"

From the Harry Ransom Center handout, "Stops along the Road: Selected points of interest in the scroll manuscript of On The Road"...

8. The scroll's exact length is 119 feet, 8 inches. The very end of the scroll is a ragged edge, and the final section of text is missing. In Kerouac's handwriting near the edge is written, "DOG ATE (Potchky - a dog)." Potchky was Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr's cocker spaniel. Regardless of what Potchky ingested, the scroll would perhaps still have lacked an ending. In a May 1951 letter on display in the On The Road section of this exhibition, Giinsberg writes to Neal Cassady that Kerouac has finished his draft: "the hero is you, you are the hero, with appearance on scene 1946. Jack needs however an ending.