Everyone knows what the stereotypical hippie is; blue jeans, drugs, flowers, and peace. What people don't realize is that there were underlying reason for all of this. The sixties and the hippie movement were a continuation of a counter culture movement starting in the late forties. The beats as they were later called started this movement to stray away form the conformity of the 1950's. The American dream era as I like to call was not their bowl of tea. They didn't want the house with two kids and a dog in the suburbs. They didn't want the good paying job and conservative mentality of the time. Yet they didn't want to change society, they wanted to distance themselves from it, and create their own little worlds surrounding themselves with new religions such as Zen Buddhism and new literature in the form of prose and poetry. These fore fathers of counter culture were from all walks of life. Great men such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg or William S. Burroughs or Neal Cassady carried the torch to pass on to the Hippies of the California Hills and valleys with San Francisco as their Capital.
             Jack Kerouac's early years presented him the life that lay in his future. As a young man Kerouac was a football star and earned a scholarship to Columbia University in New York. His entire family picked up and moved to the bright lights of New York. Jack's father was failing in Lowell, Massachusetts where the family's previous residence had been so the move was easy. Things wouldn't work out though; Jack would drop out of Columbia after a fight with the football coach. The coach was planning on benching Jack for the whole season. Kerouac's father would fall into debt and become a drunk and a failure.
             It was these events that drove this young man to start the beat culture. Kerouac had no family to lean and no college scholarship. He was against the wall he was beaten. In h...