The Times They Are A-Changin’

By Fred DeVecca

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The dude had a thick wallet. That was unusual. No one carries cash in their wallet in 2023. Mostly it’s just a couple credit cards and a driver’s license—if there’s a wallet at all. It’s all on their phones now. I gotta learn to steal phones, I guess, but if I did I wouldn’t know what to do with them since I’m the furthest thing from a techie.

I was living in the past, but so far it was still working out for me. And wallets were easy. Guys carried them in their back pocket. Phones were in their front pocket and hence much harder to lift. This wallet was overflowing with cash—a blast from the past. I pocketed the money and tossed the wallet into the nearest mailbox. I always do that. The poor guy gets his stuff back and I get the cash. Then I headed for the bar.

I leaned in and ordered two lights. There were no stools at the bar at McSorley’s Old Ale House, the oldest bar in New York City. You leaned against the ancient wood just as men did a hundred and seventy years ago when this place opened. And I mean men because they didn’t allow women in here until 1970.

You had to order two mugs; you couldn’t order just one. That’s just the way it was here. The beer had that familiar mossy grassy taste. They went down smoothly and quickly on what was turning into the first really warm day after a long cold lonely winter.

It was still early, not yet noon, and the sun slanted through those windows in the front, creating a hazy, glowing mist inside. I had never seen that effect here before. It seemed to fade everything down a notch or two like we were in an old movie. I was the first customer this morning, and it was nice to have the old place to myself.

But then, suddenly and abruptly, almost as if by magic, there was a guy standing next to me, plopped down from somewhere. He was a hipster—dark hair that had been neatly cut several months ago so that it now looked stylishly shabby, black-framed Buddy Holly glasses, and a vintage light blue button down dress shirt complete with nerd pen peeking out of the pocket—a shirt made to look like it came from the fifties but too intact to really be that old. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and he had a big toothy grin that seemed to say he thought everything was slightly ridiculous and that he was enjoying the hell out of it all. 

Some of these hipster dudes have money, and often they can be really naïve and easy marks. They’re smart about what’s cool, but when it comes to real life on the street, not so much. Those are the sorts I like to make friends with, so I decided I would be his friend.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” I said as the bartender plopped down two mugs in front of him.

He smiled, let out kind of a muffled chuckle, and replied “Yeah. It’s calm and peaceful and sunny. No one comes here ‘til nighttime. So, I come here early.”

“You don’t like people?”

“No, I like people just fine. It’s just that so many of them hang out at my shop that sometimes I have to get away to a place where no one is playing the guitar or singing about no more war.”

“What’s your shop?”

“I got a folklore center over on MacDougal.”

“I think I remember a place like that like a hundred years ago, but it’s long gone. This must be a new place.”

“I’ve been there four years.”

“That’s funny. I walk that neighborhood all the time and haven’t seen anything like that.”

“Well, you gotta pay better attention. We’re kind of a hot place. Really the hottest place in the city in some circles. That’s why I have to get away sometimes.”

So he owned a storefront in Greenwich Village. Yep, this guy had some bucks. “I’m Nick,” I said.

“I’m Izzy,” he replied, “Izzy Young,” and we shook hands.

I chatted him up for a while. He was friendly and opinionated about everything, and he could get loud when he was expounding on something he felt was important. I was enjoying his company. He was eccentric. I like eccentrics. Especially eccentrics who have money and are friendly. I wanted to find out more about his shop.

“Folks hang out at your store and play guitar and sing?” I said.

“Yeah. All day and night.”

“Maybe I should bring my guitar up there sometime. I play a little.” The operative word there was “little,” but I did not clarify my statement.

He looked me over closely. “You wouldn’t like it. And they wouldn’t like you. You’re too old. And you’re just not very cool looking, if you can forgive my honesty.” And then he seemed to reconsider. “But are you any good? These kids are really, really good. All of them. And they could accept even someone older if they’re genuine. And really good.”

“Honestly, I’m okay. Not great. Okay.”

“Do you do original stuff?”

“No. Just old Dylan. Stuff like that.”

He laughed loudly and stared me in the eye. “Whoa. You know Dylan?”

“Some of his old stuff.”

“None of his stuff is old.”

“I agree. It never gets old.”

He laughed loudly again. “I can’t believe I accidentally ended up standing next to a stranger who knows Dylan. And who’s never been to my shop. How weird is that?”

“Not weird at all,” I said. I was succeeding. I was making friends with a guy who apparently had some money even though he didn’t make much sense. I mean, everybody knows Dylan. But I didn’t want to push it too hard. I was just glad to have made some kind of in with this guy.

We chatted some more. They only fill those mugs up like halfway—it was mostly foam—so the beers went by quickly, and we had a couple more rounds.

After a while, Izzy pushed his glasses up higher on his nose in a classic nerd move and announced that he had to go.

“This has been fun, Nick,” he said. “I’m sure I’m going to see more of you. Hey, these beers are on me.”

He pulled out his wallet, not a very thick one, and carefully took out a five and a one, placed them on the bar, and started to leave.

I figured that he had just misidentified the denomination of the bills or simply made a mistake. “Izzy, that’s not quite going to cover it,” I said.

He looked at me quizzically and said “We each had three rounds. That’s a total of six. Six times seventy-five cents is less than five bucks, and I left a tip. So that more than covers it. That’s actually a pretty good tip too.”

I figuratively scratched my head. The price here was eight dollars for each order of two beers. We each had three orders so that was six orders at eight dollars a pop. I’m not great at math, but that comes out to forty-eight dollars. Izzy was a bit short.

But six bucks is what he left on the bar. The bartender scooped it up and said “Thanks guys. Have a good afternoon.”

Izzy said he had to take a leak and headed to the bathroom. I was still leaning at the bar, still figuratively scratching my head.

I said to the bartender “What’s the deal? Does Izzy get a special discount?”

“Is that his name? I don’t know him. He comes in once in a while, but he pays like everybody else.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. I just didn’t get it. “Well, I thought inflation hit everyone, even you guys.”

“Yeah. I hate charging seventy-five cents. But with an Irish president in there, things will get better.”

“Yeah, Biden’s as Irish as they get,” I said.

“Who?”

“Joe Biden? Our president?”

“Did something happened to Kennedy?” he asked me, and he looked at me like I was stupid.

This morning didn’t make much sense. I was going to tell him that Kennedy was killed in 1963, but I held my tongue and said nothing.

“1961 is shaping up to be a great year,” he said. “Right?

#

Yes, 1961 was looking like it would be pretty cool. If it weren’t 2023. I said to the bartender, “Right.”

Everything in here looked like 2023: the memorabilia on the walls, the wishbones hanging from the ceiling, the sawdust on the floor, the coal stove in the center of the place. All the same as it looked last week when the beers were eight dollars. But then again, it also looked like 1961. Or 1854. The beer price may change, but this place never does. Finally, I got up the strength to leave.

Outside it was pretty clear it wasn’t 1961. The cars were modern. The other storefronts were the same as when I walked in here an hour or so ago.

The sun was blindingly bright, and Izzy was nowhere to be seen.

Nor was 1961. I was back to the present.

#

I headed west and cut through Washington Square Park. There were two teenage kids sitting at the fountain playing guitars and singing, a boy and a girl who looked remarkably alike. They were singing what was obviously an original song—obvious because it wasn’t very good. But they played and harmonized well, and they were, so cute I had to smile and tossed one of my newly stolen five dollar bills into the open guitar case.

I continued on to MacDougal Street and walked it end to end. There were a couple times when I easily could have helped myself to a fat wallet from a skinny tourist, but I restrained myself. I had plenty of money for now and anyway, now I was on a different quest—to find out what the hell was going on. I checked out each storefront and saw nothing that appeared to be a folklore center of any kind, and I reversed my path and walked back to Seventh Street and McSorley’s.

A different bartender was working—shorter, darker hair than the last guy, but equally Irish. I ordered my usual two lights and asked him, “You been on duty all morning?”

“Yep. Since we opened at eleven.”

“Do you remember seeing me in here earlier?”

“No.”

I hated to be so direct but, what the hell, I asked “What year is it?”

“Man, if you don’t know what year it is, or whether or not you’ve been in here today, I don’t think I can serve you those beers—ya know?”

“Just tell me the year please.”

“Last I checked it was 2023.”

I looked him in the eyes and said, pleadingly, “Can I please have those beers?”

He shook his head and said, “I shouldn’t do this.” But he did, and I was very grateful. The beers tasted great, the same as they did a few hours earlier.

When it was, apparently, 1961.

#

It stayed 2023 for the next couple weeks, and soon my strange interlude with Izzy faded into the deeper parts of my brain. It was a pretty abundant time for me. It was spring, and getting warmer, and leaves were starting to show up on the trees, and people were out on the streets in droves. Picking pockets is child’s play when streets are crowded and folks are bumping into one another willy nilly and wearing less clothing.

But I could use another hustle. Things were going well, and picking pockets had paid my rent and covered a few meals at a nice restaurant and regular beers at a few of my favorite pubs for many years. But it was risky. As good at it as I was, and I was very good, any small screw up could land me back in the pokey, and this time I’d be there for a while. And as I said before, times were changing, and I could see the end in sight. It’s hard to swipe cryptocurrency from someone’s pocket, and that’s where the world seemed headed. I didn’t even bother with plastic—too much of a paper trail. I worked on a strictly cash basis—nice and clean and simple. I would be a dinosaur soon. Maybe I already was.

McSorley’s was my favorite of the pubs in town, and I started to visit it more often than usual. Each time it remained 2023.

Then, one brightly lit morning in late April, as I leaned against the bar alone, in walked a guy dressed all in white with red ribbons on his arms and bells strapped onto his legs with leather. He had that same big toothy grin. It was Izzy, and he appeared to be in a good mood.

He ordered two darks and slapped me on the back as they arrived in front of him. “It’s my old buddy, Nick, the guitar guy who plays Dylan,” he said.

I lifted my mug towards him as an acknowledgment. But I was looking at him strangely, and it was mostly because of his odd getup.

He could see the confusion in my eyes. “It’s Morris dancing,” he explained. “The bells, the clothes, the ribbons. We’re meeting up out front, and we’re gonna dance around the Village and across the park.”

I still looked confused. “I thought someone so tuned in that he knows about Bob Dylan would also know about Morris dancing,” he went on.

“I’m not sure I do,” I said. “I think maybe I’ve seen you guys before once or twice. But refresh my mind. What is it exactly?”

“It’s an ancient traditional English dance. It’s mentioned in Shakespeare as an old activity, so it goes back even further than that. It could be a thousand years old. It’s a seasonal celebration, and it’s turning into spring as you’ve probably noticed, so we’re celebrating.”

“Is this part of folklore, like at your folklore center?”

“Yeah. Exactly. You get it. It’s all part of what some people are calling the Great Folk Scare. And Morris dancing is probably the scariest part of it all.” He laughed at his little joke.

The last time I saw this guy, time flipped back to 1961. Now I was afraid that it would flip back even further, like a thousand years, and then we would not be standing in McSorley’s because there would be no McSorley’s and who knows what Manhattan would be like.

I wanted to keep close to this man. One reason was to find out what the hell was going on timewise and the other was because it still felt like he could be an easy mark for some decent money.

“I’d love to see you guys dance,” I said. “Can I follow you around?”

“Sure. We love company, and you’ll have fun.”

So we drank up, and he seemed ready to leave. “I’ll get this round,” I told him.

Before I dropped any money, I gave the bartender a deep, probing look. He looked back at me. “You got this for you and your buddy? That’ll be the usual—a buck fifty.”

I pulled the roll out from my front pocket. I don’t keep any cash in my wallet—gotta watch out for pickpockets, ya know? I laid two one-dollar bills on the bar and followed Izzy out the door. He was maybe three steps ahead of me, but when I stepped onto the sidewalk he was nowhere to be seen. Okay, the guy was younger than me and, after all he was a dancer and apparently quick on his feet, but no one was that fast. I looked up and down and sideways. No sign of Izzy. I went back into the bar.

The place had suddenly, somehow, filled up. When I was in here a minute ago, it was basically just me and Izzy and a couple stray men. Now the place was packed—most tables occupied and hardly any room to belly up to the bar. There were quite a few women in the crowd too. 

When I did manage to squeeze into a spot at the bar, I noticed that the bartender had changed. He was now a tall redheaded young guy with a beard, not the grizzled grumpy guy I had just a few minutes ago given two bucks to.

I ordered my usual two lights and guzzled them down quickly. I knew what the answer was going to be before I asked. But I asked anyway. “What do I owe you?”

“Same as last time you were here—eight bucks.”

I dropped a ten spot on the bar and stood there for a long minute. It was becoming clear—when I was in here with Izzy, it was 1961. When I was here without Izzy, it was 2023.

At least I had figured something out. That would have to do for now.

#

There were two ways to look at this situation: one as an existential mystery and one as a potential hustle. I’m a duffer at guitar and singing, but I love to do it. And I’m a history buff, and that era of folk explosion in Greenwich Village in the sixties has always been fascinating to me and I always wished I could have been a part of it.

And I’m a curious guy who is not without spiritual feelings, and something somehow otherworldly was going on and that made me stop to consider the very meaning of life.

But more than any of that, I’m a thief. The thief side started to win out after a short while of deep pondering.

A thief is a realist, and this time shifting stuff, as weird as it was, was reality. It is what it is, and I just had to deal with it and live with it. It looked like I was somehow fated to bounce between 1961 and 2023 unpredictably but consistently, at least for a while, and there had to be a way to make a few bucks from my fate.

A hundred dollars in 1961 was worth about a thousand dollars today, so I could make a quick nine hundred bucks by slipping a hundred bucks from some sucker in 2023 and take it back to 1961 if I could hang around long enough to spend it there. There were lots of ways I could parlay this into something big.

I knew that the Yankees would beat Cincinnati in the World Series in 1961 and that Roger Maris would hit 61 homers. I just needed to find a way to lay down bets in 1961.

I could invest in Microsoft in 1961 if only there was a Microsoft to invest in in 1961. The first Super Bowl wasn’t until 1967, so that wasn’t a money-making prospect, at least not yet.

It turned out that I had some time to think this over. A week went by. I continued to have a string of good pickings, and I was leading my usual leisurely life of wallets and beers. Spring advanced slowly. Those first lovely days of April faded into some rainy cool days, and then it warmed up as the month ended.

It was a sunny, crisp morning on May 1. The lilac scent was so strong it almost turned the air purple.

Morning is a good time for fetching wallets if you get out on the streets when the businessmen are on their way to work. There’s fewer of them than there used to be. Fewer people even go to work now—since the pandemic everyone is working from home. But I had a good morning and had a pretty thick roll of dollars and once again was there when McSorley’s opened at eleven.

Usually when I get there at that hour, I’m the first and only customer. But today I walked in to see Izzy already leaning against the bar sipping his beers. He was again wearing his white costume with his bells and ribbons. He must have just beat me there by a minute, and it didn’t take me long to side up next to him and join in. I was looking forward to it being 1961 again for a little while.

He lifted up a mug to me. “Happy May Day,” he said.

I lifted one back at him. He looked a little rough around the edges—unshaven, unkempt, with dirt and grass stains besmirching his otherwise crisp white clothing.

“You okay?” I asked him. To be honest he looked like hell.

He laughed in response and said, “Yeah. I’m great, but I’ve been up all night. It’s May Day. It’s a traditional day of dance and song. Every year for May Day, we cut down a tree and set up a Maypole at dawn in the park and dance around it and then hit the streets for some street theater.”

“It’s New York City,” I informed him. “Where the hell do you find trees you can cut down?”

He smirked and replied “We find them. Okay?”

“You and who else? Who else is crazy enough to do this stuff?”

“Me and the other Morris dancers. There’s a few of us. It takes six to do a dance, plus you need a musician. So we got all those guys. Plus, every year I recruit some of the young folks who crash at my shop. That’s something my shop is good for: young people and good musicians.”

“You mean the folklore center?”

“Yeah. That’s its actual name. The Folklore Center.”

“People crash there?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of the center of all that new folk music stuff that’s happening in the Village.”

“So it’s more than a store.”

“Yeah. Way more.”

“So you guys have been out all morning dancing. Now what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go home and sleep all day. I’ve also been up all night singing and drinking with a bunch of young kids.”

“So this started last night?”

“Yep. That’s part of the whole deal. Your buddy Dylan was there last night singing. Jesus, that kid is good. I tried to talk him into dancing with us but couldn’t do it.”

“Dylan hangs out at your shop?”

“Yeah. He crashes wherever he can around town but mostly at my place. He’s got a spot on the floor where he likes to sleep and keeps his sleeping bag handy. Hell, he gets his mail delivered there.”

Now I was starting to be impressed with Izzy.

“What’s he like—Dylan?”

“I thought you knew him. You do some of his songs.”

I hesitated. “No, not really. Just kind of.”

“He’s a very shy kid. He’s just nineteen and he just recently rolled into town. But I tell you—the kid is a genius. All these young folks do amazing stuff, but he is on another level. He’s from another planet. He is going to be a monster star someday. Someday soon. I’m trying to set up his first show. Then he’s gonna explode.”

And at about this point I was really seriously impressed with Izzy. He was doing things that would resonate for years, and I doubted that he had any idea.

“Wow!” I said. “You’re kind of an amazing guy, Izzy. You’re doing incredible stuff. You’ve got stuff starting there that will be important for many years. Stuff that will change people’s lives.”

He looked me in the eye and said slowly and carefully. “Nick my friend, I’m nothing. None of the stuff I do has anything to do with me. I’m just a guy here catching the wave of an era, a wave of time. These things will go on if the spirit wants them to and otherwise, no. I have nothing to do with it.”

Izzy then pulled out his wallet and removed a rumpled sheet of note paper. “That Dylan kid, he writes all the time and it’s freakin’ brilliant stuff. You should read this stuff. This one he calls The Times They Are A-Changin’. He scribbles them in this notebook he has. There’s crossouts, word changes, notes in the margins. It’s beautiful stuff. Then he tears them out and leaves them lying around the store. I’m saving them. He doesn’t care what happens to them after he learns the song.”

And then I instantly knew where all this was headed. Here was my Izzy Hustle. Handwritten lyrics of an original Dylan song were selling at auction for over two million dollars.

I would be able to forget about pilfering wallets for a while.

I was going to steal two million dollars from Izzy Young.

#

I didn’t try to do it that day. I had to cogitate how to do it properly and effectively and when things were completely right.

After some more chatting, and me trying to warm up to him even more, Izzy left, and things again shifted back to the present.

May Day had ended, but the lovely May days continued and twenty-first century life did too. I work in spurts. When I accumulate enough money to last me for a while, I retire for a while. Then I go back to work. My line of work has always been dependable enough, and me so good at it, that I could afford regular vacations—vacations right here in town. I never travel—haven’t left New York in years. Why go anywhere else? Everything I need is here.

But how much longer would I be able to continue this not wealthy but rhythmic and comfortable life? I had no idea. Change was in the air.

Nonetheless, twenty-first century life continued at least for the time being. But as content as I generally was with my rhythms, I did begin to yearn for at least a brief return to twentieth century life and an appearance by the peripatetic and nomadic in time Izzy Young and all the potential money connected to that nice, eccentric man.

Multiple visits to McSorley’s, purposefully done at differing days of the week and times of day, proved fruitless, and my quest to acquire some potentially valuable Bob Dylan archival material was proving to be frustrating, and a possible monster payday elusive.

Then, on a sparklingly crisp mid-May morn, I was thrilled by Izzy’s reappearance in his usual spot at the bar, resplendent in his whites and ribbons and bells, but cleaner and fresher appearing than the last time we met.

“Is this the way you dress all the time now?” I asked him.

He laughed. “Pretty much. It’s May. We dance out all the time in May. This whole Morris thing is about celebrating the change of seasons, and May is big as far as that goes. There’s a lot to celebrate these days.”

I didn’t feel like messing around. I wanted to get to the point—the point being songs, in particular Bob Dylan songs and how they could make me, literally, millions of dollars.

“So you’re dancing and singing a lot these days?”

“Really, when the weather is this perfect, we’re going out a lot. A few times a week, sometimes every day.”

“All this from your Folklore Center?”

“As I told you, that place is where it’s all happening. It’s an energy center. The energy center of the Village right now. Maybe of the world, at least it seems that way.”

“Have you convinced Dylan to dance yet?”

Again he laughed. “I work on it every day, all the time. I’m getting this close.” And he held his thumb and index finger this close together.

“But the kid’s a singer, not a dancer. And a writer, a hell of a writer.”

Izzy reached into his wallet and again pulled from it that same slightly crumpled folded sheet of notepaper that he showed me before.

“I’m kind of in love with this thing,” he said. “The hard to believe thing is that when his album comes out this won’t even be on it. He’s got so many unbelievable songs of his own, plus he does such incredible covers, this one will have to wait. Yeah, I’m helping him put together a record, and it’s gonna rock the world.”

Izzy carefully folded the paper and put it back into his wallet and put the wallet back in his pocket. His back pocket.

Okay, by now I’m sure you’ve figured out where this is going.

Picking pockets is not easy. If it were, more people would be doing it. But for me it was easy. It was what I did. You gotta be quick and gentle and surgically precise. Pickpockets on TV always do it by bumping into their mark to create a distraction. That’s one way of doing it, and it can be quite effective. Another old trick is to make eye contact with the mark. That seems counterintuitive, since it can imprint your face in their mind, but it works for pulling their attention away from their pocket. But if you’re really good, and I’m really good, you need no distraction. Your hand slides in and out of there like it’s greased. The only risk is that the mark will notice that the wallet’s gone. We’re always unconsciously aware of it being on our hip, but when it’s suddenly gone, we become conscious of its absence. Luckily, even though it takes only a minute or two before the guy notices, I’m long out of his sight and half a block down a crowded street by then. Even if they looked at my face, they would never see it again anyway.

So, Izzy and I were leaning against the bar quite closely. It took only a fraction of a second. I was in there and out in a flash. Izzy never felt a thing, not even a flea-like nibble, and in my hand, I held what may as well have been a check for two million dollars. Made out to me.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. There’s only one of them at McSorley’s. It was 1961. Women were not allowed in the place. Hell, even in 2023, when there are lots of women there, there’s still only the one bathroom. And it’s worth the trip just to feel yourself awed as you are dwarfed by the immense urinal, white porcelain of Brobdingnagian proportions.

But I wasn’t in there to be awed. Or to pee. I was in there for a wallet. It was an old brown leather one, creased so badly that it was torn in a couple places and, besides my treasure, it held only about twenty-five bucks, a ten, a five, and some ones. No credit cards—did people even have credit cards in 1961? A library card and a couple membership cards for some questionable, possibly subversive, organizations.

I gently removed The Times They Are A-Changin’ and put it in my own wallet. I couldn’t help but smile. This was my passport to an easy life.

I rejoined Izzy at the bar. As he told me more about Morris dancing, which held very little interest to me but was useful in keeping him occupied, I slipped his wallet back into the pocket from whence it had come. This was an action I had seldom, if ever, done. Once I had my hands on some poor fellow’s wallet it became mine. There was never any reason to return it.

But this proved to be just as easy as taking it in the first place, only in reverse. The process was immeasurably helped by the fact that one must stand at McSorley’s bar. There are no stools. If we were sitting it would be impossible to get into anybody’s back pocket. But we were standing, so it was a snap. Izzy had no inkling anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He soon made overtures to leave and return to his day of dance.

I made sure to pay for our beers. No reason to have Izzy open that wallet now, and besides these were 1961 prices and I could easily afford to treat, even if I was less wealthy than my companion.

At least for the moment.

#

With Izzy gone, the scene once again morphed back to 2023. The place got noisier, more crowded, and somehow brighter and shinier, but other than the people, nothing had changed. Nothing ever changes at McSorley’s—the same old framed photos on the walls, the same ceiling fan, the same copper mugs hanging over the bar, the same Be Good or Be Gone sign carved into the top of the wooden cabinet.

I impatiently finished sipping my beer. I wanted to run out into the 2023 air and head directly to Sotheby’s to get my prize authenticated. I was wondering how quickly the two million dollars could be in my itchy little hands.

But I still finished, and managed to savor, the drink. This was a moment to pause and reflect and remember just as it had occurred, to hold every nuance and vibration permanently in one’s deepest memory banks. One seldom has such opportunity to stop and hold on to life changing moments, but here was one and I wanted to soak it in.

I even ordered another two beersm, and they went down like silk. A guy slid up to me at the bar and began to chat. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, but I didn’t, couldn’t, pay him any attention. I was preoccupied with the item that was throbbing in my hip pocket.

Finally, after these last two beers were gone, and my mental image of this historic moment was completely imbedded into my brain, did I get up the volition to move.

It was as lovely out on Seventh Street as it had been when I entered—crisp, sunny and warming perfectly. Almost no one was on the street. Izzy was long gone.

And so was The Times They Are A-Changin’. My wallet was empty of anything Dylan related. I fumbled around, feeling every other pocket and every inch of my suddenly shivering with fear body, but no—it was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t on the ground. It hadn’t blown down the street.

It was gone.

I stood there stupidly. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Everything seemed pointless and hopeless.

When a person is standing in front of a bar and doesn’t know what to do, said person will almost invariably enter the bar, especially when he's tossing around words like pointless and hopeless. So that’s what I did. I went back into the bar.

It was a different world back inside McSorley’s. The place was comforting even as my future was collapsing around me. It had this faded green and black and brown and copper dusty quiet museum vibe despite the buzzing of the happy noon-time crowd. It took me a few minutes to figure out if I was standing there in 1961 or 2023.

But Izzy wasn’t there, so that meant that it had to be 2023. That was about the only way to find out for sure, short of trying to pay for a drink and learning what the price was.

I decided to take that route too. I ordered my usual two light beers. I was calming down. Whatever the hell was going on, I would figure it out and deal with it. I can be pretty equanimous like that when I have to be. And I was pretty sure I could eventually find a way to make about two million dollars from Bob Dylan and Izzy Young.

The beers were magically soothing, but my wallet was still empty.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ seemed to like it inside of McSorley’s, but outside, not so much.

And to tell the truth, I was starting to agree with it.           

#

I stood there reviewing what little I had learned. It pretty much boiled down to this—when I was with Izzy it was 1961, and I could only be with Izzy inside McSorley’s. At all other times, it was 2023. And now it appeared that any objects connected to Izzy followed the same rule as Izzy himself. They could not be with me except inside McSorley’s in 1961. With Izzy.

I knew there would be new revelations on time travel and related matters forthcoming, but there was nothing I could do to hasten their pace.

I had little choice but to patiently wait and see what happens next.

#

One seemingly random, gorgeous May day, Izzy reappeared. Of course, at McSorley’s. It was early. I like the way the sun creeps in there in the morning. It was just me and the bartender. I had two mugs of light on the bar in front of me. In swaggered Izzy, in white clothing, with ribbons and bells, which was now exactly how I expected him to be dressed. And I do mean he swaggered. He seemed pretty pleased with himself.

He had a young fellow of about fifteen with him, dressed as Izzy was in whites and ribbons and bells and holding a fiddle. The kid had a big grin on his peach-fuzzed face as he looked around the ancient bar in wonderment.

“This is my friend Dexter,” Izzy said to me. “He’s one of our new dancers. And he’s a hell of a fiddle player too.”

“You must hang out at Izzy’s shop,” I said to Dexter. “I hear that’s where all the hot musicians hang.”

“Is there anywhere else?” he replied. But you could see that the kid was soaking in the atmosphere and coming to the realization that indeed this bar was somewhere else, and equally worth getting to know.

His gaze swept across the saloon and, after a few minutes, he let out a slow, respectful, somewhat awestruck “Wow! Just wow! I’ve heard about this place, but I’ve never been in.”

Izzy ordered his usual two darks. Dexter was standing there too, but before Izzy could even begin to order beers for the kid, the bartender shook his head in a preemptive no.

“I want a beer,” Dexter pleaded.

The bartender said, “Come back in about ten years, sonny.” Dexter looked sadly down at his shoes.

But Izzy was enjoying his own ales. He grinned that big toothy grin and said his own wow. “Wow! Feel that new air out there? Spring is magical. There’s rebirth in it. Old stuff changes and grows and gets better and new stuff suddenly appears. I’m celebrating.”

Dexter said, “Me too.”

Izzy went on. “All my life I’ve felt this way in the spring. I felt like I should be dancing, leaping around, celebrating. But there was never an accepted outlet for that, you know? No way to really do it. Grown men just don’t leap and dance around. It’s just not done in our world.

“But then I heard about this. I took some classes—we had some at the shop—and met some guys who were doing it, and here I am.

“And it keeps going,” he continued, and looked happily at the kid with him. I thought he might pat Dexter on the head, but he resisted.

Izzy started to walk around the bar touching the various bric-a-bracs hanging around the place. Dexter followed at his heels. Izzy was giving Dexter the tour.

“Look at this,” he said. “This is a wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth. It’s real. It’s original. It’s been there since 1865. He shot Lincoln. Lincoln drank here.”

He kept walking around the nearly empty space. “And those are Harry Houdini’s handcuffs. He drank here too.”

Izzy stopped to catch his breath. Dexter looked awestruck. Izzy looked me in the eyes as if he could see right down into my soul.

“Everything changes all the time, Nick. But some things stay for a long time,” he said. “When they’re in the right place.” He looked at Dexter. “With the right people.”

Hanging behind one of the tables was a framed, yellowed and greened black and white photo labeled McSorley Chowder Club—ancient men and women dressed nicely in vests and suits and some in period baseball uniforms. “This has been here since 1873,” Izzy said, “and, God willing, it'll be here in 1973. And beyond that. 2023 even.”

And that’s when it clicked. That’s when I knew how to do it. Humans never change. They will always want to celebrate life. They will always seek out the things that move their souls, whether it be in the form of song or dance or the company of others. I got all that.

But I still wanted the two million dollars, dammit.

#

Izzy came back to earth, and we each had another round. Dexter went off on his own, walking slowly around the place studying each bit of history hanging there.

“I have stuff to celebrate,” Izzy said to me. “I’m putting together some performances by our friend Dylan. These are gonna be out of this world. Life changing.”

I was wondering if The Times They Are A-Changin’ had found its way back to Izzy’s wallet. It had.

Izzy pulled out said wallet and removed from it that coveted folded notebook paper which he unfolded and held up at eye level.

“I can’t read this enough. It’s from another world. Timeless.”

He gazed at the Holy Grail for a minute, presumably reading it for the thousandth time, and then put it back in his wallet and the wallet back in his back pocket.

I was as quick and smooth as I have ever been. I was at the top of my game. I was doing a Houdini in the same spot where Harry himself had done Houdini at around the turn of the century. That is—the turn from nineteenth to twentieth century.

I had that wallet out of his pants in a flash and, while Izzy was again walking around the bar pointing out memorabilia to Dexter, I removed the notebook paper. And when Izzy returned to the bar next to me, the wallet slipped easily back into his pocket. He never felt a thing.

I got up, following Izzy’s example, and pretended to admire the McSorely Chowder Club picture. It was hung loosely on a nail, and it swung easily towards me when I pulled on the bottom section of its frame. Its backing was a crisp sheet of brown paper which had a tiny tear on its right side. I slipped the lyric sheet into this tear and let the picture flop back against the wall. The Times They Are A-Changin’ was now inside McSorley Chowder Club where I had faith, and good reason, to believe it would remain for at least the next sixty-two years.

#

We hung out for a while and drank a few more rounds. I thought maybe Dexter would bow down and pray. That’s how impressed he was with the place. I could have stayed there longer, but Izzy and Dexter had to go out and meet the rest of the dance troupe and get on with their day of dance. Me? I just couldn’t wait ‘til Izzy left and it turned back to 2023.

That happened just as I had planned. Izzy drank up and said his good-byes. I, of course, paid for our drinks. I followed them both out the door wondering just how quickly Izzy would disappear and how quickly the time would revert to what for me was the current year.

To my surprise, they remained in my sight for a moment as they turned around the corner towards Astor Place where they were going to be dancing. It was just for a second though, and then they were engulfed by a group of other guys dressed the same, plus one fellow holding an accordion, and then they vanished into the crowd.

I followed them. I truly did want to see this strange dancing that Izzy was talking about. The dancers were gathered on the small space near the Astor Place cube, milling about, laughing while the accordion guy played a few random notes. There was also an old dude messing around on a fiddle. It was an interesting group of guys—some appeared to be very young, in or just out of their teen years, some older, one guy looked to be near seventy—all dressed colorfully with ribbons and bells. I couldn’t find Izzy or Dexter though. They were nowhere to be seen.

Then it occurred to me that the large cube standing there was installed in 1967. It didn’t exist in 1961.

I tapped the old fiddle player on the shoulder. He appeared to be friendly and approachable. “What’s going on?” I asked him, feigning more ignorance than I actually possessed.

“This is Morris dancing,” he replied. “We’re celebrating the spring.”

I tried to word my next question as carefully as I could. “I think I’ve heard about this,” I said. “You guys have been doing this for a long time?”

“Well, it dates back to maybe the 1500s in England, but this team has existed, in various forms here in New York since the sixties, so that’s over sixty years now.”

So I had established that we very likely were standing there in 2023.

“And you?” I asked him. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Me? I go way back—a long way back. I used to dance too, but now I’m just a musician.”

I hung around and watched them do a dance. The fiddle guy played for it, and he was terrific—strong and lively and confident and still tuneful. \

Then I went back to McSorley’s. I ordered my usual two lights, and they were delicious. I asked the bartender, “How much?”

He said, “The same as every time you’re in here—eight dollars.”

So it was 2023. I paid him the money. The place was pretty packed, so no one paid too much attention when I walked casually over to McSorley Chowder Club on the wall. I swung it towards me. The old brown paper backing was still there and so was the small tear in it. And so was The Times They Are A-Changin’ lyrics inside it, which I re-folded and put in my wallet, and I walked back outside, where I could tell by the cars on the street that it was still 2023.

I had two million dollars in my back pocket.

Yeah, I checked. The lyric sheet was still there in my wallet.

Even as I stood outside of McSorley’s.

Without Izzy.

In the year of our Lord 2023.

#

I walked back around the corner to Astor Place where the Morris dancers were still performing. When they took a break, the old fiddler walked up to me.

“I’ve seen you around here before, haven’t I?” he said.

“I don’t know. You might have seen me anywhere around town. I get around. But I’ve never seen this dancing before. It’s kind of cool.”

“I think I’ve seen you in McSorley’s,” he said.

“Yeah. Probably. I’m there a lot.”

“I’ve been going there since I was way too young to drink,” he went on.

I looked the old guy in the eyes. There was something familiar there. He put the fiddle under his chin and started playing a tune. He wasn’t playing for the dancers. This was just for me. He grinned at me while he fiddled.

He stopped playing. “You know,” he said. “A guy I once knew a long time ago told me how life and spirit go on, but they’re not attached to anything, not to any physical body. Once you learn that, it frees miracles to happen. That’s why we’re dancing out today. That’s why you’re here watching. It’s an endless cycle, man.”

I did not reply. The Morris dancers started to fold up shop and move on to their next stand. They were buzzing all around me going and coming, here and there, fore and aft, and up and down, all around me.

The old fiddler nodded and gave me a friendly thumbs up. And maybe a wink too. He was older than I at first thought.

One of the dancers shouted to him “Come on, Dexter. We gotta go.” He sort of limped as he walked away.

I was ready to walk away myself, to learn whatever I had learned from all this, and to cash out. I had gotten what I had been trying to get for a long time.

As I started to leave, the youngest dancer, who looked like he was about sixteen, came up near me and made eye contact. That was weird. No one really does that unless they have something to say to you, and he didn’t. He just made eye contact. He didn’t say anything.

Then the kid’s hip bumped into mine, quickly and almost imperceptibly. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he walked away.

It took me a few seconds to respond, and by that time they had all disappeared around the corner.

I felt my back pocket. I felt that absence of the familiar lump. I felt all around my pants, but I knew I was searching in vain. It was too late.

I looked up and down the street, but the dancers were gone.      

So was my wallet.

Oh, hell. I didn’t really need those two million dollars anyway.

I went back into the bar.