San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Obituary: Al Hinkle, railroad man was character in Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
Neal Cassady was behind the wheel, Jack Kerouac was in the passenger seat, and sprawled across the back seat was the 6-foot-6inch frame of Al Hinkle.
Their cross-country trip in a 1949 Hudson that Hinkle helped pay for became a set piece in Kerouac’s landmark novel, “On the Road,” and now Hinkle, who outlived Cassady by 50 years and Kerouac by 49, has died himself. A longtime resident of San Jose, Hinkle died Wednesday of heart failure at a hospital in Los Gatos, said his daughter, Dawn Davis. He was 92.
“He was really the last one of the contemporaries of my mom and dad who were involved in the beginning of the Beat Generation,” said Cathy Cassady, oldest child of Neal and Carolyn Cassady. “My dad, Jack, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Burroughs and Al Hinkle were the originals.”
As a figure in literature, Hinkle was a stabilizing force to the impulsiveness of Cassady and the brooding searches of Kerouac. Hinkle was as steady as his job as a brakeman and conductor with the Southern Pacific Railroad, working both freight and passenger lines during a 40-year career.
“Dad is the reason Neal and Jack ended up in California,” Davis said. “He got them both jobs on the railroad.” Cassady was a brakeman who didn’t miss a day in 10 years. Kerouac didn’t last beyond ‘student brakeman’ but he got mileage out of it in his free-form poem “October in the Railroad Earth,” which rattles along like a train on a track. When “On the Road” was published in 1957, Hinkle was fictionalized as “Ed Dunkel” or “Big Ed” or “Big tall Ed.” In “Book of Dreams” (1960), he was “Ed Buckle.” In “Visions of Cody” (1972), he was “Slim Buckle.”
“The importance of Al Hinkle in the myth and legend that later became the Beat Generation cannot be overstated,” said Jerry Cimino, founder of the Beat Museum in North Beach. “Al was with Neal Cassady in San Francisco in December 1948 when Neal spied a brand-new ’49 Hudson and found himself $100 short for the down payment. Al pulled the cash out of his pocket then and there so Neal could purchase that legendary car.”
As Kerouac wrote in “On the Road: the Original Scroll,” in which he used real names, “Al Hinkle was a tall calm unthinking fellow who was completely ready to do anything Neal asked him; and at this time Neal was too busy for scruples.”
Albert Clyde Hinkle was born near Miami on Sept. 4, 1926. As an infant, he was in the arms of his mother, Willie, when a twister picked the two of them up and dropped them safely in a neighbor’s yard. That short trip compelled the family to leave Florida for Denver, where Hinkle grew up.
As a teenager, he took a class in circus performance offered by the local YMCA, which is where he met the elder Cassady, Davis said. They ended up as an act. “My dad was the catcher on the trapeze and Neal was the flyer,” she said. “That was interesting because my dad was always bailing Neal out.”
Cassady became a truant, while Hinkle was constrained by his father, a police detective. His mother, Willie, survived the twister only to die in a car wreck. Hinkle did not get along with his stepmother, causing him to leave home at 16 and make his way to California where he joined the merchant marine.
After a two-year stint, he returned to Denver and reconnected with Cassady, while hanging at a pool hall. He got his high school equivalency degree, then an uncle got him a job on the railroad, which brought him back to San Francisco.
A first marriage did not last, and in December 1948, he met and married Helen Argee, in a two-week flurry. They were honeymooners in January 1949 when they piled with Cassady into the newly purchased Hudson. When Cassady needed a spell, Hinkle took over the driving so they never had to stop. According to Davis, her mother did not agree with this style of travel, and she did not approve of the drinking and drug use either.
She got out of the car and ended up in New Orleans at the house of William Burroughs. Cassady and his first wife, LuAnne, and Hinkle continued on to find Kerouac at his sister’s house in North Carolina, and on they went to New York before doubling back to California.
Argee never got back into the Hudson, but she still became the character Galatea Dunkel, in “On the Road.” Hinkle got Cassady to drop him off back in New Orleans and the newlyweds made it back to San Francisco on a passenger train. Hinkle had been inspired enough by the literary life of Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to continue his own education, at San Francisco State College.
“Jack and Neal were so intelligent and could talk on a variety of subjects,” said Davis. “But dad was the only one who actually graduated from college.”
The Hinkles had two children, Mark, born in 1951 and Dawn, born in 1953. That same year the Hinkles bought a new four-bedroom tract home on Kirk Road in San Jose, paying $9,500 with $500 down.
They briefly rented it out when Hinkle entered graduate school in geography at Stanford University. But he left the program short of his master’s degree and returned to his home in San Jose and his job with Southern Pacific.
Hinkle worked for 40 years and one month, and lived for 40 years in the same house. Cassady also moved to nearby Los Gatos, and the two families were always together, with Kerouac coming and going. When both men died within two years of each other, Hinkle was stoic, but took it hard. “Neal was his best friend, and he never found anybody to replace him,” said Davis. “Dad loved to travel, and he got that bug from Neal and Jack.”
As the other Beats fell away, Hinkle became known as “the Last Man Standing,” according to Cimino, of the Beat Museum. “Whenever we asked him he would come to events and talk about his friendship with Jack and Neal.”
“Last Man Standing ... Al Hinkle” became the title of a memoir in interview form by Stephen Edington.
“Al straddled both worlds,” Cimino said. “He worked a straight job, but he also hung with the Beats and was a nonconformist.”
Hinkle put on his train conductor’s uniform for a scene in “Heartbeat,” starring Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte, but the scene got cut. When Walter Salles made the film of “On the Road,” in 2012, he came to San Jose and interviewed Hinkle for five hours. Hinkle became a consultant to the film and offered his expertise in how to take Benzedrine. He was portrayed by English actor Danny Morgan, and his wife Helen by Elisabeth Moss.
Helen Hinkle died in 1994, and not long thereafter, Hinkle finally sold the tract house in San Jose. He took the houseful of memories with him.
“He loved to talk about that first car trip,” said Davis. “Neal’s decision to pick a radio instead of a heater because he didn’t have enough money for both was quite a funny and bad decision. It was freezing most of the time.”
Hinkle remarried in 1997 to Maxine Williams, and they were together for 10 years. In his final years, he lived with his daughter Dawn, and her husband Ron Davis, in the Cambrian Park neighborhood of San Jose.
Survivors include daughter Davis of San Jose, son Mark Hinkle and grandson Logan Hinkle of Morgan Hill. At Hinkle’s request, there will be no memorial.
“It just wasn’t in his nature to make a big fuss,” said Davis.