Bob Dylan adds to 6-year-old’s education

In 2063, my youngest child will be 65. Here’s something he’ll be able to tell his grandchildren:

“When I was little, my mother took me to see Bob Dylan.”

In his 65th year, my son might vaguely remember that raspy voice of my generation a full 100 years after “Blowin’ in the Wind” came out on the album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

Amazing. A century before I was born, the Civil War hadn’t yet begun.

Am I just fishing for a silver lining to the no-baby-sitter problem? Maybe. Yet, in taking him along with my teenage son to Seattle’s Paramount Theatre on Monday, I thought of an advantage older parents rarely consider.

My son has a direct link to history that most of his friends don’t, unless they tap their grandparents. He has me, lucky boy. I’ll share what I can of the era in which I came of age. And his life will be richer for it.

How was Dylan? Well, he was Dylan. That unmistakable nasal voice is going, going, sometimes nearly gone. No matter. Dressed in black with a jaunty flat-top hat, he reinterpreted the most memorable songs of a generation, “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Like a Rolling Stone” among them.

With his voice sometimes a growl, he also sang “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” “Watching the River Flow” and “All Along the Watchtower.”

It was a poignant night. Without a spoken word to the graying crowd, Dylan conveyed affection for his songs, so etched into our lives, and for fans who have followed him since the 1960s.

My boys had a night to remember. Passing along a 1960’s icon brought to mind how my parents shared the culture of the 1940s and ’50s, their heyday.

When I was little, a Spokane TV station used to show “The Glenn Miller Story” every Christmas. Jimmy Stewart played the bandleader who died over the English Channel in December 1944. I love that movie, which also has Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa playing themselves.

It is to my parents’ credit that a girl who grew up on Dylan became well-versed in the music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, the Mills Brothers – all those greats.

I wasn’t invited, but I do remember my mother going to see Judy Garland at Gonzaga University. She came home saying that the legend’s voice wasn’t what it once had been.

They shared movies, too. My dad loved Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront.” With my mom, I watched “The African Queen.” My big kids have seen “Casablanca,” made in 1942. It’s mandatory, part of their education.

My 18-year-old and I make dinner conversation of the anti-heroes in films of my youth, and what was going on politically that made those characters so murky.

For birthday presents, I’ve given him “The Graduate,” “Taxi Driver” and “Apocalypse Now.” We stayed up late one night watching “The Deer Hunter” and talked even later.

If my kindergartner’s teacher is reading this, sorry about the sleepy kid. The sold-out show (the last of three Dylan concerts is tonight) was on a school night. Normally, I wouldn’t even take kids to a hockey game in Everett on a Monday.

Classrooms aren’t the only places kids learn. I want my children soaking up some things of this world. Dylan makes the list.

I do have limits, and the mom-says-no button occasionally gets pushed. Talking Monday with my daughter, who’s away at college, I was reminded of a grudge she still carries.

When she was 10 or so, I wouldn’t let her father take her to Seattle’s Memorial Stadium to see the Grateful Dead. I figured – make that, I knew from experience – that the air would be thick with illegal smoke.

It was, my 21-year-old grumbled Monday, her one chance to see Jerry Garcia. She had me there.

Preparing children for the future, we shouldn’t neglect to share what was remarkable about the past. We may think kids aren’t listening. They are.

When my daughter moved from dorm to apartment, she had a goldfish, short-lived but well named. She called it Roosevelt.

Ah yes, Franklin Roosevelt, our 32nd president. On Aug. 14, 1935, he signed the Social Security Act.

In 2063, my senior citizen son will have a memory of the late great Bob Dylan. I wonder, will he know a thing about Social Security?

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein julie@heraldnet.com.

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