It’s a nice enough story in the Duluth News Tribune today, about some of those people in the Hibbing, Minnesota area who remember Dylan in his youth. My favorite is the part on Dylan’s 11th grade English teacher.

B.J. Rolfzen dialed up the stereo’s volume and smiled as Bob Dylan’s tight, world-wise voice permeated his basement office.

Rolfzen, 82, used to correct papers in this office, Robert Zimmerman’s among them. Zimmerman sat in the front row, center seat in Rolfzen’s 11th-grade English class at Hibbing High School in 1958.

Rolfzen remembers “Robert” well and has come to admire his music.

“He is a poet,” Rolfzen said. “He loves words, and the sounds of words.”

A 22-page essay on John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” Dylan wrote in Rolfzen’s class recently sold at auction for nearly $35,000. Rolfzen told the story with a tiny smile on his face. He had returned the paper to Dylan, red corrections marks and all.

Dylan also chose Rolfzen as something of a confidant, as have many of Rolfzen’s students.

When Dylan returned to Hibbing for his father’s funeral in 1968, he visited with Rolfzen, talking about his “successes in New York,” Rolfzen said. It was six years after Dylan recorded his first album.

Rolfzen last saw Dylan in fall 2004, at a funeral for one of Dylan’s relatives.

“I put my arms around him, and said, ‘Robert, how are you?’ ” Rolfzen said. “Right away, he said to me, `You taught me a lot.’ I thought that was a good compliment.”

“I don’t see him often,” Rolfzen said. “He’s too busy running around the world.”

But as Rolfzen sat in his basement, he seemed sweetly lost in Dylan’s music, tapping his stockinged feet and singing softly along with the lyrics from Dylan’s 1997 “Time Out of Mind” album. Rolfzen drew his voice out on the long syllables, similar to Dylan.

“Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear,” Rolfzen sang. “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

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