The North Door

On December 29th, we flew to Tampa, Florida.

We stayed at a hotel in St. Petersberg the first night and visited to the Salvador Dali Museum in the morning before taking the train to Orlando. We stayed with friends at a resort near Disney from where we visited Disney (Epcot, MGM, the MK) and made a daytrip to the Kennedy Space Center.

Dali Museum
Kennedy Space Center

New Years Eve 2007 at the Magical Kingdom: magnificent parade to the castle, spectacular fireworks, near-riots in the streets from overcrowding.

But I wanted to explore other parts of the area and discovered that Jack Kerouac lived in Orlando. We visited the Kerouac House on the corner of Clouser and Shady Lane in College Park, Orlando. A huge oak tree covered in Spanish moss stands on the boundary between the properties. A park bench was tipped over on the lawn.

In 1974, I hitchhiked from Niagara to Newfoundland. While I was in Prince Edward Island I met a young man from France, who had just finished reading a paperback biography about Kerouac and gave it to me. That was what I was reading August '74 as I continued my trip. (Ann Charters. "Kerouac: A Biography" 1973.)

Kerouac's mother stayed in the back porch apartment at 1418 Clouser Ave. And it was here, in 1957, that Kerouac wrote "Dharma Bums", a sequel to "On the Road". In 1964 he and his mother settled in St. Petersburg where he died in 1969. He did indicate that he wanted to start a writers residency. A sign on the door informed us that the Clouser Avenue house was in possession of the non-profit organization Kerouac Project of Orlando, which sponsors a three-month residency at the house for four writers each year.

The Kerouac Project

The Hong Kong novelist Xu Xi spent time here in 2001.

Xu Xi in Orlando

Nobody appeared to be home when we arrived but the afternoon weather was a perfect: 29 degrees C. and sunny. We walked through the neigbourhood and had ice tea at Infusion Tea on Edgewater Drive while we waited for the bus. The waitress told us that one of the writers in residence came there for tea.

Infusion Tea Cafe

We also visited the Orlando Historical Museum where there is a Jack Kerouac exhibit.

Orange Count Historical Museum

To mark the 50th anniversary of its publication in 1957, a new edition of "On the Road" is coming out later this year.

Read more here:

Kerouac's unedited 'On the Road' to be published

The House that Jack Built: Postcard from Orlando, Florida

Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ scroll begins museum tour