Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography - Part II

They entered Hazard, Kentucky, in Harlan County, coal-mining country, the next day. The first stop was the post office, to look for a thick envelope sent them from New York in care of Dylan, general delivery. The envelope was there. It contained a quantity of marijuana, sent by friends; all along their route similar envelopes filled with grass would be waiting for them in similar post office buildings.

Dylan drove. He was a bad driver, erratic, and his companions tried to keep him away from the wheel. He found the mine union headquarters and Hamish Sinclair, an organizer, Bob had met on his earlier trip South, greeted him but half-heartedly, clearly distracted. "Got a whole bunch of clothes in the car for your people that need 'em." Dylan said, and Sinclair was pleased. But he was very busy. There was trouble in the coal fields and several miners had been arrested. Sinclair was on the phone for an hour, then had to run out to the mines, and Dylan was getting depressed. "I know he's got problems, but shit..."

Dylan stalked out, and the four of them piled into the car again. As they drove into the countryside beyond Hazard, past mine towers and slag heaps, they came across a man trudging along the side of the road. "Pick him up," Dylan said. "He's a miner. Look how black he is." The man was a white man but his pasty face and rough hands were streaked with coal dust and sweat.

"Can we buy ya a drink?" Dylan asked. The miner agreed and directed them to a bar up the road, where they ordered drinks. "This guy's groovy," Dylan said. "Real miner." He turned to the man. "Been a miner long?" he asked. The man nodded. They threw questions at him — Ever been in a cave-in? Gotta shop at a company store? Company cops ever beat you? — stereotyping him as The Miner, grooving on being with a real miner, not seeing him as a man with a wife and kids, struggling to get along. And after a while they left him, drinking alone at the bar, and climbed back into the station wagon.

A feeling began to come over Karman that none of it was quite real. Dylan was looking for sensations, without involving his intellect, and Karman couldn't understand that this is the way his mind works. Dylan had seldom been articulate, but now he barely verbalized his impressions at all. His whole trip was more feeling than logical thinking — This is where it's at, it's what's happening, oh, wow!

And when he did talk, it was to work out some poetic images, testing their reactions: "Time don't exit, it's an illusion, the other side of Dali's clocks." And: "Know where God is? The river, that's God. The river's right where you're standing, and it's up in the mountains, and it's down the bend, and into the sea. All at the same instant. Very same instant. If there's a God, the river's Him."

As Victor drove away from Hazard, Dylan climbed into the back of his station wagon, put the portable typewriter on his lap, and began to write. Later Karman got a look at the page: "Chimes of Freedom" was the title, a poem that would later become a song, perhaps Dylan's description of an actual mystical experience.

They drove through the night, completely stoned. At the Atlanta post office in the morning they picked up another batch of dope and replenished the dwindling supply in the jar, and Dylan gave a concert that night at Emory University, a black college. A number of Dylan's friends from SNCC were there, and afterwards a select group of people returned with him to his motel room — kids in the civil rights movement, enough groupies to make everyone feel welcome, to take the edge off the hard travelin', and plenty to drink and smoke. Dylan called Suze, to tell her the concert went off well, and they hung around for a couple of days, filling up on the pleasures.

Through Mississippi later, and Louisiana, driving at top speed, the dope jar on the dash board and not caring about Southern cops. Clayton leaned out the window in one town, as they flew past three or four young rednecks sitting in front of a store, and shouted: "Muthfuckers!" Putting down everything they saw, deliberately courting danger.

New Orleans was alive with tourists in town for Mardi Gras week. Dylan found their motel where there was only one room available for the four of them, and they quickly headed for the Latin Quarter. "Gotta find the black bars," Dylan said. "That's where it's happening." He led them into one place and they got thrown out by the bartender who didn't want trouble with white cops. In a second place they had a couple of drinks, talked with black patrons, and were thrown out when a cop came by and wanted to know if they were part of a desegregation movement. And into another place, Dylan enchanted by the owner, a huge man in woman's clothes, a transvestite who called himself Wanda. And then off to the streets again.

There were a dozen people trailing them by this time, who had to see what this Pied Piper was up to. A white street singer and poet, Joe B. Stuart, became part of the entourage for a while. Everybody flying high, floating through the town, Dylan at the head of a freak carnival procession.