Scrolls

From the Chronicle…

Last week, an airtight black suitcase passed through a security checkpoint at the Indianapolis International Airport on its way to San Francisco. A guard ordered the case opened and found inside a tattered and frayed scroll of yellowed paper 119 feet and 8 inches long.

“Oh I know what this is,” the baggage screener said to Jim Canary, a conservator who was accompanying the artifact. “This is one of them religious scrolls, ain’t it?”

Not a bad observation. The scroll was in fact the manuscript of one of the most famous and iconic novels of the 20th century, Jack Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness Beat generation bible, “On the Road,” which is on exhibit for the next three months at the San Francisco Public Library….