Re: highway 61, history, present, photos

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Jul 21 2002 - 15:05:11 PDT


Eric,

U.S. Highway 61 goes all the way down the Mississippi river -- a fact of
which I was unaware until your post led me to track its full route on my
wall map of the USA. This of course deepens the metaphor in the dylan song
I quoted since it was undoubtedly one of the main routes of the south-north
exodus which was one of the most significant social transformations in 20th
century US HISTORY, the focal point of the Mississippi summer of '64, when
dylan was himself down in the south, and also could be an echo of "Bringing
it All Back Home:" since, as you point out, it goes through zimmerman's own
upper midwest home as in "my name it ain't nothing', my age it means less."
I'd always thought the allusion was basically to a revisiting of the themes
that were so prominent in his early songs as transformed in the crystals of
whatever drugs he claims to have never taken; social themes refracted
through a Rimbaud rather than Guthrie lyric sensibility. One could even
point out that the Huck Finn adventures Engestrom uses in LBE take place
along the river whose course that hiway follows: a significant space of
multi-cultural contact if ever there was. The mississippi route as
transformative metaphor for the american experience, but in any event, far
away from Pennsylvania's denuded coal country and rusted out mill towns
which don't seem to have provided a metaphor for anything I can remember.
(Amish ahistoricism?)

Paul H. Dillon

----- Original Message -----
  From: MnFamilyMan@aol.com
  To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
  Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 11:14 AM
  Subject: Re: highway 61, history, present, photos

  Paul,

  I signed off with a reference to the Highway 61 that starts in northern
  Minnesota (near Bob Zimmerman birthplace) and runs south through the state
of
  Minnesota. As it meanders its way, much the same way the Mississippi
does,
  it makes its way through St. Paul. It is convenient for me that it runs
by
  my house, I get to drive it every day. Oftentimes as I drive it I listen
to
  that fabulous song you cited and imagine I could continue on down to the
Gulf
  of Mexico.

  Eric



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