In a little Minnesota town called Hibbing, people are apparently always talking about each other.
Some even say it’s a bit of a twitchy-curtain community.
The disingenuous are known to describe each other as judgemental while others simply say everything is ‘very nice, thank you’.
Personally, I don’t know which is worse – to be described as ‘nice’ or ‘judgemental’.
But there is certainly a middle-class pride in Hibbing, considering it is such a small place standing in the foothills of the Masabi Iron Range …
One of its claims to fame is that it had the first swimming pool in Minnesota. And that makes people feel very nice, thank you.
Oh, and the man who invented pizza rolls lived nearby.
But he wasn’t much of a role model, by all accounts. He came from ‘the other side of town’ and, for some people, that was just too far.
The swimming baths make many good people beam with historic pride though. But the man who invented pizza roll, Jeno Paulucci, who died in 2011 aged 93, got talked about plenty when he was gone.
He was a ‘peddler’ with a foreign name who’d built several food empires, including Chun King, Jeno’s Inc. and Luigino’s.
And successful people are always worth gossiping about.
Oh, and we all know that Bob Dylan was brought up there don’t we … he was a small-town dreamer, just a son of a polio-victim furniture and appliances salesman.
Bob went to Hibbing High School.
It still has a marble staircase, brass handrails and massive stone pillars standing sentinel at the entrance.
And now there is something else.
A brick wall
The school itself was built in 1920 for $4 million and became known as ‘the castle in the woods’ for some reason.
Nobody gossips about that though. I don’t think they even know.
The school has a 1,800 seat auditorium with crystal chandeliers. That’s where Bob fronted a garage band and pounded out 1950s rock‘n’roll at a school assembly.
It was his first step on the highway of his life.
Dylan didn’t have far to walk to high school. His house of blue, with its funny flat- roof, was just two blocks away at 2425 7th Ave. That’s now called Bob Dylan Drive.
Bob Dylan super-fan Bill Pagel bought the 1,600 square foot home from Greg and Donna French, who had lived there since 1990. It was valued at $84,000. but Pagel is said to have paid more than $300,000 dollars.
Later, he said: “I paid way too much for that house.”
His own small-town dream was to restore it back to the way it was during Dylan’s childhood in the 1950s. He said: “I’m 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.”
Pagel, a pharmacist now in his late seventies, has run the Bob Links website since 1995.
And now there is that new little brick wall outside the school, just a few yards away from his ‘museum’ where Bob’s infinity goes up on show.
Some say it is very nice brick wall, but it is described jokingly as ‘two-faced’ by the judgmental ones.
“No one likes him here,” one of them, an elderly woman identified only as Irene, is oft quoted. “He wouldn’t acknowledge he’s from Hibbing, so we took his house off the bus tour.”
The house is back on now, and so is the wall.
The wall, described as a monument, is biographical on one side but has lyrics – and a chair – on the other.
Some, like Irene, have tried to paint a rift between Bob and the people of his home-town. But I don’t believe it, not since the far-off Sixties and Seventies anyway.
Certainly, his lyric ‘they’re selling postcards of the hanging’ didn’t endear him to some types during that period … it referred to the fact that on June 15, 1920, the good residents of Duluth, lynched three African-American circus workers, Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton and Elmer Jackson.
This ‘strange fruit’ horror was photographed for posterity and turned into a postcard.
A hundred years later things have changed and towns folk and some leaders in Hibbing have joined a Police Department task force to sort out any hints of Trumpian racism left in the community.
But because of his flamboyance and many of his biographical lyrics Bob has always ruffled feathers in town.
Now, however, 30 snippets of his lyrics take up one of the faces of this strange, conservative, under-stated red brick monument which cost just $100,000.
On the other is a legend marking the Nobel Prize in Literature Bob was awarded in 2016.
Then there is also that bronze depiction of a school chair. It faces the school. Is it saying that it was his ‘schooling’ that made him what he is today?
A nice conservative thought or a subjugation of genius?
President of the Dylan project, Katie Ferdeen, said that placing the wall in front of the school would inspire students.
“I believe it’s really important to our community to recognize him so that graduates from our schools in the future realize that if they work hard and they chase their dream, they have the potential to achieve the great things that he did throughout his career,” she said.
At the end of the groundbreaking for the wall the celebration moved down the street to Bob Dylan’s bright blue childhood home, where refreshments were served.
And somehow it all seemed very nice but very un-rock’n’roll indeed.
maybe the fact that he was supposed to break down middle-class walls is others invention and not his intention.
In the summer of 1974, after my first year of teaching, flush with cash from a car accident insurance settlement, I drove my first new car (a 1974 yellow VW Rabbi) on a cross country trip, and drove north in the Midwest on Highway 61 to visit Robert Zimmerman’s hometown, inspired by Toby Thompson’s “Positively Main Street” (first published in 1968, republished in 2008). My aim was to walk the streets of what I knew to be a small town and perhaps talk to folks who knew Dylan back in the day. Led by the instincts of a 24-year-old male, I stopped by the first tavern I could find, one called Shoes Instant Replay (ice hockey was huge in the region, and instant replay technology had been perfected during the prior decade). There I met a gentleman who knew the Zimmerman family, Bob’s father Abe who owned an appliance store in town ( “Abe was a good man, you told him what you wanted and he gave you credit on the spot”) and drew a small street map on yellow paper that would lead me to 2425 7th Ave., a pleasant walk away. The barkeep told me that I should talk to Bob’s cousin, Renee Stone – described as a friendly, outgoing woman who “is in here all the time” and would be glad to talk to me. She gave me Renee’s number, and, after a brief intro on the phone in the back of the bar, we had a nice conversation, confirming the bartender’s description. Renee told me that she had recently spent time with her cousin, on his farm, “…somewhere in Minnesota, Bobby would kill me if I told you where he lived.” She said they rode horses together, and Bob was mostly quiet. I then walked down to Dylan’s homestead, took some pics, and talked to a person living in the neighboring house, who had been a classmate of Bob at Hibbing High. I knew that Dylan had performed at a talent show in high school, and I asked his former classmate how the performance was received: “We pretty much laughed.” He also said, the previous summer he saw a person “dressed the way you’d expect (Bob) to dress” climbing a tree in the backyard of his childhood home. I ended my walk tour with a return into town and stopped by another tavern. There, I found supporting evidence for the bibical quote (John: 4-44), “No prophet is accepted in his home town.” I told the bartender in that joint my purpose for visiting Hibbing, he waved his finger in the air and exclaimed in disgust, “Bob Dillan, Bob Dielan, whatever his name, his brother David was twice the musician he was, that stuff about sniffing drainpipes …” Another tavern patron told me that Roger Maris, the NY Yankee who broke (with an asterisk) Babe Ruth’s home run record of 60 in 1961, and who was born and spent his earliest years in Hibbing, was better known in town as a famous native of Hibbing than was Bob. All of this was at a time when Dylan, while surely well known among rock fans and those familiar with pop culture, was not the universally known and widely revered personage that he would become in future decades. Few, I guess, would have predicted that their hometown Bobby Zimmerman would one day be honored by the consecration of a wall in front of their community’s high school, two blocks down from his youthful home on 7th Street.
“Leaders in Hibbing have joined a Police Department task force to sort out any hints of Trumpian racism left in the community”…
So now it’s totally acceptable to admit to a systematic process of taking out people you disagree with politically? Who exactly are these “racists”?
“At midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew, come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do”.
Why do you want to protect racists? How would you handle the situation?
“Trumpian racism,” really? What kind of racism would that be? Spent my first 18 years in Hibbing, never saw a hint of “regular” racism…and I don’t have any blind spots; I had a HHS teacher, Charlie Miller, who made sure of that.
Hi Jim
Interesting comment, thank you … how do you view Hibbing?
Thanks for asking Leigh. I don’t live in Hibbing any more, but do live seasonally south of there in Cotton, MN. I do get back to Hibbing every summer to visit friends and have so many mixed emotions. My old neighborhood and home is a run down mess and I hear crime and drugs are a real problem not only in Hibbing but across the range. Howard street lacks any identity of its past, the boarded-up store fronts, and closed businesses abound. That hurts to see since the Hibbing I grew up in is still in my heart and wonderful, innocent memories flood my mind on those return visits. Some towns’ grow and their character gets better with time and some don’t. I think Hibbing falls into the latter category as it somehow lost that unique character of it’s immigrant population of high moral standards that protected our innocence.
I certainly agree with you. I had Charlie Miller for a teacher too. I have always admired him, and I think he taught us a lot. I never saw any racism either. In fact in HJC as it was called when I went there, our freshmen class voted a person of color to be our class president.
Nancy M. Cobb
Leigh G Banks, thanks. I believe Bob Dylan is trying to mend middle-class barriers and to get away from the political world he has written about in the past. One example is that he has chosen to tour the Midwest and the South before visiting the blue states where most of his fans reside. And Hibbing is no ordinary small town. To find out more about its history and influences on Dylan’s young life, read “Bob Dylan’s Hibbing” published by EDLIS Café Press.
Gina Forti
Not “very nice”. It’s his blog and his opinion, as negative, uninformed and disjointed it may be, so I’ll just file this one under “badly written free speech”. Call me “judgmental”, but I would prefer to have read something more positive about the wall itself versus of a curmudgeon’s opinion of the community.
Gina Forti tell us your view Gina … We’ll publish them straightforwardly … Sorry you don’t like my view, but I’m happy to give your views in your own words. Do you think the wall is a fitting tribute?
Mr. Banks, Understanding everyone has an unique lense the look through, I accept your view of Hibbing. Being a life long resident, my lense is different. Our town’s history has molded us here. We are a melting pot of many religions, races, and cultures. I encourage you to listen to the Podcast “Power in the Wilderness” and read the book of the same name, which will come out this year. It tells much about how we grew out being a mining camp who’s residents lived under a form of indentured servitude, fought the biggest company in the world to become the “richest village in the world”. I believe history provides insight.
My early years in Hibbing were good. Our diversity was not colorful but cultures from what we called the old country were strong and, from saunas to poticia, we still share and celebrate them.
My education was exceptional. Our teachers were great. I was prepared for college. We were an inclusive bunch. One teacher said “this is the first school I’ve worked in where I can’t tell the rich kids from the poor.” I was taught by my parents that skin color, gender or any “differences ” are hard to live with, not because of the differences, because of how some people react to those differences.
Politically we were strong DFL – socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Things have changed but, the changes are not unique to us. Our politics are leaning more conservative, mostly because the DFL is not the DFL anymore and has basically Stopped listening to the people and become part of the machine. Our country is changing and has been for years.
If you compare my time and Robert Zimmerman’s time to now, we had it good and Hibbing was different then. He was laughed at, he was also admired. His experience wasn’t much different than most other American middle class kid. I think we romanticize our idols experiences. As for Hibbing now, our education system is not what it was. We don’t have the finances or the population we had before. Our diversity in color is growing but still low. We are good people here no better no worse than anywhere else. I’m glad I grew up here and that I am still here. That is my view.
thank you for this … i would like to publish this properly on the site, if that’s ok with you. Brilliantly written! Thank you
ok by me.
Erin McCabe Ningen
One of the laziest examples of journalism I’ve ever seen. Leo G Banks clearly did not do his research. A blogger who cared to put in even a minimal amount of effort, would have discovered that the story of Hibbing is remarkable, even in a country full of remarkable achievements.
He mentions the “castle in the wilderness” and expresses condescending dismissal and confusion as to why people seem so proud of it.
A minimal amount of research would have revealed to Mr. Banks the incredible story of immigrants from 43 countries who, in spite of the underhanded efforts of the mine barons to divide us, stood our ground and achieved not only concessions on workplace safety and pay, but also forced the mining companies to put some of their profits back into the community including building the high school and the state’s first pool.
That High School, in the span of about 30 years, graduated Governor Rudy Perpich, baseball player Roger Maris, basketball player Kevin McHale, Manson prosecutor Vince Bugliosi, Palucci, Dylan and hundreds of others whose achievements would be considered notable if they were from a town without so many remarkably accomplished people. For instance, did you know that Hibbing was home to a lady who went on to become one of Macy’s head buyers? Did you know that Hibbing produced a Broadway performer who went on to become one of the producers of the Vagina Monologues? Pp did you know that the journalists who uncovered the Enron scandal was a graduate of Hibbing? Did you know about the little bus company that grew up to become Greyhound? Did you know that the ore from these mines became the steel with which we won World War II and built the greatest industrialized country the world has ever known?
It seems like Banks was content to try and find in Hibbing a town deserving of Dylan early dismissive comments without considering that those may have been the sentiments of a young man freshly freed from small-town life and eager to experience a much bigger world.
Again, with just a minimum amount of effort, Banks could have uncovered Dylan recent comments where he explains that his recent successful career as a sculptor of iron gates is an homage to his hometown and the hard-working people who lived there.
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Leigh G Banks
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Erin McCabe Ningen I’ve been doing this job for many years for leading uk, euro and US titles … not lazy at all! You might not agree and that is fine! I’m happy to publish your thoughts on site … but tell me, what is your view of Hibbing relationship with Dylan … what about the postcards of the hanging? What is life like there today? Do people travel etc… let’s tell the truth about Hibbing! I stand by what i said but I’m happy to share everybody’s thoughts on a fascinating town.!