On a typical summer’s day in my teen years, I felt suffocating tedium, a restlessness born of nothing happening in my town, of seeing the same faces over and over again. Back before the Second World War, the symbol of escape for many people was the plaintive whistle of a far-off train, the kind that George Bailey hears in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Then, through Born to Run, which I picked up at my local Korvettes in Northern New Jersey, just before the start of my sophomore year in high school, the sounds of freedom came from car tires squealing down the highway.
Not knowing how or where I belonged, I desperately longed for a place where I could be myself and find people who would accept me for who I was.
In Bruce Springsteen, I found the voice of my psychic hometown, the person who told me that the promised land lay just beyond the horizon, where I could find another solitary soul with a hungry heart.
Could I ever reach that point? Exultantly, from one who had seen “heaven waiting down on the tracks,” backed by the triumphant saxophone of his boon companion, Clarence Clemons, Springsteen assured me that I could:
It’s a town full of losers,
And I’m pulling out of here to win.
Thanks for all the years of joy, Boss. Keep rockin’!
Then, through Born to Run, which I picked up at my local Korvettes in Northern New Jersey, just before the start of my sophomore year in high school, the sounds of freedom came from car tires squealing down the highway.
Not knowing how or where I belonged, I desperately longed for a place where I could be myself and find people who would accept me for who I was.
In Bruce Springsteen, I found the voice of my psychic hometown, the person who told me that the promised land lay just beyond the horizon, where I could find another solitary soul with a hungry heart.
Could I ever reach that point? Exultantly, from one who had seen “heaven waiting down on the tracks,” backed by the triumphant saxophone of his boon companion, Clarence Clemons, Springsteen assured me that I could:
It’s a town full of losers,
And I’m pulling out of here to win.
Thanks for all the years of joy, Boss. Keep rockin’!
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