Something 4 The Weekend # 235

Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan: "Highway 51 Blues" [mp3]

Highway 51 runs about half a block from my front door. I may never have travelled it all the way down to no man's land, but I've certainly gotten as far as northern Illinois, a mostly bleak, flat place that I've never really cared for, especially Rockford, which may very well be hell on earth, but for entirely mundane reasons. Actually, it's the mundaneness of Rockford that makes it the hellscape that it is.

But I digress. Of course I digress.

A decade ago I had a fling with a woman who actually lived on Highway 51, up past Token Creek Park. I wouldn't say she was my baby, but she was a good time for a short while, and I suppose I was a good time for her, for awhile, and then we weren't. I still drive past her house on occasion, and I imagine her smile, her laugh, and her tits. She also made pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tonight I went and had a couple of stiff drinks with a couple of friends at The Lazy Oaf, a bar (well, lounge) on Highway 51 about two blocks from here. I think it was the bald dude with the white goattee who played "House Of The Rising Sun", also from Dylan's first album, on the jukebox. And I sat there for a moment wondering if choosing this song "Highway 51 Blues" would have been a better choice, or merely cheesy and obvious. Then I went out into the cold night and smoked a cigarette, staring at Highway 51, covered in brown slush with a dusting of grey snow. Roads often have their stories, even mythologies, but they're still just roads in the end.

I always loved this song.

Hotcha! Hank