Along the Metedeconk, the Homeless find a Home Beyond the Kerouacian Imagination
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Along the Metedeconk, the Homeless find a Home Beyond the Kerouacian Imagination
Downtown Lakewood. Photo by Hank Kalet
Note: This is based on a visit to a newer, makeshift encampment in Lakewood, N.J., I made over the summer with photographer Sherry Rubel and the Rev. Steve Brigham. It is part of a longer essay manuscript in progress tentatively called Revisiting Paradise: Rereading Kerouac and On The Road. Kerouac tended to romanticize the hobo, but there is nothing romantic about American homelessness, in the past or in the 21st Century. It is a hard life, a stigmatized life.
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© 2022 Hank Kalet
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Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
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Hank Kalet 