submissions
| Bob Dylan – Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
| 13 years ago
|
|
My previous explanation assumes all have read the British folk tale of Tom Thumb or the History of Tom Thumb as some know it. Dylan is small, diminutive man -- not as small as Tom -- but I would identify him as Tom Thumb. In the story Tom is eaten by various people and animals. He survives by being pooped out and barfed up. That's how you might feel if you spent a weekend in Juarez in those days. It worse today. Get in a fight and they shoot you. You dodn't even have to get in a fight. They shoot you just for being there. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
| 13 years ago
|
|
Juarez is the Mexican border town across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. In the mid-1960s at the time Dylan wrote this song, the town was famous for its bars and whorehouses. College students from schools throughout the Southwest went there to drink tequila and cheer each other one as they got drunk but yelling "bite that lime." There was a ritual to getting drunk on tequila at that time. The Army guys were from nearby Fort Bliss. Most had just finished basic training, were about 18 years old and there to get drunk and get laid before shipping out to Vietnam. If you stayed there for more than a few days, the drinking and whoring wore you out. The best lines that give it meaning are near the end when he mentions that Angel (presumably, a Hell's Angel biker from California) arrived from the coast and left three days later looking like a ghost. Given their reputation as drinkers and battlers, you get the idea that Juarez could drain every bit of life out of anyone. And it would. |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.
