The only possible explanation Al could come up with for Lu Anne’s big downhill detour late in life was that it was “a middle-age thing.” He said she would sometimes wonder aloud, “What’s left for me?” But it seems there was more than that going on. All the evidence points to the fact that she had never gotten over her love for Neal Cassady, and that the tragic end of his own life was absolutely devastating for her.
Although she truly loved Bob Skonecki, Lu Anne could never break off her sexual relationship with Neal even after she took vows with her fourth husband. The connection she had with Neal seemed to override everything else she had in her life. Al recalls how happy she was—just bubbling over with laughter and merriment—when Neal drove them over to see Jack at his little cottage in Berkeley in 1957. He also recalls how worried she was about Neal the following year, when he was in San Quentin. Deeply mortified to have landed in such a place, Neal did not want to write letters to the majority of his friends while in prison (though he did keep up a faithful correspondence with Carolyn). For the most part, he also did not want to see visitors. Lu Anne had no way of getting word of his condition, and she feared for his life. Finally, arrangements were made with the prison, and Al drove her over to Marin County to see him. She asked Al to leave them alone together during the visiting period. Afterward, he says, she was enormously relieved to have found that Neal had achieved some sort of tranquility in jail, and that he was doing his best to earn an early release. It was clear to Al that she still cared a great deal about Neal, and that Neal’s state of mind profoundly affected hers, as if there were some sort of communication wire between their psyches.
Bob Skonecki (Lu Anne’s fourth husband), Lu Anne, and Annie, age 13, holding Junior, her Maltese terrier, Daly City, 1964. (Photo courtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)
Al Hinkle with coworker, Southern Pacific Railroad, July 9, 1954. (Photo courtesy of Al Hinkle.)
Hinkle also recalls how, during the sixties, Lu Anne would meet fairly often with Neal for clandestine sex. Until 1963, of course, he was still married to Carolyn; and from late 1963 on, she was married to Skonecki. But the marital status of neither one proved an obstacle to these rendezvous, the urgency of which both Neal and Lu Anne seemed to feel keenly. Occasionally Hinkle would abet their trysts. By prearrangement, Neal would wait in San Jose on certain days when Al brought her down from San Francisco on the train. There’d be big hugs and kisses as soon as they came together, and then Neal would spirit her off in his car to a motel or somebody’s empty bedroom, where they’d share a few hours of bliss in each other’s arms. Other times—Al learned from Neal—Lu Anne would simply drive down to San Jose in her car and call Neal to come meet her. Her daughter would be left in the care of Joe or one of the many people who spent time living at their house. As far as Hinkle knew, nobody else in their lives, including Carolyn Cassady and Annie Ree, was aware of these secret love meetings.
When Neal was found dying beside the railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende in 1968, Annie Ree, barely 17, was having her own difficulties and was not there for Lu Anne, to talk through all the things her mother must have been feeling. Nor could Lu Anne easily have talked with Skonecki about Neal’s death, even had Skonecki not been absent so much of the time. Joe stayed with her during some of her worst times. Still, Lu Anne retreated into herself. Never much of a drinker, she got so drunk and disoriented one night that she ended up falling asleep in a stranger’s house. Four years after Neal’s death, she tried heroin, and found herself compelled to ride the self-destructive train almost to the same place where it had taken Jack and Neal.
But Lu Anne proved herself stronger than they were. Maybe it was her love for her child and grandchild that saved her, but one also feels there was a strength in Lu Anne from the very beginning that always let her land on her feet, always kept her one step ahead of the pack of troubles that dogged her for most of her life. After all, as a willowy teenager only halfway through her high school years, she survived the worst tricks and knockdowns a hardened ex-con like Cassady (for in many respects that’s what he was) could toss at her. She also survived a host of physically abusive, sometimes brutal men. Some might think there was a streak of masochism in her that brought her back to men like that time and again—but that would have been a matter for a trained therapist to dissect, and she’s gone now and beyond the reach of analysis. I would merely suggest here that there is an alternate explanation—that the lady honestly sought love as her highest goal, that she needed love more than anything, craved it, and was willing to risk anything, even her own well-being, to find it.