Desolation Angels - Sedro-Woolley, 1956

Here's Kerouac's description of Sedro-Woolley in 1956: He gets dropped off outside, then "I walk across the hot road towards the town ... first I comb my hair in a gas station and come out and there's a goodlooking woman busy at her work on the sidewalk (arranging cans) and her pet raccoon comes up to me ... then I start off - across the curving road is a factory plant ... I keep moving ... out across tarns and oil-meadow distches between superhighway macadams, and come out and lope ... into Sedro-Woolley proper ... there's a bank ... there's the saloon next door... I get a beer at the big shiny bar and sit at a table, back to the bar ... I go out to buy my shoes ... Main Street, stores, sporting goods, basketballs, footballs for coming Autumn ... I go in a store and clomp to the back and take off the clod-hoppers and the kid gives me blue canvas shoes ... I buy em, leave the old shoes there, and walk out - ... Squat against a wall and light a cigarette and dig the little afternoon city, there's the hay and grain feed silo outside town, the railroad, the lumberyard ... I cut off, back to the highway, over the tracks, and out on the bend getting traffic three ways ..." Desolation Angels