generation that venerated his chronicles of the counter culture's conception. He wouldn't give Ken Kesey the time of day, even though Neal Cassady was part of the group, known as the Merry Pranksters, that went to see him on the bus called Furthur.