Bob Dylan Goes Tubing

“No,” I cried, leaping over to the CD player. “Play... play the remastered Etta James. Or that Robert Johnson one, did we bring that?”

Dylan looked up from the map. “Got any old Valdy?”

“Valdy.” Paul swivelled on his heels to me with panic-stricken eyes. “Now let me have a look.”

Valdy is a West Coast Canadian folksinger who had enjoyed a little plateau of fame in the 1970s. While Paul inverted his head to read the labels on the lowest shelf of CDs, Dylan wandered into the kitchen, looked in the fridge, and turned on the radio. The CBC news was just wrapping up.

“Good old Jim Curran,” said Dylan, putting chunks of brie on a row of Ritz crackers. “Talkin’ traffic.” He turned the volume up.

“Really?” Paul said. “You listen to Cbc?”

“Oh yeah. The boys on the bus listen to NPR and CBC all the time. It’s good for moving through the land.” Dylan took his plate of crackers over to the couch and sat down.

“I wrote a pretty good song about Gzowski a few years back.”

“You’re kidding,” Paul said.

“About this guy in a little green studio, smokin’ and talkin’ to people all over the country until one day the government burns down the radio station with him in it. Yeah, the band all likes the CBC. We get sick of watchin’ TV on the bus.”