CENTRALVILLE

"And all the usual pleasantries, detailed styles, and panoramicshots of a complete social scene, Centralville in Lowell in 1925 being aclose knit truly French community such as you might not find any more (withthe peculiar Medieval Gaulic closed-in flavor) in modern lingered France"-- Visions of Gerard.

Jack Kerouac was born March 12, 1922 in the Centralville neighborhood of Lowell, at 9 Lupine Road (1) (clik here//), the second floor of a brown-painted duplex. Unlike his older brother and sister, who were born in a hospital in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jean Louis Lebris de Kerouac was delivered at home.

In Doctor Sax he says he was delivered by "young Doctor Simpson who later became tragic tall and grayhaired and unloved." Doctor Simpson was Victor Rochette, M.D., pediatrician for most of Lowell's Franco-Americans until the 1930's. He was, as Kerouac says, tall? with gray hair, and a man deeply saddened by the death of his wife.

Kerouac, who had a prodigious memory, claimed to remember the day he was born, and events from his first two years at Lupine Road find their way into Doctor Sax and Visions of Cody and Mexico City Blues. At home Jean Louis was called "Ti-Jean," short for "PetitJean" or "little John." It was a nickname he retained his entire life--it was the name he signed to his most personal letters, and the name that is etched in his gravestone.

Jack Kerouac's first ten years were spent in a section of Centralville which gathered around St. Louis de France Church (2) (/). The church was founded in 1904 by the French Canadians who settled in lower Centralville. The church as it looks today dates from 1954, whenit was altered from what Kerouac called "a basement affair" to a more traditional Catholic church. Kerouac was baptised here, and in Visions of Gerard he writes of "special altars" and "antique mahogany confessionals" and "vast solemn marble basins in which the old holy water lies, dipped by a thousand hands."

Kerouac was raised as a Catholic, and as a boy he went to church every Sunday. A few biographers of Kerouac often portray Kerouac's father, Leo, as somehow anti-religious, and Kerouac's mother, Gabrielle, as fiercely devoted to the church. But Roger Brunelle, a Kerouac scholar from the St. Louis de France parish, has found church documents which reveal that both Mr. and Mrs. Kerouac served on special committees for the church. It seems Mr. Kerouac was simply anti-clerical, not anti-Catholic.

Kerouac was educated by the nuns of St. Louis de France parish. He went to kindergarten and part of first grade at the Billings School, a public school building rented by St. Louis to house overflow classes. (The Billings school has since been torn down.) In April of 1929, Kerouac was transferred to the large, red brick St. Louis School (3) (/) at the end of Boisvert Street.

Kerouac's first language was French. It was the language used at home by his parents, and the language heard most often on the streets of St. Louis parish. Kerouac attended St. Louis school through the fourth grade, and his education was also conducted largely in French. In a letter to Lowell-born writer Yvonne LeMaitre, Kerouac confessed that "all my knowledge rests in my French Canadianess and nowhere else."

Kerouac's earliest sense of identity was certainly shaped by his "French-Canadianess" and his Catholic education, but the formative event of his childhood was the death of his older brother Gerard. It was while the Kerouacs were living at 34 Beaulieu Street (4) (/)that Gerard died of a heart condition, brought on by rheumatic fever. Gerard was nine at the time of his death, four years older than Jack. He died on June 2, 1926, and the funeral was held at 34 Beaulieu Street.

Kerouac's novel Visions of Gerard is a tender portrayal of his older brother's illness and death. Young Jack, with "the dizzy brain of a four year old, with its visions and infold mysticisms" thought Gerard's death only meant some kind of holy transformation was taking place, something "that would make him greater and more Gerard like." Gerard's death had a profound influence on Kerouac, and even forty years later he often talked about how Gerard was waiting for him in heaven.

From Beaulieu Street, "the little street that bears the great burden of Gerard dying," the Kerouacs moved to 320 Hildreth Street, then 240 Hildreth Street, then 66 West Street (5) (/). The Kerouacs remained at 66 West Street for three years, making it one of the longest continuous stretches spent at any address in his life. Kerouac's restlessness as an adult echoes his family's constant relocations as a child. The Kerouacs moved nine times before Jack graduated high school, all moves within Lowell, but Kerouac's Lowell novels do not portray the moves as disruptions-- there's little explanation, no detailed family discussions, no mention of landlords or creditors.

For Kerouac's prose, the family's many relocations within Lowell create a kind of general boyhood in Lowell, and yet particular emotions or experiences are often associated with particular addresses. Beaulieu Street, of course, is associated with the great sadness of Gerard's death. In the years Jack lived at West Street his father was involved in a number of business ventures including work as a printer at his own shop, the Spotlight Press, at 463 Market Street in downtown Lowell. The West Street home, three years after Gerard's death, was a sociable place. The Kerouacs often entertained a regular group of friends.

In Doctor Sax, Kerouac writes about the wild parties at the West Street home. In Visions of Cody, he writes of one party where "I remember sitting in the parlor listening to the old pre-Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes on the radio with my father and Sis and suddenly in the kitchen I see a man creeping up like an Indian with twelve people creeping up behind him from the kitchen door and it's a surprise party which rocks house (small rosecovered cottage, actually and noshit, next to a rickety grocery store, on West Street Lowell)." In 1929 the Kerouacs moved from West Street, and Centralville, to the Pawtucketville neighborhood of Lowell.

A walk through the lower Centralville neighborhood of St.Louis Parish is a walk through Kerouac's earliest sense of place. We know his interior life was shaped by the death of his brother Gerard. It's also possible to see how this neighborhood was a vibrant, active place for the French Canadaians who settled here. This vibrant life, in the shadow of Gerard's death, contains the essential paradox of all Kerouac's writing. "All you can do is head straight for the grave," he writes in Visions of Cody, "a face just covers a skull a while." "What you learn the first time you get drunk," he writes in Visions of Gerard, "is what you learn when you understand the meaning that's here before you on this heavy earth: living but to die."

Walking through Kerouac's Lowell Centralville neighborhood, it's possible to imagine how Visions of Gerard and Visions of Cody are, in fact, one single vision.

Jack Kerouac's Lowell is a joint project of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Committee, sponsor and organizer of the annual Kerouac celebration in Lowell, and by the Jack Kerouac subterranean Information Society, publisher of DHARMA beat, the magazine of Jack Kerouac activities, organizations and publications. To find out more about these organizations write to:

Lowell celebrates Kerouac!
P.O. box 111
Lowell, MA 01853-1111

The Jack Kerouac subterranean Information Society
P.O. Box 1753
Lowell, MA 01853-1753

This site was design by Alan Taupier, with cooperation from Brian Foye, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Lowell Public Library.

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