The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle

Twenty years ago, I spent my last summer as a kid in my parents’ hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania (WashPa), a steel town Southwest of Pittsburgh.  I was fifteen, not quite sixteen.

Growing up, my parents would send my brother and me off to Washington during the summer for weeks at a time.  During the school year we were stuck in New Jersey, except for the occasional trip back for major holidays or special occasions.  The summertime was a chance to spend time with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  Despite the distance, WashPa was considered "home," and our ties to Southern New Jersey were akin to expatriates living abroad.

I was the youngest grandchild on my father's side and the youngest male grandchild on my mother's side.  By the time I reached my teenage years, my brother was away at college most of the time, and many of cousins were either at school or had begun their adult lives, mostly out of the area.

I could see that my endless summers of shuttling between relatives, reading in the middle of large backyards of rolling hills, swimming at various pools, heading into Pittsburgh, going to the cottage on the Youghiogheny river with my cousin Stacy and her in-laws were soon coming to an end.  I'd start working summers in South Jersey and my time "home" would be very limited.

In every life, there are landmark years, where the events that occur take a glowing prominence that has deep repercussions.  Starting in the spring of 1991, my life began seismic changes.

My grandmother died in April.

My brother graduated from college in May. 

In June the Penguins, lead by Mario Lemieux, won their first Stanley Cup.  I went to the Naval Academy for an intensive wrestling camp.  I came home from camp and heard that one of my great friend's mother had been murdered.

And then, I went to WashPa. 

I was a mess.  I never slept.  I couldn't.  But that's a different story for a different time. 

While in Washington that summer, I spent a lot of time at my Aunt Billie's house.   She had this large rambling house, on a corner lot just off an exit on Route 70 that lead into town.  The constant background dissonance from the highway traffic became like hearing the rumblings of ocean surf. 

Her daughter, Lisa, was home from grad school for the summer and living back at her mother's house.  She was in and out of town a lot, but she had a part time job at a clothing store at the mall through family friends. 

Billie's boyfriend, JR, and I were buds.  JR was a city cop but he was on leave for the summer rehabbing an injury.  During the day, he and I ran around town, went to Pittsburgh, watched Twilight Zone episodes.  My aunt provided the ambulance service to area's concert amphitheater, in Burgettstown, so he and I were able to go see many of the summer's best acts on their summer tours. 

JR's aunt had a large farm out in the county sticks.  I spent days riding a four-wheeler up and down the rolling hills that made up the acres of the estate.  The farm had a giant man made pond where I would go swimming with JR, Lisa and her friends.  Lisa's friends were twenty-five and I thought, absolutely gorgeous.  In high school in South Jersey, I couldn't get the girls to even acknowledge I existed.  Yet, in my parents’ hometown, I was able to hangout with women that not only tolerated me, but also actually enjoyed my company.  One of the best nights of the summer was spent night swimming in the pond under a perfectly clear night in the middle of July.

Cathy, the manager of the clothing store where Lisa worked, was a family friend.  Her husband, Bracken, was a local city politician.  They had a son, Jamie, a pre-med student at Notre Dame, who was about four years older than me.  There was also a daughter, Colleen, who was only about six months older than me.  Lisa and Cathy thought a great idea would be to set up Colleen and me as summer friends. 

Despite my teenage nerves, I thought this was a great idea.  I had the hots for her.  She, of course, didn't see me that way.  However, she was kind to me.  And we did have many laughs.  We both loved the Pirates, who were in the middle of their last golden age.  We went to a couple of games at the old Three Rivers Stadium.  My favorite player was Andy Van Slyke, the centerfielder.  Her favorite was the young pitcher, Stan Belinda, which would be slightly apocryphal.  Belinda was the guy who gave up the game winning single to Francisco Cabrera in the bottom of the ninth of game seven in the '92 National League Championship Series. 

Colleen brought me around to many of her friends, and to local teenage parties.  She had a license to drive. 

She came up to Peters Township to swim with me at my Aunt Connie's house.

We went to Pittsburgh, movies, innocent friendly dates.  I had fun. 

The first time Colleen and I were set up, Lisa had a friend who owned a boat on the Monongahela.  My parents and my brother, Chris, were also visiting WashPa that weekend.  Lisa brought Chris, Colleen and me to meet up with her friend with the boat, along with a few other friends.  We spent the day boating.  At night, we went into Pittsburgh and ended up having ice cream on the top of Mount Washington, which overlooks the three rivers and downtown Pittsburgh. 

That night I was staying with my mother at my grandmother's place on Henderson Ave.  My mom's parents lived a tiny rancher house that sat close to the road, but had a huge expansive backyard.  Henderson Ave doubled as Route 18, an old two lane country highway that lead North to Burgettstown and eventually up to Beaver Falls.  Many cars and tractor-trailers still took this winding road to avoid the major highways that circled around the city.  The trucks would cruise past and shake the rickety old house. 

Lisa and Chris dropped me off at about 12:30am or so and quickly split, before I had entered the house. 

I waved goodbye and turned to open the door to the screened in porch next to the side of the house.  My gram kept a spare key hidden on the porch that opened the side door to the kitchen.  The porch door was locked.  The porch door was never locked, especially if I was going to be out and coming in after she went to bed.  I thought well maybe the basement door is unlocked.  I went around the house and down the stairs that lead to the backyard and tried the cellar door.  That was locked as well. 

I couldn't get inside and I really didn't want to knock on the bedroom window.  There were incidents of nutters on the highway that tried to break in neighbor's houses.  There was also a biker bar about a half-mile down the road that I was always told had sketchy characters.  I thought if I knocked on the window I might frighten her to death.  Once that thought dropped in my head, I was scared to ring the doorbell.  I didn't want to cause a panic at 1 in the morning by ringing the front door.   

I was stuck outside, with nowhere to go.  I became petrified.  If I wasn't exactly a city kid, I was definitely not country boy.  I thought of sleeping out in the backyard under a tree, but then I realized that wasn't me either.  I had no love for lying down in a completely open space with the potential of wild animals cruising past. 

I found a bit of space on the front porch stairs and crouched up.  In my book bag that I always carried had inside my Walkman, which I was never without, either.  However, I only had one cassette, Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.  I was familiar with the album, my family had it on vinyl, but I only really knew the one song Rosalita.  The rest seemed dated, rambling, and not nearly as fresh as Bruce's first album Greetings from Asbury Park, or as complete as his later work.  I had read a review in Rolling Stone that had called it a classic.  Plus, the cassette always seemed to be the one that was in my oldest cousin, Stacy's car.  I thought I should give it another chance.  That morning I had packed my bag and threw in the one cassette in the off chance that I would be bored. 

That night as I sat on my grandmother's porch staring off into a pitch black rustic highway, I listened to the cassette, front to back, from one in the morning until about half past six, when I finally heard Grammy beginning to stir in the kitchen. 

Occasionally I drifted into a light sleep, but I would be shaken awake by a passing car or truck.  Mostly, I just sat listening, thinking, absorbing.  The album became imprinted on my brain, intertwined into my DNA. 

The bravado of Bruce's storytelling sucked me into the world he created.

The album was New Jersey, the New Jersey in my mind, if not my reality.  The album was Perth Amboy, where I was born.  Tragic, operatic, daring, bold, conflicted, it was a portrait of youth, of the seventies, of the Jersey Turnpike and the lives that are centered and splintered around it, a plea of desperation.  Most of the towns I knew in Jersey were well past their days of grandeur, yet people remained.  The question then becomes if not what's next, then what do I do with what's left?

The album was the magic, the mystery of shore, of the boardwalk at night, the swagger, arrogance, immaturity and confidence of youth.  The theme of proving yourself while questioning the status quo, a theme that haunts all of Bruce's music carries across as raw and mythic.

The album was Manhattan, my Manhattan.  To me, the album's most enthralling imagery came on the second side, where two of the songs were explicitly about New York City.  A place of mystery, crime, rough lives, shady characters, dashed hopes and dreams, but still vital, still alive and bursting at the seams.  The songs upended the traditional suburban notions of NYC. 

Growing up in New Jersey, the state was dominated by two cultural gravitational centers, NYC to the North, Philadelphia to the South.  To the social outsiders, the dreams of getting out of town to be somebody always lead to either city.  Just getting to the city meant life, culture, excitement.  "Incident on 57th St" and "New York City Serenade" told stories from inside the anguish and gloom of the city.  The characters' hopes and dreams of a better life meant fleeing New York. 

Yet, at fifteen, I assumed that my living in New York City was an inevitability.  I couldn't picture myself living truly anywhere else. 

The books I read, the movies I watched, the music I listened to, the paintings I saw in museums, all had an undercurrent in my perception that dragged me to what I thought New York City was, endlessly mysterious, alluring, addicting, Noir films, jazz, full of life. 

There's a world, a universe deep in my body, that's completely influenced by Bruce's second album.  Every time I hear the opening notes of "Incident on 57th St" on the piano that leads in the guitar solo, my mind goes back to that dark night in July on my gram's steps, totally alone on the planet, yet completely connected to a place, to characters and to universal themes. 

A coda to that story…

I mentioned that my oldest cousin, Stacy, seemed to always have a cassette of The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle in her car. 

Despite the seventeen-year age difference, one of the things that Stacy and I were able to bond over was a love of Bruce's music.  She was a teenager when Born to Run came out and growing up I knew of no bigger fan. 

In the summer of '03 her cancer was in remission.  Through a friend, my brother was able to get tickets to a Springsteen concert at the newly opened Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.  My brother, Stacy, her daughter and I went.  The concert was Bruce and the E Street Band at their best, playing in front a sold out football stadium, throwing a huge party that everyone felt invited to. 

In the middle of the concert, Bruce stepped back and took a breath. The band settled down for a moment.  Bruce stepped back to the mic and the piano started the opening notes to "Incident on 57th St." 

There was Springsteen lore at that time that he hardly ever played in concert tracks off of The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, at least not since the '70s. 

I can remember looking at Stacy and her eyes getting really big, her face lit up, a gigantic smile and then her singing all the words. 

In the midst of 70,000 people, I felt that Bruce could hear her personal request.