Thursday, August 24, 2006
A journey back in time
By Henrylito D. Tacio
"HOW many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand? How many times must the cannon balls fly before they're forever banned?"
Are those lines familiar to you? If you answered affirmatively, then you know they're quoted from the song "Blowin' In The Wind." But did you know where the singer who wrote the lyrics himself -- Bob Dylan, who else? -- grew up?
Well, the answer my friend, is Hibbing, Minnesota. Although Robert Zimmerman (that is his original name before he changed it to Bob Dylan after poet Dylan Thomas) was born in Duluth (the third largest city in Minnesota, after Minneapolis and Saint Paul), he spent his childhood years in Hibbing.
In fact, you can walk or cruise down Dylan Drive, past the childhood home of the Grammy-winning singer. If you're a Dylan fanatic, be sure to visit the Hibbing Public Library, where a permanent exhibit recognizes the work and accomplishments of one of America's best-known singers. Bob Dylan is just one of the famous people to come out from Hibbing.
My sister Elena came to the United States in 1998 and lived in Hibbing, where her husband worked in a mining company. When she visited us in the Philippines in 1999, she brought some T-shirts with the words,
"Hibbing, the world's largest open pit mine." What's this, I inquired. Well, my question was answered when I visited her recently. Her husband, Daniel Chase, brought me to the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine View. "It looks like Grand Canyon," my eight-year-old nephew, Erik, told me. In a way, it is. The mine stretches three miles long, two miles wide and reaches a depth of about 600 feet.
A 170-ton mining truck that is 20 feet high and 10 feet across is on display at the site. Don't forget to take a picture of yourself in front of that huge tire (which cost about US$20,000!). The truck was one of those used by Hibbing Taconite Company to haul taconite trucks typically weighing between 170 and 240 tons.
The Hull Rust Mahoning Mine witnessed the development of strip mining technology. In its peak production years during World Wars II, the mine supplied as much as one-fourth of all the iron ore mined in the United States and I.
Hibbing is also recognized as the birthplace of the bus industry in the United States. It sprang from the business acumen of Carl Wickman and Andrew Anderson -- who opened the first bus line (with one bus) between the towns of Hibbing and Alice in 1914.
They figured the region's iron miners would make good mass transit customers. They did, the bus line grew to become Greyhound (the fastest breed of dog used in dog racing). Although Greyhound Bus is now headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the Greyhound Bus Museum is located in Hibbing.
My sister and her family used to live near the Hibbing High School, another must-see. Construction of this historic school was started in 1920. The cost of the building was roughly US$3,900,000.
Today, it would cost over US$50 million to build it. The building is made up of red brick trimmed with Bedford stone and is arranged in the shape of the letter E. It was built to replace the old high school, which had to be torn down because of the encroaching mining operations.
If only I could paraphrase a line from one of Bob Dylan's famous song, I would sing it this way: "I could stay here forever and never realize the time."
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