(From, On The Road, by Jack Kerouac A part of the book that is real, funny, and something every poor traveler can relate to, hunger. Also, I did this for practice, typed it up, and took some liberties with structure for fun.)
[“But this aint the road to Canada, this is the road to Pittsburg and Chicago ” The little man got disgusted with us and walked off. The last I saw of him was bobbing little white bag dissolving in the darkness of the mournful Alleghenies.
I thought all of the wilderness of america was in the west till the Ghost of the Susquehanna showed me different. No, there is a wilderness in the east; it’s the same wilderness as Franklin plodded in the oxcart days when he was postmaster, the same as it was when George Washington was a wild buck Indian fighter, when Daniel Boone told stories by Pennsylvania lamps and promised to find the Gap, when Bradford built his road and whooped her up in log cabins. There were not great Arizona spaces for the little man, just bushy wilderness of eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, the back roads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful river like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and monarchy.
That night in Harrisburg I had to sleep in the railroad station on a bench; at dawn the station masters threw me out, isn’t it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father’s roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked and with the vision of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life. I stumbled haggardly out of the station and I had no more control, all I could see of the morning was a whiteness like the whiteness of the tomb. I was starving to death and all I had left in the form of calories were the last of the cough drops id bought in Shelton Nebraska, months ago, these were sucked for their sugar and I didn’t know how to panhandle so I stumbled out-of-town with barely enough strength to reach the city limits. I knew i’d be arrested if I spent another night in Harrisburg, the cursed city, and the ride I proceeded to get was with a skinny and haggard man who believed in controlled starvation for the sake of health. When I told him I was starving to death as we rolled east he said, “fine fine there’s nothing better for you. I myself haven’t eaten for three days and I’m going to live to a hundred and fifty years old” He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac, and I might have gotten a ride with an affluent fat man who say lets stop at this restaurant and have some pork chops and beans…NO, and I had to get a ride that morning with a maniac who believed in controlled starvation for the sake of health. After a hundred miles he grew lenient and took out bread and butter sandwich from the back of the car. They were hidden among his salesman samples, and he was selling plumbing fixtures around Pennsylvania. I devoured the bread and butter and suddenly I began to laugh…
I was all alone in the car, waiting for him as he made business-calls in Allentown and I laugh and laugh and glad, I was sick and tired of life and that madman drove me home to New York. ]
Adventures In American Writing 