What's up with HIbbing?

Duluth News Tribune Letter to the Editor  

 

Jeff Smith is a retired Registered Nurse. He enjoys music, motorcycles, Minnesota History, and The Big Lebowski. He lives in Duluth.

 

                                                                                   

                                    What's Up With Hibbing?

 

Last summer I rode my Harley to Hibbing for the heck of it. Lunch etc. Hibbing's always been my favorite Range City. Well, it’s actually a tie with Eveleth. (Or maybe little bit behind it on account of Margies Roosevelt.)

At any rate I did not see, and I rode about freely, any mention of Bob Dylan. Anywhere. I know there is a something modest in the library and by snooping once I found his boyhood home.

          Made me think: What’s up with Hibbing?

Remarkable, a Nobel prize laureate. A defining artist of the 20^th Century and hardly a peep there about him.

I asked a coworker about the reasons for this appalling lack of recognition by the hometown of one who is arguably the state’s most celebrated artist.

My coworker grew up around there and was more of a contemporary of Bob Dylan. He theorized that it’s because there is lingering embarrassment. Maybe he was treated poorly by his fellows there, suffered bullying and insults.

I have also been told that there is simmering resentment in the town because he was not, and has not been, effusive enough in his praise for it.

I doubt that community could be so puny.

I suppose the reasons are more complicated. Or maybe more simple: "It's because of the money."

Still, consider Sauk Centre and the pride taken there in Sinclair Lewis.

And Lewis, America’s first Nobel Laureate for literature, did not treat the place all too gently in his masterpiece Main Street. 

Yet I recall seeing a photo of him there late in his life. He was in front of the movie theater. It is still called Main Street Theater. There he was, smiling, standing right there on…Main Street.

Just shy of its intersection with Sinclair Lewis Avenue.

          Now I can just hear someone out there whining: “Yeah he wrote some songs but he was no crooner, no Perry Como.” But Como’s hometown, Canonsburg, PA has his statue. Plays his music 24/7! (Bobby Vinton was born there too and has a statue. It’s in a McDonalds though.)

          Further, tiny Sunrise MN has a historical marker denoting the fact that Richard Widmark was born there.

Albert Lea happily celebrates Eddie Cochran.

          And Grand Rapids?  Judy Garland? They might also someday celebrate Hugh Beaumont’s retirement. (And Bob Dylan even, like her, has won an Oscar.)

          I know Bemidji doesn’t crow about Jane Russel’s birth. But they boast Paul and Babe.

          Austin is mute on John Madden’s birthplace too, but they have The Spam Museum.

          I know that Hibbing does have the Greyhound Bus Museum so it is right up there with Austin. Cool, but in 100 years I fear Greyhound’s significance will wane.

          Not Bob Dylan’s.

          And Madden was out of Austin when he was 6.        

          Even Cook has a mural about Johnny Cash getting busted there for speeding.

          Well, what should be done?

I don’t know.

          I am more of an idea man. I draw the line at actually doing the work.  I wisely leave that to somebody who has talent.

          Not to club Hibbing again with Grand Rapids, but ‘Rapids also has the Reif Center.

And Myles Reif is not exactly a household name,

          So maybe there is a wealthy benefactor, (worldwide), somewhere? Someone delighted to add her or his name to something connected to Dylan in his hometown?

          Imagine the Bruce Wayne Performing Arts Center on the local college campus with its sparkling Bob Dylan Theater. Or, perhaps, the Jed Clampett Center with the Bob Dylan auditorium.

          Something like that.

          I don’t know.

          But do something. Even a simple sculpture in a set-aside little bricked in square. Maybe a young Dylan with guitar and harmonica in holder. Or, better yet, a rendering of him grinning on that Harley when he was a kid.

          (And, perhaps, include a word, nearby, about Gary Puckett and Roger Maris)

          Or a mural perhaps? Downtown. Minneapolis saw fit to have one. And it’s a beauty, (Hennepin and S 5^th St.)

          Just someplace where folks can go, snap a picture, or just reflect on this remarkable artist and the unique place that was once his home.

          Thank you.

 

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