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`Before the Road` is presented as a book-title threshold, giving the sequence a more deliberate authorial frame.

After so many note-like and fragmentary pages, this title sheet matters because it declares intention. It gathers the manuscript into book form and positions the road as the major symbolic horizon before the prose or poems even begin.

A book title page: 'BEFORE THE ROAD / A BOOK / BY JACK SMITH', set alone. Coming right after the El Paso bridge crossing, the phrase reads as retrospective framing - everything preceding belongs to the time 'before the road' the author has now committed to, gathering the loose notebook pages into declared book form.