Dylan's Motorpsycho Nightmare is a tongue in cheek nightmare. Dylan at this best, telling us about the adventures of a drifter, who "pounded on a farmhouse, looking for a place to stay".
Following the hobo-cliché, Dylan's first person narrator was (and had to be) "mighty mighty tired" because he had "gone a a long long way."So far, so good, so traditional.
The farmer answers the door and immediately sticks a gun into the intruder's guts. (nice alliteration: gun & guts, scary and gory reality). Being afraid that the drifter might be a psycho or criminal, the farmer
"cocked his rifle
and began to shout
>You're the travelling salesman
That I have heard about<".
Since the drifter pretends to be a "doctor" and a "clean-cut kid" who's "been to college too" (once again: the poetic power of alliterations), the farmer finally offers him a "bed underneath the stove." Of course there are strings attached:
"Just one condition
And you go to sleep right now
that you don't touch my daughter
And in the morning milk the cow!"
Notice: it is "go to sleep", not "go to bed". You don't have to be a Freudian to know what is bound to happen: the drifter will try to seduce the farmer's daughter, or vice versa. Stuck between a rock (the farmer) and a hard place (because of the farmer's daughter) the drifter, who is a clean-cut kid after all, has to find a way out:
"Well, I couldn’t leave
Unless the old man chased me out
’Cause I’d already promised
That I’d milk his cows
I had to say something
To strike him very weird
So I yelled out
>I like Fidel Castro and his beard!<”
Castro's beard really does the magic. The farmer, the psycho in this nightmare, loses it, attacks the drifter and tries to shoot the "unpatriotic rotten doctor commie rat", who crashes head over heels through the window at 100 miles an hour and beats it.
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