Big numbers on Uncle Bob

The author says, uh, WOW...and thanks!

Even the wonderfully cooperative and encouraging folks at Substack spoke up. “Your post has generated a lot of traffic over the last 24 hours.” That may be the understatement of the week, month, year.

For years now, every time I’d listen to Bob Dylan’s wonderful career summation - “Series Of Dreams” - a song he kept OFF the album he recorded it for, I’d ask myself, “What the hell…? Which you’re a fan of the guy, does come up every so often.

To the 1,428 and the 10.6 K readers who’ve stopped by, THANKS!

On a steamy Florida afternoon (Is there any other kind?) I sat at the end of my living room couch, my usual composing spot, and wrote 1,519 words about it, probably a little longer than standard. And as of this morning, that particular post drew a whopping 1,412 views. WOW. (Correction coming later)

For the Substack heavyweights out there like George Saunders (a wonderful guy) and Heather Cox Richardson, 1,412 views might be expected. But for me, well, geez whiz, THANKS folks. I’m flattered, excited, stunned. Since I kicked this little Substack off back on May 8, I’ve had a wonderful response, some posts have really taken off. I’ve had 18 posts that have drawn more than 200 views, which is really cool.

The top ten (so far):

• Review of Clinton Heylin’s new book on Bob Dylan 894

• Bob Dylan’s MusiCares speech 595

• Can Dreams Come True (John’s baseball season starts in Iowa) 335

• Can FSU win the whole bleeping thing (College World Series) 332

• Gore Vidal’s prophetic speech 329

• Elvis’s career kicks off 326

• John’s Baseball career started on Father’s Day 315

• John learned Ted Williams’ lessons 284

• Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump 275

• Story about a column I did on a high school wrestler 265

Now I’m not a numbers guy - I taught English - but it’s clear that writing about Bob Dylan interests folks, so does a Dad writing about his son. (Sweet!) The Gore Vidal column ran in the Hartford Courant and as I mentioned the other day, I bought a Courant when we arrived in Connecticut (for $5.50, mind you!) and bang, the column was in that newspaper.

“Nashua” - My latest book - yes, it feels good saying that - “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” was a post about that book (available on Amazon!) which seems to be, unfortunately, timely right about now, considering the political mess we find ourselves in. I’m excited to be doing a reading from that book at our prestigious local bookstore Midtown Reader on July 25 (6:30 p.m.) Writers don’t get to do that kind of thing all that often.

The story about the column on a wrestler was a particularly moving one for me and, if you think about it, sort of the whole idea or theme of this particular column I’m writing on a Saturday morning from the brand spanking new, immaculate Starbucks near our house. It’s just me and the three ladies behind the counter. (Hi kids!) The impetus for that post was a column I wrote 42 years ago at my first job at the Nashua Telegraph. I’d seen a kid I knew, walking down the street in the middle of the day, smoking a cigarette when he should have been in school.

I did a little investigating, found out he’d had some troubles, dropped out of school and I wrote the column as a sort of wish that he’d reconsider his actions, a message of hope and in some ways, a prayer that things would turn around for him. Wonderfully, they did, and he actually had the courage to come into the newspaper office and stand in front of my desk, hand shaking, to tell me he was going back to school and was going to wrestle again. It was incredibly moving.

All these years later, somehow he tracked me down in Florida and sent me a letter with just the first sentence of that long-ago column, as if to say ‘Thanks. It made a difference.” I got the letter in the fall and didn’t really understand what it meant until I re-read that column again. It hit me like a thunderbolt that my words, written so long ago, could still ring in someone’s ears. Including my own.

I’ve always taken the privilege, honor, opportunity to write for an audience seriously. I know what the written word has always meant to me and for my distant friends out there, most of whom I’ll never meet, it’s important to me that you’ll take a few minutes to share with me what I happen to have on this Substack today.

As for the 1,412, oops, it’s 1,428 now…well, the majority of those views came as a direct result of a first-class Bob Dylan website created by a cool dude from Sweden I’ll likely never meet, Karl Erik Andersen, who offers a daily post of happenings in Dylan World (and a few other music-related items of interest) and has always kindly shared MY posts on Uncle Bob with his vast audience.

I reached out to him, via email, told him I’d like to interview him, do a Substack post about him and all he’s done to connect with people interested in Dylan all over the globe. He declined, said he didn’t think he was “so interesting.” I’ll keep working on him.

In the meantime, this is my 95th post. And there are a few of you out there, Mike, Debbie, Rhonda, Denise, Gary, Mark, Pam, who’ve read just about every one of these missives, sometimes have even commented (which I LOVE!). So let me say to them and to all the rest of you out there, thanks for stopping by. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. My distant friends, I like that. Hope you feel that way, too.