THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING by BOB DYLAN. Poem by Craig Kirchner.

 

Ocean City, Maryland, September 1968

 
The times were changing

 
There are stories, classics and myth.

The weekend before Labor Day, 1968,

The Dems had just had their fiasco

of a convention in Chicago.

 
The drug store was encamped at the Islander

in Ocean City which was packed with other

20 somethings having their last summer fling,

everyone was on the lot drinking

 
Kuzy had finished one Irish Rose

and was blipping in and out of consciousness

clutching the second, Bobby D. kept blasting

over and over that the times they are a changing.

 
Rick C. propped Kuz up in a metal trash can

on the parking lot and proclaimed him

the drug store’s candidate for President

everyone in the motel soon was chanting,
 

       Wino in the White House

Ed Y. going room to room sharing pot,

as ambassador for the cause, decided

the campaign needed a parade, propped

the candidate up in the backseat of Big Red.
 

The Buick convertible was driven

back and forth on the parking lot

to what was now monstrous applause and chanting.

Chicago had been spectacle,
 

but everyone in OC was talking about

the party at the Islander. The drug store’s

candidate and campaign to put a wino

in the white house became folklore.
 

It was a story told often afterwards,

told to the kids as a classic.

When told to the third generation

which borders on forever, there is myth.
 
 

Stereo Story 834