Highway 61 revisted

Yes, I know Bob Dylan’s 72nd birthday was Friday.

And it’s Sunday night as I write this.

It doesn’t matter.

For the next week, I have the house all to myself — free to do practically whatever I want. Today, I decided one of the things I’m going to do is not turn on the damn TV for the next week.  So, tonight, I’m listening to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. His birthday, after all, was on Friday.

Considered by many as one of the greatest albums of all time, Dylan named Highway 61 Revisited after the road that connected his birthplace, Duluth, Minn., with St. Louis, Mo., Memphis, Tenn., and New Orleans — southern cities famed for their musical heritage.

It’s worth noting that U.S. 61 also runs through Muscatine — the Iowa town where I have lived since 2007. But U.S. 61 first became significant in my life in 2000,  when I became editor of the Daily News in Winona, Minn.

I left Winona — a town that felt more like home to me than anywhere else I had ever lived until that point — in late 2005. It wasn’t the best career move I ever made and I’ve often wondered what fate had in store for me since I was pushed by my own foolish ambition to leave such a great place.

The answer, my friend, isn’t blowing in the wind — something for which Muscatine is sometimes known in a not-so-positive way. But I’m pretty sure I was meant to move to here in 2007. I’m even more sure I was meant to go to work at MCSA, which I have done since late October. There are people at MCSA and elsewhere in Muscatine who needed me as much as I needed them. It’s as simple as that.

To the outsider racing along on U.S. 61 to get through my little town on the Mississippi River as quickly as possible, Muscatine’s appeal may not be readily apparent. Heck, its appeal even might be debated by many of the natives who have grown up and moved away.

But I like it here. And I”m pretty sure, it was preordained that I’d be learning about myself and writing this blog in Muscatine. I’m as certain of it as I am of the fact that if you go far enough on U.S. 61, you’ll wind up in Duluth, Minn., the birthplace of Bob Dylan.