Re: 'North Country Blues'_

I suspect that there's a good dose of personal experience in this song.
Hibbing, where Dylan grew up, was in the 1950s/early 60s, a fairly prosperous iron mining town where Dylan's father and uncle had an electrical goods business - fridges, washing machines, tellies etc. -most of which would have been purchased on the never-never. Then iron mining went downhill, people couldn't keep up the payments and the Zimmermann family, including Bob, had to go out on repossession trips, which probably gave him unexpected, possibly unpleasant, views behind the scenes of many families. The fathers who went to buy a paper or cigarettes and never came back, the classmate who on Friday was in class but not on Monday because the family had 'disappeared' during the weekend. Even though it's written from a woman's viewpoint I really get the impression that he knew what he was singing about.

I sing this song unaccompanied!

The background story applies to any rundown mining and/or heavy industry region