Throwback Thursday: Together Through Life, 10 Years Later

THIS BLOG POST WAS FIRST PUBLISHED 10 YEARS AGO TODAY

I woke about an hour early this morning. As I lay there my mind began planning the day as it often does. Call Mom at eight, as is my custom. Pick up paintings from Homegrown Art Festival at 2:30... visit an artist's studio at three... paint in my studio and listen to Highway 61 Revisited, a.k.a the Dylan Hour, on KUMD at five... make a decision about going to the Million Dollar Bash at Beaners later. 

 

While thinking thus I drifted back to sleep. Then the alarm went off. Whoa! It's Friday!!!! Gotta go to work! 

 

It's been one busy, jam-packed week, and we're not done yet. Tonight there will be a couple more art events and still more Dylan activities. The Open House at Maggie Flowers Interior Design is a three day French Fling based on the European flea market motif. I have a number of new paintings there (Thursday thru Saturday) and will be there myself from 5-7 p.m. Location is at the corner of 15th Avenue East and Superior Street here in Duluth. Visit www.maggieflowers.com for more information. 

From there I will be running over to a one night only art show aptly titled Ten Emerging Artists at the former European Bakery, 109 West First Street, again in Duluth. Ten artists will be on display, or rather their work will be. I strongly encourage anyone who's out and about to drop in to see the art and photography of Adam Rosenthal, Alexander Hanson, Anthony Zappa, Brent Erickson, David Moreira, Justin Iverson, Leon Nyarecha, Rob K-Sm Nicolas Monson and Steven J Read. 

To my dismay I will again miss the singer-songwriter competition at Hibbing Auditorium, perhaps the highlight event of Dylan Days there. But for Duluth-bound fans, the Brewhouse will be putting it all out there as Duluth Does Dylan to their hearts content. 

If you're here from out of town and looking for something to do to kill time till tonight's activities, you might want to drive along our Skyline Drive and take in some of the views of the bay, the ore docks, bridges, ships and Lake Superior. Any time, day or night, Skyline Drive offers great vistas. 

 

You also may want to drive past 519 Third Avenue East and take a peek at the house young Bob Zimmerman once lived in till he was age six and his family moved to Hibbing. The fellow who purchased this house ten years ago is himself a Dylan fan and has been renovating it as time goes by. He maintains one of the most comprehensive Dylan sites on the internet if you need to know anything and everything Dylan, from tour dates to links to stories in the news. This morning there are 24 of the latter. The web address is www.expectingrain.com 

 

In the meantime, enjoy the sun and the moon and the music and your friends. And have a great Memorial Day weekend. Don't forget Sunday's Battle of the Jugbands. Till the morrow.... 

PHOTO Top right: Drawing based on cover of Dylan's Street Legal. I placed it here because it looks like a guy looking for something. This week a lot of people were looking for Dylan. He turned 70, a milestone for any of us, and being a human like the rest of us, he very likely blew out birthday candles like the rest of us. Where did it happen? You can find quite a few articles online this week asking that very question. 

After half a century of listening to Dylan music, you might say we've been Together Through Life.

Archivist Bill Pagel Seals the Deal: Now Owns Both Homes Bob Dylan Grew Up In

The former Zimmerman home, Hibbing. Photo: Iron Range Resource Bureau

Bill Pagel is now the proud owner of both houses that Bob Dylan grew up in. A long time collector and Dylan archivist, Bill took possession of the Duluth Central Hillside duplex — first home Bob Zimmerman lived in as a toddler — nearly a decade ago.

That he would eventually own both homes was practically a given. He was living in the house next door to the former Zimmerman home in Hibbing, patiently waiting for the price to come down to something within reason. A few weeks ago he acquired the home.

The former owners, Gregg and Donna French, had owned the home since 1990. Throughout the years they’ve talked to 1000s of fans, musicians and authors who have visited the house. They decided that it’s time to move on.

Celebrating Dylan’s birthday with cake on the front yard of his first
boyhood home till he was six. Young Bobby Zimmerman lived upstairs
in this duplex.  Photo 2016, Duluth Dylan Fest.

This past week as he was moving in a fellow from Canada drove up on a motorcycle and shared an anecdote that might correct a myth about Bob’s relationship with his father Abe Zimmerman. The motorcyclist said that when Abe was alive he had some of his son’s albums in the window of his hardware store. Clearly he had a father’s pride on display there.

Gregg French, who has known Bill Pagel for many years, said that he can think of no better person to become the next caretaker. Bill plans on restoring the home and returning it to the color it was when Bob Dylan, who at the time was known as Bob Zimmerman, lived there from 1948 through 1959.

Bill Pagel

I learned about the sale on a very hot day this past month as three friends from our Duluth Dylan Fest committee helped move a 1930s stove up a flight of stairs. Bill has been in the process of restoring the Duluth house so that the furnishings match the decor which was there with Dylan was a youth. He already owns the actual high chair Bobby Zimmerman used. By using photos from the period he is attempting to match all the other features.

Bill Pagel has been collecting for over 50 years and has exhibited many pieces from his collection in New York, Chicago and Duluth, Minnesota. Currently objects from his collection, including some of Bob Dylan’s handwritten manuscripts, are being shown in Chicago at the American Writer’s Museum and here in Duluth, Minnesota at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum.

Future plans are for both homes to eventually be part of a museum project in Northern Minnesota.

EdNote:  Bill is currently trying to locate another collector who purchased many pieces of the original furniture including Bob Dylan’s bedroom set from the Hibbing home in 1988. He would appreciate hearing from anyone who may have a lead in locating this person. Contact: 
Billp61@boblinks.com 

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Related Links
Here’s the Duluth News Tribune account of the recent sale: https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/entertainment/music/3905347-Collector-purchases-Bob-Dylans-childhood-home-in-Hibbing

Here’s the Rolling Stone version of the news.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-superfan-hibbing-minnesota-858270/

Here is what the Central Hillside home looked like in 2010 when he bought it:
https://www.superiortelegram.com/entertainment/man-who-bought-dylans-duluth-home-fixing-it

For those unfamiliar, Bill Pagel created and maintains BobLinks.com, one of the most popular websites in the world for Dylan fans due to his archiving of Dylan’s concert information, setlists, reviews and links to other Dylan-related sites. The site has surpassed 40 million visits since 1995.
To see a list of the 187 countries from where people have visited BobLinks visit this page. 

Trivial Pursuits: Bob Dylan's Favorite Monopoly Piece

The Scottie Dog

Disclaimer: There is nothing profound to be revealed here. Just a few more tidbits of Dylan trivia. 

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey we went through a Monopoly phase. It may have been just after the slot car racing phase, the ping pong phase or the billiards phase. You know how it is when you’re a kid. You get amped and focused.

I remember one game in Tom Browne’s basement that lasted a full week, which we funded by adding cash from my own family’s Monopoly loot. Late Friday evening we finally called it a draw.

Monopoly is one of those ubiquitous games that seems embedded in our collective unconscious. The various elements of the game are fairly common knowledge: Chance and Community Chest cards, title deeds for the various properties, green houses and red hotels, and money.

And then, there are the tokens, or playing pieces, each as much a part of the game as everything else.

Parker Brothers purchased the rights to Monopoly in 1934 and produced the game from 1935 to 1990, when it was sold to Hasbro. From 1943 on you could choose as your playing piece a Battleship, Boot, Cannon, Horse and Rider, Iron, Race Car, Scottie Dog, Thimble, Top Hat, or Wheelbarrow.

What this means is that the same game pieces kids used in the 80s were being used in the 40s and 50s. And the same game pieces we used in the 60’s were the same that Bob Dylan used when he came down from Hibbing to visit his friend Louis Kemp out on London Road in East Duluth.

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Two Degrees of Separation
What makes Duluth interesting to some extent is how "small town" it is. You're no doubt familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation in which every person in the world is just six steps removed from everyone else in the world. Well, I am beginning to think that here in Duluth everyone you meet is just two steps removed from someone with a first-hand Bob Dylan story.

From my own experience here many stories can be retrieved in an instant, but this is a new one. Last weekend a friend of a friend told me that when Bob Zimmerman (Dylan) would visit his friend Louis Kemp in Duluth they used to play Monopoly. The story originated with a gentleman who does security guard work at Fond-du-Luth Casino downtown.

Naturally, I thought it would be fun to hear the story first-hand and headed into town the following eve to see what I could learn.

Timing is everything, and when I entered the front door I encountered an older gentleman wearing a white shirt and tie, a badge and a name tag that read “Gary.” He looked to be in his mid-70s so I struck up and conversation by first asking if he lived here in Duluth all his life. He said he had. I then asked how old he was, and Gary said 77.

“Oh, Bob Dylan is 77,” I said, and we were quickly into it. In short order he mentioned living down the block from Louis Kemp, a friend of Bobby Zimmerman’s from Camp Herzl. When Bob would come down from Hibbing they liked to play Monopoly. “Bob always liked to be the Scottie Dog,” Gary affirmed.

Gary, Louis, Bob and other friends would spend hours upstairs playing Monopoly. Gary remembers Louis’ mom Frieda sometimes coming upstairs to bring them grapes and hot milk, and that when Louis later had a boat in Alaska he named it after his mother.

Gary also shared how Bob would be humming all the time while playing, tapping on the edge of the table, a restless internal energy going on so that sometimes they would have to say, “Your turn, Bob.”

Buddy Holly, Winter Dance Party at the Armory,
Carl Bunch on drums. Photo: Sharon Johnson

I asked Gary whether he was at Buddy Holly’s Winter Dance Party at the Armory. Gary said he was indeed there at the Armory show with two other friends that night. While there he noticed at one point that there was a pile of 20 or so Winter Dance Party posters sitting there. In retrospect, in light of the plane crash a couple days later, he wondered what those posters would be worth today. "There were lots of people there. The music was great all around," Gary said, "but the real hit that night was Ritchie Valens."

For Bob Zimmerman the highlight was making a connection with Buddy Holly, a connection that felt like more than simply eye contact. Dylan has made several public references to that night including these comments from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I'd have to start with Buddy Holly... He was mesmerizing... Everything about him... Something about him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction. Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I don't know what. And it gave me the chills."

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Louis Kemp and Bob Zimmerman were 11 and 12 when they met at Camp Herzl. They went on to become lifelong friends. When Louis was married in that London Road home in 1983 Bob was there as Best Man.

For the past couple years some of us had caught word  that Louis Kemp was writing a book about growing up with Bob. One chapter in the book will be about that night at the Armory, titled "Oh Boy." As for the rest of the book, it's a sure thing that there will be stories we haven't heard yet, and also a sure thing that they will be more interesting than which game piece Bob would choose when he played Monopoly.

The book is slated to be released later this year, in late summer or early fall.