We don't know if Jack Kerouac was on the road when he wrote this $1,300 check on March 25, 1958 or who the recipient, George Eddy, was. But we do know good signed Kerouac items are scarce, and his signature here is clearer than the Beat Generation's avatar usually was when, disillusioned by life, he drowned or inhaled his angst away. Still, it never crimped his bitterly brilliant observations, at least until he drank himself to death in 1969 at age 47. The Bankers Trust Company check, which came a year after "On the Road" was published, is made out in blue felt pen, with the signature NRMT and the check itself is EX-MT.