By the 50's, Neal and Carolyn were having problems. Neal had been
visiting friends in New York when he met and got pregnant, one Diane Hanson.
She wanted marriage and Neal got a quick marrieg to her without divorcing
Carolyn first. This caused many problems, not the least being that Neal
decided he wanted to be with Carolyn instead and came back to San Francisco
begging her to take him back.
By the late 50's, Neal and Carolyn were all but finished.
In the 1960's, Cassady began a new series of road adventures, again
with a young novelist. This time around Ken
Kesey took the place of Kerouac. When Kesey organized a trip to the
New York World's Fair in a psychedelic bus named 'Furthur,'
Neal Cassady was the madman behind the wheel. This trip is chronicled in
Tom Wolfe's 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.'
Mexico in 1968, Cassady wandered onto a deserted railroad, intending to walk fifteen miles to the next town. He fell asleep on the way, wearing only a t-shirt and jeans. It was a cold rainy night, and Cassady was found beside the tracks the next morning. He was in a coma, and died in a hospital later that day. The rumor is Cassady's last words were "Sixty-Four Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-Eight". This was supposedly how many railroad ties he had couted before his death. Kessey wrote a wonderful story about recieving the news of Cassady's death entitled "The Day After Superman Died".
Kerouac didn't bat an eye when told the news. He would die a year later.
Neal's unfinished autobiography was published as 'The First Third' after his death.