of Joan Adams Vollmer Burroughs, William's common-law wife, sharing with her a taste for amphetamines. In the late 1940s he was invited to Texas to grow marijuana on the Burroughs farm. It was here he renewed his acquaintance with the young Abe Green, a fellow train jumper and much later on in the early beatnik scene, a regular reciter of his own enigmatic brand of spontaneous poetry. Despite his comparative youth, Green was often referred to by Huncke as "Old Faithful." Huncke valued loyalty and it is thought that Abe Green was of "inestimable assistance" to Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac when it came to the concealment of the weapon used to kill David Kammerer some years later. During the late 1940s, Huncke was recruited to be a subject in Alfred Kinsey's research on the sexual habits of the American male. He was interviewed by Kinsey, and recruited fellow addicts and friends to participate. Huncke had been an unpublished writer since his days in Chicago, and gravitated toward literary types and musicians. In the music world, Huncke visited all the jazz clubs and associated with Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon (with whom he was once busted on 42nd Street for breaking into a parked car). When he first met Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, they were interested in writing and also unpublished. They were inspired by his stories of 42nd Street life, criminal life, street slang, and his vast experience with drugs. Huncke was immortalized in Kerouac's On the Road as the character Elmo Hassel. In the late 1940's, Huncke was arrested on a stolen goods charge and sentenced to a term in the New York State Prison System. Ginsberg was arrested along with Huncke and others, and was sent to a mental hospital as a result. Writing career Huncke himself was a natural storyteller, a unique character with a paradoxically honest take on life. Later, after the formation of the so-called Beat Generation, members of the Beats encouraged Huncke to publish his notebook writings (Huncke's Journal), which he did with limited success in 1965 with Diane DiPrima's Poet's Press. Huncke used the word "Beat" to describe someone living with no money and few prospects. "Beat to my socks," he said. Huncke coined the phrase in a conversation with Jack Kerouac, who was interested in how their generation would be remembered. "I'm beat," was Huncke's reply, meaning tired