1 definition by iwantout
The only city to be talked mad shit on in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". Traveling back and forth across the whole country multiple times and Harrisburg, PA was the only place depicted as a gloomy, unfriendly shit hole.
Jack Kerouac- "It was the night of the Ghost of the Susquehanna. The Ghost was a shriveled little old man with a paper satchel who claimed he was headed for 'Canady.'...He was about sixty years old; he talked incessantly of the meals he had, how much butter they gave him for pancakes, how many extra slices of bread,...how he hit every Red Cross in town and showed them his World War 1 credentials; how the Harrisburg Red Cross was not worthy of the name; how he managed in this hard world...The last I saw of him was his bobbing little white bag dissolving in the darkness of the mournful Alleghenies....That night in Harrisburg I had to sleep in the railroad station on a bench; at dawn the station masters threw me out...I stumbled out of town with barely enough strength to reach the city limits. I knew I'd be arrested if I spent another night in Harrisburg. Cursed city!"
by iwantout July 11, 2008