Early “North Country Blues” in Hibbing.
HIBBING, MN.–I drove alone into the north country unguarded. I carried no expectation or pretense. A songbird hovered along a roadside lake. A good highway leads to connections.
Hibbing did not disappoint.
I thought Hibbing would be a nice companion piece to last summer’s trip to the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Ok. Robert Zimmerman was born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, 75 miles to the east of Hibbing. But he spent his formative years in Hibbing. When Dylan was seven years old his father Abram moved the Zimmerman family to Hibbing where he opened [...]
Scorecards from the author’s basement.
The promise of Cubs opening day never gets old.
Time is a stiff wind, but when baseball’s opening day rolls in, I am young again. There is hope in the air. On April 1973 I attended my first Cubs season opener at Wrigley Field. I have not missed one since.
On March 30 I will attend my 50th consecutive home opener. I’ve made it through snow, rain, sun, lockouts, marriage, divorce, illness, a thousand woo-woos, and a pandemic. And I have a scorecard from every game. That’s the longest streak for anything I’ve done anything in life except for writing. And [...]
Dancing Mr. President and Mr. Bill. (Courtesy of Robinette family.)
William Robinette was more than the ringmaster of the amazing Stay Out All Night Disco in west suburban Stone Park.
He was a ringmaster of life.
Mr. Robinette died Tuesday afternoon after an extended illness. He was surrounded by his family and grandchildren. He was 73 years old. On March 12 he celebrated his 52nd anniversary with his wife Darlene.
Affectionately known as “Mr. Bill”, Mr. Robinette was an accomplished bassist-vocalist who in the early 1970s played in the touring bands of the Marcels and the Vogues. In the [...]
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Jan. 13, 1968 (Dan Poush photograph.)
WEST BRANCH, Ia.—This road of incongruity was too much to pass up.
I’ve driven past the sign on I-80 for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum at least a dozen times on my way to Iowa City, the Iowa State Fair, or a minor league baseball game. I never stopped to see the museum. After all, in a 2021 CSPAN survey, presidential historians ranked the 44 presidents. Hoover came in 36th due to his legacy of economic woes. Months after his 1929 election the stock market crashed and the United States fell into the Great [...]
