Bob Holman & Margy Snyder

The passing of the scroll...
It's gone to a good place.

An iconoclastic, white-tie wearin' John Lennon lovin' “huge Bob Dylan fan,” spirit of the 60's, buddy of Brinkley's, crony of Thompson's, and owner of the Indianapolis Colts (my new and forever favorite team), Jim Irsay.

It was football got Jack out of Lowell,
and it was football saved his holy scroll.

$2.2 million dollars -- a new world record, more than Joyce's Ulysses, which some people think is a pretty good book, Kafka's Trial, and every other literary piece ever written. In fact, it comes to about $2,430,000 when you add in the commission and taxes.

I'll have to tell you about visiting the scroll
Four out of five days you could see it unrolled,
But I'll save that for some other time
Cuz the essence of the moment is the auctioneer's rhyme...

Returning around 2:45, I walked again through the opulent and decidedly un-Beat Christie's Palace past the 6-foot wall mountings of animals in foliage like 3-D Rousseaus, and up the ornate inner staircase two cushioned steps at a time until my bean crested the second floor and I immediately saw a mob filling the doorway and spilling into the hallway (oh-oh!) from the auction room, the same as where the scroll was displayed. I squeezed through like I had a seat, got to the front of the mob (something I seem to have a knack for) and lo -- there it was -- the packed in-action auction room! There were 120 seats, all filled, about 25 people standing on each side, so maybe 175 in all, plus 12 Christie's suits manning rows of telephones on either side of the rectangular room, and about 20 people in the press corral at the back with five major camera set-ups, but none with network logos.

There were several assorted Sampas's, Doug Brinkley, Sterling Lord, Ann & Sam Charters, Regina Weinrich, Michelle Esrick, Casey Cyr, Ed Adler, and scattered throughout was the hard core group of five of us who were all there at closing time on the last day: photographer Aaron Schuman and writer Ken Caffrey in the press pen, writer Ronna Johnson who's coming out with a second take on Women of The Beats later this year, and New York Beat guitarist Randy Hutton whom we'll hear before long at one of the shows. Others too in the eternity of it.

And I'm there tryin' to figure it out -- who's with who, what's goin' on. It's Lot number 242 when I come in. Jack's scroll soul is number 307. A guy gets up from a seat in the back row right in front of me. I hesitate maybe 10 seconds, then step forward before someone else reaches their courage threshold and I ask the next seated person if he's gone for good and get this rich suit's disdain, “I have no idea.” Which I interpret as Snagged! Homie's home. Howdy doody and a whole lot more!

Brian Hassett

Next page > Part II, The Auctioneer's Song > page 1, 2, 3, 4

Brian Hassett's been On The Road since hitchhiking from Vancouver to the Camp Kerouac Conference in Boulder in '82. He recently produced shows evoking Jack's spirit in both New York and LA on the 50th anniversary of his writing the scroll April 2nd - 22nd, 1951. Works at MTV, has written for the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, etc., and is really just striving to keep the voice pure and the chi channeling.