Neal Cassady was born on February 8, 1926, in Salt Lake City, Utah. His parents were en route to California where the plan was for his father to open a barbershop there. The barbershop failed, the family moved to Denver, and when Neal was 6, his parents split.
    Neal Cassady was raised by an unemployed and alcoholic father in the skid row hotels of Denver's Larimer Street. He grew to become a very skilled car thief with a unique ability to charm strangers. Because of these skills he spent many years in reform schools and juvenile prisons. He was never arrested for anything violent or serious. Neal just did illegal things for the sheer hell of it. If it was fun, damn the laws...he was gonna do it. By the age of 21, by his own count, Neal had stolen five hundred cars to go joyriding with girlfriends and had served fifteen months in reform schools.
    In December of 1946, Neal Cassady arrives by bus in New York City with his teenage wife, LuAnne (previously LuAnne Henderson). They are there to visit his Denver friends Ed White and Hal Chase who are attending Columbia University. Since frst arriving in New York, White and Chase have become friends with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
    Jack dislikes Neal at first, but they become fast friends soon enough. Neal is envious of Jack's writing skills and Jack is envious of Neal's charms and fast-living lifestyle.
    By March 1947, Cassady is back in Denver, but the two friends take to writing letters and Jack decides to go visit Neal in Denver.
    Over the next several years Cassady and Kerouac will travel many times spanning the countryside. It is these zany experiences that Kerouac will later incorperate into his great novel, "On The Road".  In the novel Jack is named "Sal Paradise" and Neal is "Dean Moriarty". LuAnne becomes "MaryLou".
     Kerouac will continue using Cassady as a main character in many other books such as his novel, Visions of Cody. "Cody", of course, is another psuedonym for Neal. Neal will also appear in Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Desolation Angels.
    By March of 1947, Neal (while still married to LuAnne)meets and  begins an affair with Carolyn Robinson ( Soon to be Carolyn Cassady - "Camille" in On The Road), a graduate student at the University of Denver. Soon Neal will be sharing time between the two women and introducing Carolyn to his old New York pals.
    Allen is the first to visit Neal. Neal is still running between Carolyn and LuAnne and now he has Ginsberg to juggle as well, (as Ginsberg has a very big crush on Neal). Neal is in the process of divorcing LuAnne when Carolyn walks in on Neal, LuAnne, and Allen in bed together. This is a hint of the life to come for Carolyn and Neal.
    Neal and Carolyn are married on April Fools' Day, 1948, and she bores the first of his children. Jami, Joanne, and John Allen. John Allen, of course, is named after Neal's two best friends....Jack and Allen.
    Neal and Carolyn eventually settled down in in Los Gatos, a suburb near San Jose, where he worked as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific railroad. Neal was very proud of his brakeman job and tried numerous times to get Jack to come out and work the rails with him. Jack was never interested and not really a working stiff anyway.
    He remained close friends with Ginsberg and Kerouac, although he never profited from their eventual success. Neal felt he was seen by the world as a madcap madman because of the "Dean Moriarty" character. Neal always felt that people had certain expectations of him that he could not live up to. This caused Jack and Neal to drift apart later on in life.

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