Born in the same year, 1926, Neal and Al met in Denver when they were both 13 and performed together in a YMCA circus. They did a high-wire-and-trapeze act together—with a net under them—and Neal, ever the athlete, was the one to fly across, somersaulting in midair, while Al, who was a lot taller than Neal, was the one waiting on the other side to catch him. A few years later, in 1946, they met again through a mutual friend, the gimpy, bug-eyed pool hustler Jimmy Holmes, down at Pederson’s Pool Hall. As soon as Neal, who as usual was drifting with no job, no money, and often no place to sleep, learned that Al had both a job and his own car, a 1936 straight-8 LaSalle convertible, Neal glommed on to Al as the guy who could put him behind a wheel (something he desired probably more than beautiful young women) and provide him with the one absolutely vital component of his life: mobility.
In fact, the day they remet at the pool hall, now both 20, Neal asked Al to let him drive the LaSalle down to the local drive-in restaurant on Spears Boulevard, where his wife was working as a carhop. Al was amazed to hear that the handsome but ne’er-do-well, penniless Cassady actually had a wife, but he was even more astounded when he saw Lu Anne come running out to them in her frilly carhop’s uniform, complete with low-cut blouse and ultra-short skirt that showed off her long, perfect legs. Her blonde hair was long too, and her skin strikingly pale. Lu Anne Cassady was the most beautiful woman Al had seen up till then, but Cassady casually kissed her as if having this gorgeous 16-year-old heartthrob gush all over him was no big deal. He never even bothered to get out of the car; he had her bring them Cokes. Then Neal turned the car around and headed back to Pederson’s Pool Hall, where Al got yet another shock.
A few minutes after they got back, two young women walked in from the alley—one of them Al recognized from junior high school, a barely pretty blonde with stringy hair and an aggressive attitude named Jeannie Stewart. “Oh, this’s my girlfriend Jeannie,” Neal explained. It turned out Neal was living at her house, a circumstance he explained as being due to his inability to rent a place for himself and Lu Anne. Whenever Lu Anne saved up a couple of bucks from her carhop tips, Neal would later tell Al, they rented a room (with no bath) for the night at the nearby Trentham Arms flophouse. Al would also soon learn that Neal was not only living with, and having sex regularly with, Jeannie, but he was also having regular sex with Jeannie’s mother and grandmother, who lived in the same house—and who demanded Neal’s servicing as a condition for allowing him to stay there.
It was to finally pry Neal away from Jeannie, according to Al, that Lu Anne insisted they leave Denver together and go live with her aunt and uncle in Nebraska—the moment in the story where her long interview printed in this volume begins.
Al would subsequently have hundreds of adventures with both Neal and Lu Anne, and eventually become the confidant of both as well. He remained friends with both of them until their respective deaths, Neal’s in 1968 and Lu Anne’s in 2010. He probably knew more about them than anyone on the planet—and certainly knew more about them even than they knew about each other.
Al paints a picture of Lu Anne as a smart and very pretty girl, shuffled around by divorced parents busy trying to survive the Great Depression—a girl who became sexually active very early. Although Al admits he cannot verify all the things he heard about Lu Anne, he feels fairly sure that the reason her father sent her back from Los Angeles to her mother in Denver, when Lu Anne was only 12, was that his daughter had been “growing up too fast” in L.A. and had already become, or was close to becoming, sexually involved with an older guy. Al also learned that the reason Lu Anne’s mom agreed to let her marry Cassady was that Lu Anne’s stepfather was pressuring her to have sex with him. Lu Anne later admitted as much to Cassady biographer Tom Christopher. Lu Anne had been deeply troubled by her stepfather’s advances, but it wasn’t due to any sexual naiveté or inhibitions on her part. Al relates that at 14, Lu Anne and her girlfriend Lois had already been getting “presents” from a well-to-do Denver storekeeper, in exchange for sexual favors, including oral sex, in the back room of his store. He says Lu Anne told him this story herself.