Location Unknown

This is the last page from "The Town and The City," by Jack Kerouac. The novel is a work of fiction so there is no specific location for the content of this final page. However, I ponder the place of the red lights at the big junction... the view of the gas stations and diners. I think perhaps it was in Iowa, the land "where they let the children cry."

"ON A HIGHWAY one rainy night in the summer of that year, by glistering waters of a river in a place not far from the lights of a town, among hills and river-bluffs that were like shadows, a big red truck stopped at the one-light junction. Peter Martin, in his black leather jacket, carrying the old canvas bag in which all his poor needments for a long journey were packed, got down from the truck.

     The driver of the truck, enshrouded in his high cab, sadly called out: "Remember what I told you now. Walk a quarter mile down the road, just follow the river, till you get to the railroad overpass. If it starts raining hard you can wait there. Then you come to the red lights at the big junction, and there you'll see the gas stations and the diners, and there's the main highway that'll take you right in. It goes over the bridge. Got that straight? Good luck to you, man!" He shifted into gear and lumbered off the highway.

     And Peter was alone in the rainy night.
     He was on the road again, traveling the continent westward, going off to further and further years, alone by the waters of life, alone, looking towards the lights of the river's cape, towards tapers burning warmly in the towns, looking down along the shore in remembrance of the deamess of his father and of all life."