From: tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us (Timothy Bowden)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: the Cassady Chronicles
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 14:28:19 PST
Organization: Yucca Flats II in Felton, CA

Carolyn Cassady, wife of the famous Neal Cassady, and I went up one 
bright day late in 1972 to visit one of her late ex-husband's last 
lovers.  Ann Murphy/Maxwell came down the stairs in her underwear 
to ring us in, asked us not to look while she ran back up ahead of 
us (she was on the phone and had no time to dress) then turned 
and flew up the stairs.  Carolyn and I consulted later.  We had 
both ignored the instruction.
 
Ann Maxwell was small and trim and semi-voluptuous due to plastic 
surgery apparently performed to impress upon Neal a new bustline.  
She was not yet out of her bandages when Neal was found on that 
railroad track, Carolyn told me.
 
Ann Maxwell had the prettiest, softest voice, like a nightingale 
singing, when she spoke.  He home was warm and colorful;  I saw 
what simple contact paper on the window could do to alter the 
complexion of a room.  We sat at the kitchen table.
 
Ann Maxwell moved like a dancer, because she was one.  She would 
step in front of her full-length mirror and glide;  there is a 
certain poetic fluid transition the women have, like cartoons 
finely wrought, and Ann Maxwell danced, needing no band.
 
Ann Maxwell danced in North Beach, where smoke and ugly hoovered 
and mere degradation loomed and a step away was trouble.  She told 
us during the day of the pimps who break your legs to force 
compliance, about the interview she held with one goon through a 
locked door.  
 
Ann Maxwell never liked me much.  At the kitchen table, they spoke 
of Neal (in _On The Road_, Kerouac speculated about 
transcontinental telecons between Neal's wives about a certain part 
of his anatomy - Carolyn denies this..) and about the stars, which 
were altogether too much with us, in my opinion.  They spoke of 
early days, by which I mean the dawn of humankind, and past lives 
visiting forsaken sites, and groaning mystery in the murk.  I was 
excused early.
 
I retreated to the living room to watch Johnny Carson.  Ann Maxwell 
brought me coffee, said `I don't want to monopolize, but we are 
going to be busy for a while...'  
 
Later the Upstairs Poet joined us.  Philip Lamantia was living one 
floor above, and we sat in a circle.  We agreed about Lawrence 
Ferlinghetti as a poet.  
 
Ann:  But do you think he really regards himself a poet?
Phillip:  Of course he does!  His royalties *announce* it to him!
 
Lamantia, you may remember, was a participant in the famous reading 
of 1956 in some church in Berkeley which is regarded as the dawn of 
the San Francisco Renaissance.
 
In bed.  We had the waterbed.  A bedpost of some sort was loose, 
banging the floor.  Ann came by the bed, asking if we wanted to 
switch with her.  She was concerned about the neighbors.  We hadn't 
been aware.  
 
I wanted to invite Ann Maxwell to join us, but I didn't.  I wasn't 
sure how it would play with either of them.  I was just off the 
Texas prairie, and unsure of anything.  
 
When Carolyn jumped up in the morning, Ann said to her `You have a 
beautiful body.'
 
I always lament the roads not taken, rather than the ones that were 
and deadended.  At least then you know.
 
In the morning we caught the train, and I never saw Ann Maxwell 
again, and I wonder who has, and how she is, and what has become of 
her, of all of us.


-Tremonius

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