Goodbye to Neal Cassidy
For those who don't know, Cassidy was Jack Keroac's friend and the role model for his character Dean Moriarty in Keroac's famous novel On the Road.
I met him when we were both seeing the same doctor, Dr. Radar Wennesland (see Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). We met in the waiting room and got along so well we connected as friends.
When the word came to SF that his dead body had been found in Mexico, his long time friends, mostly his old biker group, created a funeral for him at Lime Kiln Creek just south of Big Sur.
First, his body had to be obtained from the mortuary in SF where it had been sent; that required a bribe I"m told. Then his body was put in a motorcycle sidecar and brought to Lime Kiln Creek. His coffin in SF had stones in the coffin to weight it so his missing body wouldn't be detected.
His body arrived in Lime Kiln Creek early in the morning before sunup. His biker brothers took his body, placed in on a sheet, and took off his formal funeral suit, then dressed him in his usual jeans us his biker colors on his motorcycle jacket.
Meanwhile, others were gathering wood and building a huge funeral pyre for cremation. It took hours. Then someone put a ladder up on it and they placed his body on it. People gathered around it as it was lit. After awhile people moved back from the extreme heat of the flames.
At one point, early in the cremation, there was a sense of a ghost walking around the pyre. I felt its presence as it passed me. It felt as if Neal Cassidy was saying Goodbye. Everyone exchanged glances as if to confirm what we were experiencing; then I heard a man say, "I think we all know who that was." And we did.
The fire burned all night. By morning it was only hot coals. People began carrying buckets of hot ash into the ocean waves at low tide; the high tide to come later in the day would take the cremains out to sea.
Some were emotional and crying. Most people were calm and saying goodbye quietly. After a couple of hours the ashes were disbursed into the Pacific Ocean. People stood by and watched the tide come in as I did.
I met him when we were both seeing the same doctor, Dr. Radar Wennesland (see Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). We met in the waiting room and got along so well we connected as friends.
When the word came to SF that his dead body had been found in Mexico, his long time friends, mostly his old biker group, created a funeral for him at Lime Kiln Creek just south of Big Sur.
First, his body had to be obtained from the mortuary in SF where it had been sent; that required a bribe I"m told. Then his body was put in a motorcycle sidecar and brought to Lime Kiln Creek. His coffin in SF had stones in the coffin to weight it so his missing body wouldn't be detected.
His body arrived in Lime Kiln Creek early in the morning before sunup. His biker brothers took his body, placed in on a sheet, and took off his formal funeral suit, then dressed him in his usual jeans us his biker colors on his motorcycle jacket.
Meanwhile, others were gathering wood and building a huge funeral pyre for cremation. It took hours. Then someone put a ladder up on it and they placed his body on it. People gathered around it as it was lit. After awhile people moved back from the extreme heat of the flames.
At one point, early in the cremation, there was a sense of a ghost walking around the pyre. I felt its presence as it passed me. It felt as if Neal Cassidy was saying Goodbye. Everyone exchanged glances as if to confirm what we were experiencing; then I heard a man say, "I think we all know who that was." And we did.
The fire burned all night. By morning it was only hot coals. People began carrying buckets of hot ash into the ocean waves at low tide; the high tide to come later in the day would take the cremains out to sea.
Some were emotional and crying. Most people were calm and saying goodbye quietly. After a couple of hours the ashes were disbursed into the Pacific Ocean. People stood by and watched the tide come in as I did.
70-79, F
