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The year was 1965 and the place was Springfield, Missouri.  Springfield at that time was a thriving college town of 100,000 or so in Southwest Missouri.  Branson, Missouri was a few miles south, and wasn't even a wide spot in the road.  The only reason I'd ever heard of it was I had a girfriend from there.

Today Branson is a world-wide travel destination and no one has heard of Springfield.

I had transferred to Southwest Missouri State that year.  I had a good friend, Ernie Richardson (mentioned below in the Kesey post, actually) who played football for the University of Arkansas.  The U of A was football mad, having just won (shared) the national championship in 1964.  This is how good they were: Ernie was a Parade High School All-American at Poplar Bluff, Missouri High School, and he hardly ever played.  He was a star on a Poplar Bluff team that also included Warren Whitworth and Les Kingery, friends of mine also who were just as tough as Ernie.  Ernie didn't care if he played at Arkansas or not, actually- he was there on a full scholarship&nbs p;and looking to get an education.

A Dylan fanatic I am, and have been, since 1961.  There are a lot of us, but we didn't know that back then.  There was no communication, at least where I lived.  In 1965 I was in Springfield attempting college again, when I walked to the local Walgreen Drugstore for something or other.  As I routinely shuffled through the record bin (Walgreen had a large selection) I came across, out of nowhere, Highway 61 Revisited.  There it was, just setting there.  There he was, dressed weirdly and looking even weirder.  DYLAN.  I shoplifted it immediately (I'm not proud of this- but I was broke at the time, and nuts). That was on Friday.  I played it all night long in the attic where I lived, drinking wine with some friends.  It was like nothing we had ever heard before.

The next day I hitchiked to Fayetteville, Arkansas to visit Ernie.  I did this a number of times, hitchhiking through the desolate Ozarks with absolutely no hesitation or qualms. I traveled alone, with the clothes on my back and Highway 61 Revisited.  There was a game that weekend, and somehow Ernie and I ended up in a "coffeehouse".  Yes, they had coffeehouses in Fayetteville, Arkansas then.

I will never forget this.  The place was mobbed and they were playing recorded music on a stereo, and I asked the owner to play Highway 61. He did, immediately, and as the music set in the buzzing conversations stopped.  The record absolutely took over.  Everyone was trying to find out who/what it was. The proprietor played it over and over and over again.  When we finally stumbled out, he had someone out scouring Fayetteville for a copy.

You had to be there for the impact of that album.  There was no promotion, no tours posted on the internet, no hype. I don't even think Rolling Stone Magazine had started yet.  There were no cell phones, portable phones, cable TV stations, MTV, FM radio.  There were three TV channels, AM radio (if you were lucky) and whatever newspapers you could buy that were delivered to your area.  You might have been able to buy the Sunday New York Times in St. Louis, but you damn sure couldn't in Kansas City.

And that album hit the record bins, with Like a Rolling Stone, and changed music (and, to an extent, our culture, for better or worse) forever.  And, ironically, it's still that way for Dylan.  He tours always, but there is no hype.  If you don't seek him out, you certainly won't have him thrust upon you.

And during this week of March Madness-(there was no March Madness in 1965 either- UCLA was in the second year of a decade long domination of NCAA basketball)- a side note.  The aforementioned Poplar Bluff High School Mules basketball team just won the large (class 5) state championship for the second year in a row.  They beat the hell out of Vashon (St.Louis) who was ranked Number 1 in the USA Today prep poll, with a 60 game winning streak.  This thrashing dropped Vashon down to number 8.  The Mules could not crack the Top 25, in spite of a 28-4 record.

Yes, Things Have Changed.  But change is not, by definition, always a good thing.