Mr. Tambourine Man
It was a Wednesday in Brookings, just past dawn, foggy, and my local coffee joint was closed. I could stop at Dutch Bros for their burned brew, but my mind wasn't prepared for youthful, corporate-contrived eagerness that early in the morning or any morning for that matter.
I saw a sign for $1 coffee at McDonald's. Why not? Drip coffee is drip coffee. I parked my car and walked toward the entrance. Three transients loiter outside. One of them, a man in his 70s or 80s or 90s, smoked a hand-rolled cigarette as he leaned against his bicycle. Strapped to back of his bicycle are his worldly possessions, including a tambourine.
The tambourine arrested my attention. I wanted to know: what are the circumstances of the man's playing? What makes him break out the tambourine? Does he sing as he plays? If so, what are the songs? What's his name? I was ready to detour and begin my investigation, but fatigue topped my curiosity—for the moment.
I walked inside McDonald's. I encountered eight elderly men and two women wearing MAGA caps and t-shirts sit with their backs to the wall, sipping coffee. One man was warning government to keep its hands off Medicare. Another man was ripping immigrants while talking to the ceiling.
Team Trump noticed me. Perhaps it was the long hair. Perhaps the frazzled gray beard. Perhaps the corduroy blazer with the suede patches. No, it was all three in combination! I was a walking, not-yet talking socialist intellectual in uniform. Leon Trotsky had resurrected in Brookings with plans to unionize the hamburger workers and overthrow capitalism! He also deigned to drink $1 coffee with the American proletariat, a mass of people who mostly align with Trump.
I froze for a moment and soaked in the Trumpian stare. I turned around and saw Mr Tambourine Man puffing away outside. He was sort of smiling. His face had a million weather reports etched upon it. He was weather.
What a contrast between the Trump Table and Mr Tambourine Man!. What fantastic juxtaposition! Was I some kind of metaphorical meat in this American crap sandwich? Who had the more interesting and more important story? Was there any possible way to connect them?
I broke the spell and moved to the counter. I was thinking of Mr Tambourine Man...play a song for me / in the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.
Dylan didn't invent him. Dylan never invented anything. He borrowed and fused. He readily admitted this in his memoirs. He'd heard a tambourine man long ago play his tambourine and sing along roads, in camps, in the woods, under bridges, in alleys, the willows, everywhere. Steinbeck knew of them, too. He put one in The Grapes of Wrath. The tambourine (and guitar) men have always been among us, but I am not sure they ever looked like the ones I see today during the New American Diaspora.
I ordered my coffee and planned to give it to Mr Tambourine Man if he wanted it. I'd tell him it was payment for when he played the tambourine and sang right outside the window in full view of the Trumpians. They wouldn't hear a damn thing. They would only see him play and sing.
At the prospect of this, my fatigue vanished and I got a jingle jangle hitch in my giddy-up as I carried coffee past the Trumpians. I relished the song Mr Tambourine Man would open the show with. Woody Guthrie? The Ramones? Prince? Dylan?
He wasn't there! I didn't act fast enough! You've got to move in these moments! This is the first and only rule in observing and writing of this kind.