“There! Get off there!”
Even with Bruce Springsteen’s “Downbound Train” blasting from the tape deck, we were convinced, all three of us, that Bert was asleep in the passenger seat. And though startled by his wide-awake voice, I managed to cross-navigate two lanes of southbound New Jersey Turnpike traffic at 65 miles-per-hour and make the exit a second before a pair of tractor trailers would’ve turned my gold Cutlas Supreme into a subcompact. We’d been on the road three hours, it was time for a pit stop.
“Stay to the left.”
I looked over at Bert as we decelerated down the ramp; thin shadow of a beard, curly, disheveled sandy-blonde hair, thick reading glasses perched midway across the bridge of his pointy nose. Sections of the Boston Globe and New York Times lay discarded at his stocking feet along with a set of directions and most of our toll money. In the rearview, I saw Stan and Packy smiling and shaking their heads just like we had done throughout our junior and senior high years when Bert was Mr Bertini, our substitute teacher in the Bamberry school system outside Boston.
“Go right before the Mobil station.”
It was September 1988, a Sunday, and we were on our way to Philadelphia to see The Boss – at that point, it was still unclear whether or not Bruce Springsteen was comfortable with that title, so, like many hardcore fans, we usually referred to him as Bruce, as if he were a friend. The show, which also featured Sting and Peter Gabriel, was one of just three US dates on a worldwide tour to raise awareness for human rights.
But as far as we were concerned, it was a Bruce Show.
“Okay...keep heading down this street.”
I always drove. My car was a couple years old and I liked being in control of the music, which, for this trip, would be an endless loop of homemade Springsteen cassettes. I had seen Bruce on each of his last three tours, but this would be my first show outside Massachusetts. At age 23, with a steady job doing masonry work for a local contractor, a reliable car, and friends who supported my habit, I was gearing up for the next tour when I would begin building my super-fan resume. I was going to be one of those fans who piled up shows and prefaced letters to the editor of Backstreets magazine with qualifiers like,
Dear sir, as a veteran of over 100 shows, I believe...
“Take another right.”
I had no idea where we were having nearly been past the exit when Bert spoke up. Somewhere between Hightstown and Allentown was my guess. I wasn’t worried. Long before cars came equipped with GPS, we had Bert. No matter where he was in the eastern United States, and despite his apparent lack of order, he could always be counted on to locate two things; one was cold beer, the other a New York Giants football game on TV or radio. Something about the notion of pigskin and barley aroused an acute sixth sense, and that day, he found both.
“Should be right around here...”
Most of our parents – we all still lived at home, even Bert – found it strange that a 30 year-old man was accompanying three 23 year-olds on a rock and roll road trip. But we saw Bert as a renaissance man who transcended social norms. And besides, there were many things our parents didn’t know, like that Bert had been our main supplier of alcohol since we were sixteen, and that he had often played Rolling Stones records in class instead of following the school’s curriculum. Now that we were all of legal age, Bert was just another friend and Bruce fan catching a ride to Philly.
“Pull in there.”
Bert was pointing toward a dirt parking lot where a diner sat nestled between a Woolworth and an old-style barber shop with traditional striped barber’s pole out front. Matching placards hung from a green awning:
SAL’S DINER
SAL’S BARBER SHOP
Packy and Stan, with almost two hundred miles of drinking behind them, tumbled out of the backseat while Bert fished his sneakers from the chaos of the foot well. An unplugged neon Budweiser sign beckoned from the diner window.
“I reckon this must be the place,” Packy said, in his best Curly Howard voice. Packy’s father owned two package stores back in Bamberry, hence the nickname.
The door between the diner and barber shop was ajar allowing people to pass through like adjoining hotel rooms. The place smelled of burnt toast and hair tonic. The interior was decked in a swimming-pool-green on white color scheme. After-church lunchtime patrons ate quietly in booths, sleepy-eyed men sat shoulder-to-slumped-shoulder at the counter sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. A loaded, three-tier pie carousel rested atop a refrigerated cold cut chest next to a cash register surrounded by beef-jerky and a box of billiard-sized gumballs. Two poneytailed waitresses connected dots from table to table in quiet shoes. Behind the counter, on a stool, sat a gruff looking man his arms folded over a white smock with “Sal” sewn over a pocket that housed a comb and pair of scissors. Sal appeared to running both shows.
“Any way we can get the Game?” Bert asked.
Sal disappeared through a curtain, knocked around some random stuff, and returned with a 13-inch black and white Magnavox. He plopped it down on the counter and plugged it in next to a five-gallon jar filled with pickles the size of candlepins.
“See what you can do with that,” he said.
He gave a quick, conspiratorial, many-have tried-and-failed smile to the men at the counter before returning to his stool and re-folding his arms.
Bert is the least technically inclined person I know, but he may just be the most committed New York Giants football fan alive. He’s one of a legion of 2nd generation rooters, born in Massachusetts, whose fathers shunned the AFL’s Boston Patriots in favor of the closest geographical franchise from the established NFL.
As Patriots fans, Stan, Packy and I loathed the Giants, but at that point, a little football, even Giants’ football, would be a welcome treat.
With focus and concentration usually attributed to surgeons and chess masters, Bert fashioned a makeshift antenna from tinfoil and a beer can, and when that TV crackled to life, Sal nearly fell off his stool. Bert adjusted the dials like an expert safecracker, first vertical hold, then contrast and brightness, and soon we were standing in a semi-circle eating club sandwiches, drinking cold beer, and watching the second half of the Giants-Cowboys game.
----------------------------------------
After lunch, we noticed a line of girls loading provisions bucket-brigade-style into a green panel van in front of the mini-mart across the street. They were stocking enough vodka and cigarettes to bring down a charging rhino.
“Hey,” Packy said, “you ladies heading down to Philly to see Bruce?”
“Gee,” one of them said, “let me guess, you guys are from Boston?” She was blonde, the best looking of the bunch, which wasn’t saying much. She exaggerated the word “are” pronouncing it ahhhhhh. The voice was a high-pitched scrape making her attempt at our accent even more outrageous.
Packy wasn’t deterred. A fifth-year senior linebacker at UMass, he was one of those guys who claimed to have never lifted a weight, but was tall, well-built, and possessed just the right amount of don’t-give-a-shit attitude to successfully chat-up women under any circumstance. Perhaps his greatest talent, however, was pulling it all off without coming across as arrogant.
“You wanna follow us down?” he said.
The rest of the van-load looked like a casting call for Hell’s Angels on Wheels. Bare feet, crooked teeth, cutoff shorts, and one rider who appeared to have her jaw wired shut and was drinking beer through a straw. They were all impossibly skinny, their skin blotched and wasted from the sun.
“These bitches look like they just crawled out of a bag of french fries,” Stan said.
“Hey, you,” the almost good-looking one said.
“Me?” I said.
“Yeah, what’s up with your hair, you in the service or something?”
More Brian Bosworth than JR Reid, my hair was light-blonde – made even lighter by working in the sun – and spiky with contoured sides. But all the gel in New Jersey wouldn’t’ve been enough to tame two stubborn cowlicks that prevented true flattop symmetry. No doubt the hair needed to be addressed, but not by this panel van-driving stranger.
“Packy?...” I said.
“Relax. They’ve got a van.”
“Easier to murder us in?”
Bert laughed, nervously.
“Look,” Packy said, “there’s no telling what kind of shit’s going down in there.”
“Right,” I said, “and that’s exactly why girls with broken jaws travel in vans. They don’t want people to know what’s going on in there.”
We pulled out of the dirt lot and the van fell in behind us. I felt like Dennis Weaver in that ‘70's Spielberg movie where the unsuspecting motorist is stalked by the menacing tanker truck.
Appropriately, we were listening to one of my most ambitious projects, Bruce Springsteen A to Z: tape three, side 1 – “Lost in the Flood”
...he rides headfirst into a hurricane and disappears into a point...
----------------------------------------
After several miles, the girls passed us doing eighty-five. I noticed three things while trying to keep pace, 1) they changed lanes often for no apparent reason, 2) their turn signal was just a neglected appendage that protruded from the steering column, and 3) they liked taking turns dangling their soiled feet out the passenger side window.
“Hey, can we stop? I gotta piss,” Stan said. “And besides, I think we’re running out of beer.”
Stan and Packy were often mistaken for brothers; similar in height and weight, Stan’s hair was a slightly lighter shade of brown. Unlike normal passengers, they switched seats whenever we stopped, and sometimes even I did a double take in the rearview when one of them spoke. The two of them had been performing like a WWF tag-team in the backseat maintaining a torrid drinking pace since the beginning of the trip.
“No problem,” I said.
Other than the beer I had with lunch, I hadn’t started drinking yet, but saw an opportunity to separate from our escort.
“What?” Packy said. “What about the girls?”
“What about them?” I said. “They never said they were going to Philly or the show, and in case you didn’t hear, they were cranking Quiet Riot when they passed us. When’s the last time you heard a Bruce fan listening to ‘Mama We’re All Crazy Now’?”
“Pull up alongside them.”
“I’m not pulling up, Pack.”
I hated pulling up next to vehicles full of females. One time a carload of girls from Wakefield rolled up beside us at a light. I pretended not to notice, but soon my friends were on me to roll down my window. “Hey,” I said. My voice a tremor of infirmity. Six giggling girls leaned portside toward the open window of their two-door Ford Escort. If we’d been on the ocean they would’ve capsized before I’d had a chance to ravish them. “You girls going to the carnival?” It’s worth noting that the carnival had left town two months earlier. The light turned green and they sped away, giggles turned into all-out laughter.
“We need to let them know we’re stopping,” Packy said.
“How much longer do we have?” Stan asked, hoping to steer Packy’s train of thought onto his tracks.
“We’ve got about a 12-pack’s worth to go before we reach Philly,” I said.
Stan lived life fluidly, twelve ounces at a time. He was the audience beer distributers had in mind when introducing products like 30-packs and wide-mouth cans.
I met Stan when his family moved from West Roxbury in the summer of 1973. One day, I came out of my house and joined a group of neighbors as they watched a moving van back into the driveway across the street. A chubby kid wearing a Red Sox cap dropped out of the cab like a bag of grass seed. He stood on the asphalt holding a cardboard box observing his surroundings like he’d just landed on the planet.
“What’s in the box?” I said.
“Baseball Cards.”
“Who’s your favorite player?”
“Yaz. Who’s yours?”
“Carlton Fisk.”
“I’ve got Fisk.”
“And I’ve got Yaz,”
We exchanged cards, shook hands, and a friendship began.
In the years that followed, we played baseball together – he was better than me, drank our first beers – I threw up, he didn’t, and took the Finch Twins on a double-date to our junior prom – I ended up with Gail, the pretty one, he paired-up with Gloria, the drunk one.
Stan was out of work and out of money, as long as you’re willing to accept that someone can be out of things they’ve never possessed. When we were teenagers, he said he was going to see if he could get along without having a job. So far, so good. Most people would’ve left him by the side of the road. Not us. We liked having him around. As long as he made us laugh, we would pay his way and he could sit in the backseat in his Red Sox cap and high-waisted coach’s shorts pounding Buds all day.
They say there is a sub-species of sharks that die if they stop swimming. We all agreed, once he got started, it was a good idea to keep Stan drinking.
He bent forward, rummaged through an ankle-deep pile of empties, and said to Packy, “Well, we got seven left, not including the two we’re drinking.”
Sensing Packy was weakening, I pulled off at the next exit. The combination of car slowing down and van moving on made it seem as if we were going backward. A comforting disorder.
Bert directed me to a mom & pop gas & grocery where Stan convinced Packy it was smarter to buy a case rather than a twelve-pack since we’d all be drinking when we got to Philly.
After refueling Stan and the car, we continued south down the Turnpike. Packy didn’t mention the girls or the van. That’s how it was with him; he wasn’t obsessive, something else was sure to come along. In fact, he moved right on to updating us on his latest car wreck of a relationship.
“Carly says she wants to start dating people her own age,” he said. “Can you fucking believe that shit?”
Carly was sixteen, and if “that shit” meant cheating on her with her own sister then, yes, I could certainly believe it. But I kept those thoughts to myself. There’s nothing like a confrontation to quiet a car full of friends. Packy and I did not see eye to eye when it came to romancing women; I always fell in love and ended up getting crushed, he treated them like shit and ended up getting laid.
I sometimes envied his conquests, and was confused by his clear conscience, but the thing I admired about Packy, was his almost-innocent, if not over-the-top, sense of justice.
We met playing football as high school sophomores. Or, more accurately, Packy played and I cheered him on from the sidelines. Packy was a football player, our team captain. I was a student who wore a football uniform.
During senior year, our team was mired in a three-season, 25-game winless streak. In other words, our class was in danger of graduating without ever winning a single football game. Toward the end of the season, some of the soccer players thought it would be amusing to attend a home game wearing bags over their heads.
The following Monday, on his way to homeroom, Packy took it upon himself to defend what honor the streak had not robbed him of by handing out black eyes to the first four soccer players he passed. Before finding a fifth, he was summoned to the office by Principal Frost.
Frost was a 6' 3" ex-marine sargent who also captained the football team during his senior year at Bamberry.
“That’s why I didn’t call you to the office first thing,” he told Packy during their strictly off-the-record meeting. “You see,” he continued, “if I were you, and I once was, I would’ve beaten those punks so badly they would’ve had to cancel the soccer season. So I figured I’d let you have a shot at one or two of ‘em before pulling in the reigns.”
“I got four of them, sir,” Packy said.
“Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t think you’d move that fast. But, then again, maybe I did. You’ll never know. And neither will anyone else. Ever.”
Packy swears Frost was fighting back a smile, but was too in-control to crack.
“Are we clear?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, as much as it pains me, I have to punish you.”
Against heavy protestations and accusations of leniency from soccer Coach Martinez, Frost suspended Packy for the first quarter of the next game against Winchester.
When the quarter was over, an emancipated Packy entered the game with us trailing 18-0.
The streak ended that day with a 22-18 victory. Packy had three sacks, one of them for a safety, and rushed for two short touchdowns; good enough for honorable mention star-of-the-week honors in the Boston Herald.
In his yearbook comments, Packy wrote, Bamberry 22 Winchester 18 - thanks, Sarge.
The soccer team lost their final five games.
Half hour after we’d made our pit stop, I noticed a sparkle of flashing blue lights in the breakdown lane ahead. My foot involuntarily slid from the gas to the break; blue lights have that effect when you’re chauffeuring two sure-fire first-ballot hall of fame beer drinkers through the Tri-State area.
As we closed the distance, I recognized the green van we’d once been following bracketed between two idling New Jersey State Police cruisers. Several barefoot girls sat on the guardrail while two troopers stood before them writing in their notebooks. One of the girls was throwing up.
We passed the scene just as the almost-good-looking blonde was being led in handcuffs toward the backseat of a cruiser. She thrashed against her restraints, kicking at the troopers with one leg while digging her opposite bare heel into the pavement to slow their progress.
Beside me, Bert was asleep. In the rearview, I once again saw Stan and Packy smiling and shaking their heads. I didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. I ejected Springsteen A-Z and inserted a 1975 bootleg from Houston. Whenever possible, I played music to fit the moment; creating a soundtrack for our trip. After what we’d just witnessed, I had to hear “Jungleland.”
...The maximum lawman run down Flamingo chasing The Rat and the Barefoot girl...
--------------------------------------------
As we crossed into Pennsylvania, Bert came to and began rummaging through my tape collection causing my grip on the wheel to tighten. It was like that moment in the dentist’s chair before the drill first makes contact with a tooth.
He pulled out a tattered Memorex with “Passaic 9-19-78" written on the label.
“What’s this one?”
“That’s from the radio broadcast,” I said. “Remember? You were still at Northeastern. I taped it off ‘BCN.”
“Oh yeah. What’s on it?”
Bert was relentless. It wasn’t so much the questions, but that they were a deliberate, torturous lead-in to what he really wanted to say.
“You want me to list off all the songs they played?”
“Can we pop it in? I’d like to hear “Thunder Road.”
Bert always wanted to hear “Thunder Road”. Never requested anything else. Drove me nuts.
The banality was destroying a fantastic version of “She’s the One.” I had my secret antidote, though. Bert was the ultimate hypochondriac, so open to the power of suggestion he once claimed altitude sickness from listening to John Denver. I was about to make up some statistics about how often the person in the passenger seat gets carsick when he decided to let me up.
“I’ll just put it here, in the on-deck circle” he said, placing the cassette on the center console, “for when that one’s over.”
Knowing the Houston show wouldn’t end before we reached our hotel, and that “Thunder Road” was two songs away, I told him that would be fine.
A short time later, we pulled into a Howard Johnson’s motor lodge in North Philadelphia. It was an older member of the chain with an orange creamsicle-colored roof and colonial house architecture.
“Park on the side,” Bert said, “away from the office.”
“Why?” I said.
“There’s four of us. I made the reservation for two.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Did I mention Bert was cheap?
“We’re not in junior high anymore, Bert. We have jobs. We don’t need to be hiding out behind dumpsters in hotel parking lots.”
The room was around back and it smelled like someone had been storing warm cabbage in an old laundry hamper. Yellow and mint-green striped wallpaper adorned the walls. The area between the baseboard and window sill was scribbled with crayons like those disposable tablecloths you find in restaurants that cater to kids. Jammed into the window, was an air conditioner with a screw driven through the temperature control to keep it from being turned down. Two queen sized beds were dressed with undersized comforters like short slices of cheese on long pieces of bread.
I threw myself backward onto the mattress anticipating that soft cradle of satisfaction travelers experience on TV, but ended up with something closer to whiplash after landing on what amounted to a spring-loaded warehouse pallet.
“Hey, check it out,” I said.
Several dark hand prints blotted the wall where it met the far corner of the ceiling.
“Probably somebody trying to claw their way out,” Stan said.
I plugged in the boombox. Since there was no clear-cut song in Bruce’s catalogue to accentuate the moment, I cued up “Mansion on the Hill” and gave it a shot:
There's a place out on the edge of town sir
Risin' above the factories and the fields
Now ever since I was a child I can remember that mansion on the hill...
Risin' above the factories and the fields
Now ever since I was a child I can remember that mansion on the hill...
Stan and Packy began to laugh, instantly picking up on the sarcasm.
“C’mon, guys,”Bert said, “it’s not that bad.”
He was a little defensive.
Because Bert didn’t drive, he felt he could earn his keep by making the hotel reservations. He was wrong; the place was a disaster.
Packy called down for extra towels and a woman from housekeeping told him the pool was closed because a dead animal had fallen in and drowned clogging the filtration system. “They’ll have to drain the whole thing and start over,” she said.
“We weren’t planning on swimming,” Packy said.
We never got our towels.
----------------------------------------
The next morning, we ate breakfast at a storefront eat-and-run called The Little Griddle where they served scrambled eggs by the pound. After the intense ab-workout, we set about town killing time before the show visiting as many historical sights as possible. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Independence Hall. And, of course, the giant clothespin. But The Liberty Bell was where we were nearly tarred and feathered when Packy and Stan leaned over the roped barrier, placed their hands on the centuries-old iron, and pushed.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”
A patriot emerged from a small group of tourists. He wore a blue coat with red lapels and buckles on his shoes. “That bell has not been rung in over 200 years!”
“Easy there, Jefferson.” Stan said.
Struggling to stay in character, the patriot said, “If you persist in this manner, the stockade surely awaits you!”
Stan and Packy did little to hide their amusement and their laughter was making a lot of people uncomfortable, including me and Bert.
Just what the guy needs, I thought, a bunch of morons from Boston giving him a hard time.
I stepped between my rabble-rousing comrades, hooked my arms loosely around their quarter-keg necks, and said, “How about a headlock instead? Let’s go boys.”
“Jefferson,” Bert said, thoughtfully, as we left the viewing area, “So you were listening in ninth-grade history class.”
----------------------------------------
JFK Stadium was an ancient concrete horseshoe that held over 100,000 people, and if you saw the parking lot that day, you’d have thought every one of them drove their own car.
It was one massive tailgate party.
Marinated meats sizzled on charcoal grilles while footballs and frisbees filled the air. Three guys dressed as The Spirit of ‘76 marched up and down the rows playing out-of-tune Bruce songs on harmonica, tom toms, and acoustic guitar. The ratio of Springsteen fans to supporters of the other acts was near twenty-five-to-one. Most car stereos were synchronized to a local station playing non-stop Bruce. When someone a few cars away tried to sneak in a song from Sting’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles, the collective Springsteen volume was amped-up to drown it out. Proving a single blue turtle could not survive in an ocean of “Badlands”.
...Talk about a dream, try to make it real...
Half the male concertgoers were dressed for the Born in the USA tour. An army of rock and roll Rambos wearing sleeveless t-shirts and bandanas, they represented a recent, but bygone era, when Bruce bulked up and Stallone trimmed down and it wasn’t always easy to tell the two apart at a quick glance. They walked with chests out, fists in the air, shouting, “Bruuuuuuuce!” which is Latin for I’ve never had an original thought in my life.
“Can you believe these guys?” Stan said.
It was a warm afternoon and many female fans celebrated the end of summer by wearing clingy halters and terrycloth shorts. “I’m Goin’ Down” followed “Badlands” on the airwaves and I thought of my first girlfriend, who, in 1984, thanks to me and a pair of $125 scalper-priced tickets, saw her first Bruce show; a Born in the USA extravaganza at the Worcester Centrum. Two years later, she dumped me for the very same scalper. I felt like Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And if that wasn’t bad enough, before we broke up, she told me she liked Bruce before we met; this from a girl who didn’t know a Saint in the City from a Devil in a Blue Dress. The thought of her out there misrepresenting the origins of her fandom prevented me from completely moving on.
...lately girl you get your kicks from just driving me down, down, down, down...
To our left, four guys in tie-dye t-shirts stood around aimlessly playing let’s-take-turns-dropping-the-beanbag-on-the-ground, or, as it was more commonly known, hacky-sack.
Packy stared at the hippie-wannabes.
“Can anyone explain this to me?”
“Explain what?” Bert said.
“Alright,” Packy said, “they kick the thing around, it falls on the pavement, no one keeps score, no one wins, no one loses. What the fuck?”
Stan came over.
“First of all,” he said, “these guys suck. The sack is not supposed to spend that much time on the ground. Second, they’re non-athletes, that’s as close to competition as they get.”
Across the way, some fraternity types were passing a funnel around chugging full beers one after the next. One guy in particular, a John Belushi look-alike, seemed to be headed for a difficult night.
“What a way to get ready for a show,” Bert said.
Bert and I never drank before shows. It wasn’t so much the drunkenness, but the risk of having to go to the men’s room during a critical portion of the concert, which, for us, lasted from the moment Bruce took the stage to the final bows. Packy and Stan were not quite so intense. They crossed the lane and joined the frat boys for a funnel, reluctantly exchanging high fives with Belushi Guy before returning.
With little interest in the opening acts - African singer Youssou N’Dour and Cambridge’s own Traci Chapman - we headed across the parking lot and circled Veteran’s Stadium before walking over to The Spectrum to visit the Rocky statue.
“Weird, huh?” Stan said.
“What?” Packy said.
“Walking form one major sporting facility to another. Back home, it would take all day to walk from Foxboro Stadium to The Garden. Shit, it would take all day if we ran. It’s longer than a marathon.”
“Even The Garden and Fenway are three miles apart,” Bert said.
“The Spectrum,” I said, as we approached, “Lot’s of big ones here over the years. Erving and Malone. Clarke and Parent.”
“I hated those Flyers teams,” Packy said.
Bert said, “That’s because they beat the Bruins in ‘74. The Broad Street Bullies were bigger and badder than The Big Bad Bruins.”
For reasons unknown, Bert was a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.
“Maybe,” Stan said, defending Packy and the Bruins, “but the Maple Leafs have sucked for forty-five years.”
It was a classic 3rd-grade playground tactic; when insulted, avoid the original debate by attacking something of equal or greater value to the other person.
“Not true,” Bert said, “They won The Cup in ‘67.”
The hockey talk stopped as we stood in front of The Spectrum looking up at the two-ton, ten-foot-tall, bronze statue of Rocky Balboa. Several other people milled about, snapping pictures and lounging on the steps.
“Hey,” Stan said, “what’s up with the cancer stick?”
Somebody had wedged a cigarette between the Italian Stallion’s sepia-colored lips.
“No wonder he always got his ass kicked.”
“He didn’t always get his ass kicked,” Packy said.
“He lost 24 fights,” Stan said. “And even when he won, he got pounded first.”
Stan was the only person in the theater taking notes when the ring announcer read off Rocky’s won-loss record.
“He knocked out Spider Rico in the 2nd round,” Packy said.
“Are you guys serious?” Bert said. “You’re debating the merits of a fictitious boxer?”
“I wonder,” Stan said, circling the statue, “if there’s a mark where he threw the motorcycle helmet in Rocky III.”
----------------------------------------
Back at the car, I handed out the tickets, which had aged prematurely due to my habit of constantly pulling them from my pocket to make sure I hadn’t misplaced them. We had purchased the tickets in two separate phone transactions through Ticketron and somehow ended up one row apart.
As I locked up the car, Belushi Guy called over and asked if we had any extra beers.
“Where are your friends?” Stan said.
“Bunch of pussies went in without me,” he said.
He was slouching in a lawn chair holding the funnel to his chest like a puppy. Stan plucked two warm Budweisers from the trunk and walked them over.
“Don’t over do it, man, you don’t want to miss the show.”
Bert said, “Now we know the guy’s wrecked if he’s taking abstinance advice from Stan.”
“No worries,” Belushi said. “Hey, why don’t you stay out here with me? We’ll get fucked up!”
“Sounds tempting,” Stan said.
At the turnstiles, Packy, wearing only shorts and sneakers, was allowed to skip the cursory contraband pat-down.
“Concrete horseshoe?” Stan said, as he passed through. “Looks more like a giant cement toilet seat.”
Stadiums were built for sporting events, therefore, 85% of seats sold for stadium rock shows suck. Of that 85%, we were sitting in the worst 20%; high up in the far end of the bowl. The seats were actually steel benches with numbers stenciled on them. The numbers, however, were too close together, resulting in awkward mini-rounds of musical chairs whenever someone new showed up. The girl beside me held a cardboard sign with “Rosalita!” written on it. She gazed at the stage, better than a football field away, then down at her pitiful request. Frowning, she folded the sign in two, then again, and decided to use it as a cushion.
Large projection screens were set up on either side of the stage, and, after awhile, my eyes and ears grew accustomed to the delay between what was happening on stage and what was being broadcast across the divide.
Sting and Peter Gabriel each performed solid, hour-long, hit-filled sets; the most favorable crowd reaction coming when Bruce joined Sting for a duet of “Every Breath You Take.”
Next up: The Main Event.
During the break, the big screens scrolled text from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“This is good,” Bert said.
“What’s good?” I said.
We were watching road crews break things down and build them back up again while Stan and Packy roamed the outer concourse in search of beer. From where we sat, the stage looked more like a waterfront wharf than a place to make music.
“It’s good that Bruce will be playing after dark.”
“I agree, too many distractions between here and the stage when the sun’s out.”
As I said this, a man a section over swung and missed at a bounding beach ball, hitting the back of a woman’s head with his forearm in the follow-through.
“The only thing worse,” Bert said, “than Bruce playing a stadium, is Bruce playing a stadium in daylight. Rock and roll was meant to be played indoors under minimal lighting.”
“Yup, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing The E Street Band at Pete’s Tavern anytime soon.”
“So here we are. Damn shame.”
This was as close as Bert came to criticizing Bruce. It was as if he thought any second-guessing on his part would somehow get back to The Boss. He even refused to criticize Bruce’s horrendous fluttering in the “Dancing in the Dark” video, calling it “necessary promotion.” Blind adoration equaled true loyalty.
Bert and I met when I was in eighth grade and he was covering for an English teacher on maternity leave. During the second class with Mr Bertini, the plan called for a spelling bee. I hated being the center of attention, and sometimes misspelled words on purpose so I wouldn’t have to participate, but on that day, I was a spelling fool, and led my team to the final round where teammates chose me to represent them.
“Cashmere,” Mr Bertini said.
I sensed a trick.
“Kashmir,” I said. “Capitol K - A - S - H - M - I - R, Kashmir.”
My classmates laughed while my teammates stared slack-jawed. Mr Bertini wasn’t laughing, but he was grinning. And nodding. He declared us winners on a technicality stating that he hadn’t specified whether he was looking for the fabric or the country.
He stopped me after class.
“So, you’re a Led Zeppelin fan?”
“Physical Graffiti’s my favorite album.”
“Well, today you struck a blow for rock and roll fans of this school.”
“So did you.”
A few days later, he handed me a short stack of LP’s.
“Check these out.”
Among the titles was Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ. I was familiar with Born to Run, but, like most of my peers, knew little of Bruce’s recorded history prior to 1975. I taped the album, listened til it was threadbare, scrounged up some money to buy a used copy of Wild & Innocent..., and began saving my allowance so I could purchase Darkness on the Edge of Town when it came out two months later. By 1980, I had begun going to concerts, and Mr Bertini had become Bert. That December, he helped me, Packy, and Stan secure tickets to see the first of two River shows at Boston Garden. We’ve been attending shows together ever since.
Stan and Packy arrived with four beers just as the first bank of lights went dark around the stadium. The crowd began cheering as stragglers ran to find their seats, but the rest of the lights stayed on.
“They must love doing that,” Stan said.
“What?” Packy said.
“Fucking with the lights. Same thing with the guitars; all the guy has to do is strum once and every idiot in the stands starts cheering.”
“I’d love to be that guy,” Packy said.
“Me too,” Stan said.
“It’s pretty unique, though, isn’t it?” I said.
“What’s that?” Packy said.
“The whole thing with the lights. I mean, where else do people cheer when the lights go out?”
“What about the theater?”
“No, there it’s a signal to hush. Here, we’re just waiting to be plunged into darkness so we can let loose. There’s nothing else like it.”
“Hey,” Stan said, “have they been doing ‘Born to Run?’”
I knew where he was going with this because I had been wondering the same thing. In our collective opinion – minus Bert, the apologist – Bruce had not made many missteps in his career, but earlier that year, his reading of “Born to Run” on the Tunnel of Love Tour was one of his worst. Seated on a stool, while the rest of the band waited beneath the stage, Bruce strummed his acoustic guitar and tiptoed through one of rock’s defining anthems.
“I believe they are,” I said, “but I’m not sure what version.”
“He better do it the right way,” Stan said.
The right way meant with full-band accompaniment.
“I agree,” I said.
“He fucked with ‘No Surrender’ on the Born in the USA tour, too.”
“I know,” I said.
“As long as he doesn’t do “Hungry Heart”, Packy said, “and that pansy-ass sing-along, I’ll be happy.”
“They’re his songs,” Bert said, “he should be able to perform them how he sees fit.”
Even though Bert was the senior member of our crew, he did not receive the respect generally reserved for chiefs. Yes, he was older, but things like under-booking hotel rooms and falling asleep when he was supposed to be helping with directions did not go unnoticed, and his attempts at providing the voice of reason were often met with derision.
Just as Stan and Packy leaned forward to enforce their positions, the rest of the lights went out, and a day’s worth of anticipation burst forth as tens of thousands stood and hollered, drowning out the potential for further setlist debate. I turned to Bert and shook his hand. We then turned around and shook with Packy and Stan. Our pre-show ritual. No matter our opinions, one thing we agreed on; this was supremely important, the reason we drove nearly 300 miles.
----------------------------------------
The show opened with Bruce in the center-stage spotlight.
“ONE!...TWO!...ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”
“Born in the USA” thundered across the stadium over a sea of pumping fists. The Rambos were happy. Okay, we were all throwing fists. You couldn’t help being swept up in the spectacle.
What followed was a well-paced half hour of familiar songs, including “The Promised Land” (more fist pumping) and “Cadillac Ranch.” Then came the point in the show – there’s always at least one – where, later, you look back and say, That moment alone was worth the price of admission.
Even though we listened to it on the ride down, “Jungleland”, having not shown up once during the Tunnel of Love tour, was not on my anticipatory radar. And when Roy Bittan began fingering the opening notes, it took me a few moments to place the arrangement. Bert, Packy, and Stan were all leaning toward me. The guys always insisted I was haunted for my ability to recognize and identify a song within the first three notes. I had my head cocked, right ear and squinting eye aimed toward the stage.
“‘JUNGLELAND’!”
The song was the centerpiece of the show, bringing out the best in the band’s major players; from Bruce’s pained vocals to Nils nailing Steve Van Zandt’s solo, from Max’s musclebound drumming to Clarence’s performance-defining sax interlude. It was a near-perfect performance of an epic number, one that floored even the Born in the USA-onlys.
The next few songs were made all the better simply for following “Jungleland.” “Thunder Road” was like a hopeful morning after a dark night. “Glory Days,” and subsequent fan reaction, threatened to reduce the old concrete horseshoe to powder and obscure the guest appearance of original E Street, and current Peter Gabriel keyboardist, David Sancious.
Then came ultimate redemption.
Due to the cadence of Bruce’s famous count-ins, some songs are recognizable before they even start; the tempo-establishing “one...two...three...four” as much a part of the construction as any bridge or solo. “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” immediately come to mind. “Born to Run” is another of those songs, except Bruce only gets to “two” before Max drum-rolls the rest of the band in. And as “Glory Days” faded-out, the band all in place, no acoustic guitars in sight, that’s exactly what happened. I turned around to face Stan and we shouted in unison, “THE RIGHT WAY!”
“Born to Run” was born again.
As the show approached its climax, Bruce and The E Streeters were joined by the other performers for a momentum-killing, but appropriately chosen cover of Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up.” It was during this politically-charged moment that a ruckus broke out in the row behind Bert and me.
I turned to see Packy’s hands balled into fists around some stranger’s collar. Stan stood to the side, his body shielding two beers to prevent spillage. Security was nowhere to be seen. Most of them had been reassigned to the field to stem the steady flow of fence-jumpers rushing the stage.
“Pack!” I said, yelling over the music. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making an example out of this douche bag!”
The douche bag was a large kid, but his body was doughy like the guy who plays football only because it’s what’s expected of him. He was wearing an LA Lakers hat and San Francisco 49ers shirt, which in 1988, meant he was the most despicable of clichés; a front-running sports fan. If he’d been wearing a stitch of Edmonton Oilers gear, I would have found it hard to intervene on his behalf.
“Come on Pack, let him go. Just what we need is to have to bail you out of jail 6 hours from Boston.”
“You don’t even know what he said.”
“Tell me,” I said, figuring it was about the clothes.
“He said ‘Sting should’ve gone on last’ and ‘Only an idiot would have Springsteen headline the show.’”
I had to admit the guy was a douche bag to say such a thing. But I also knew a broken nose wouldn’t do much to convert him to our way of thinking.
“Pack, don’t be a fool. We still got a lot of drinking to do.”
That seemed to get his attention.
It definitely got Stan’s.
“He’s right, Pack, maybe we’ll see him somewhere after last call.”
Packy loosened his grip and pointed to the exit. “I don’t care where you go, but you’re no longer welcome in this section.”
The douche bag left with two friends. At the end of the row, he turned and yelled something about Boston and Springsteen sucking, then sauntered up the stairs and down the tunnel. I’ll admit I kind of felt bad for the guy. I felt bad for anyone who said the wrong thing around Packy. It could’ve been worse, though, he could’ve been wearing a bag over his head instead of all that west coast regalia.
-------------------------------------------
After the show, Stan surveyed the parking lot. Every lane jammed with the red glow of stalled-out taillights. “We won’t get out of here until after midnight,” he said. “That’s too much valuable drinking time to waste sitting in traffic.”
He was right, and with the buzz from the show and Packy’s near physical altercation still fresh, we decided a little walk was just what we needed.
“Hey,” Packy said, “check out Funnel Boy.”
Belushi Guy was right where we left him. Except his eyes were closed. The funnel was still clutched tightly to his chest and several empty beer cans cluttered the ground.
“Wonder where his friends are,” I said.
“Probably looking for him inside,” Bert said.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Packy, put your shirt on, Bert, do your stuff.”
It only took a minute for him to pick up the scent and soon we were in an unfamiliar neighborhood several blocks from the sports complex north of Pattison Avenue.
“Here we go,” he said.
We were standing on a dimly lit sidewalk by an open side-door.
“You sure?” I said.
The sign above the door read:
IRISH AMERICAN CLUB
“Yup,” Bert said. “Positive.”
He didn’t wait for the rest of us.
The lighting inside wasn’t much brighter than out and it didn’t take long to adjust to the shot-and-a-beer atmosphere. There was an L-shaped bar at the back of the room where two men, one very fat, the other very thin, sat angled toward one another on swivel stools. They gave us a quick look then went back to their conversation. Another man sat at the far end against the wall. A muted M*A*S*H rerun played on a TV over his head. He wore a hat with 82nd AIRBORNE and several pins on the bill. A half-full glass of amber liquid sat next to a chipped ashtray on the bar in front of him. Cigarette smoke rose in a thin line joining the hazy layer that lingered just below the ceiling. Four men sat at a corner table playing poker with real money beneath the only light in the room bright enough to read cards. A darkened stairwell led upstairs, probably to a 2nd floor function room. No parties tonight.
We approached the bar.
Trophies of various size sat high on a shelf beside team photographs of Little Leaguers. A 30-ounce Dave Cash model Louisville Slugger rested on a lower shelf beneath rows of dusty bottles. At the near end, a mounted pay phone jutted out behind a railed-off waitress station, though it seemd unlikely this grille room had seen a waitress, or any woman for that matter, in some years.
The bartender took a quick look at Bert then considered me, Packy, and Stan.
“Everybody old enough?”
He was an older version of the coach in the Little League pictures; short with sagging cheeks, thick brown sideburns running ears to jawbone. A patch on his fishing hat said “Scuppie.”
We reached for our wallets.
“Yes or no, fellas. I don’t read small print.”
“Yes,” we all said.
He wristed us each a cardboard Schlitz coaster like a seasoned blackjack dealer.
“We don’t serve Schlitz. All we got is bottles of Bud and Michelob and $1 drafts of Miller. I do shots and straight-up. You want something sweet and creamy, you’ve come to the wrong place. ”
“Four Millers,” Stan said, “and four more after that.”
“Sure thing. Oh, and fellas, when last call comes, make sure and put your cups face down on the bar. Let’s me know you’re in without all the fuss.”
“When is last call?” Stan said.
“Oh, could be anytime between one and two. Sometimes a little later. You fellas coming from The Stadium?”
“Yup,” we all said.
“I like Bruce,” Scuppie said. “Don’t care too much for Sting, though.”
“It was a good show,” Bert said. Bert said that about every show he’d ever attended.
“Shit, I saw Bruce in ‘75, New Year’s Eve at The Tower Theater,” Scuppie said. “Guy played like they were going to take his guitar away. Never saw anybody work that hard. Not before, not since. Stopped going to concerts after that. I figured, what’s the point, you know?”
“That must have been something,” I said, “seeing him in a place that small.”
“Yeah,” Scuppie said, “he’s earned it, though. Playing the big places. Good for him.”
With the ground rules in place, we set about drinking as much beer as possible in the time allotted. Bert and Packy dug in at the bar while Stan and I got some quarters and headed for the coin-operated basketball machine located by the door we came in.
On the way, Stan stopped to check out a neglected jukebox.
“Look,” he said.
I walked over.
“Check out E6.”
“‘My Hometown’,” I said. “Is that it for Bruce?”
“No, look at the b-side.”
“‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ live.”
“ Step aside, my friend.”
With a wry grin on his face, Stan fed several quarters into the undernourished machine and punched the same combination eight times. The internal mechanisms clicked to life and every patron except the veteran at the bar turned as Bruce’s voice called out over jingling sleigh bells on a 1975 December night from CW Post College:
It’s all cold down along the beach, and the wind’s whippin’ down the Boardwalk...
The basketball machine was in tough shape, the canopy and sidewalls had been removed and the coin slot was obstructed by what looked like a broken-off popsicle stick.
“Just reach in and take the balls out,” Scuppie said. “That thing hasn’t worked in over a year. Bunch of college shits came in here for a stag party. Beat the crap outta that thing. Can you believe it, a stag party in here?” His voice rose a couple octaves before crashing down in spasms of crackling coughs.
Stan and I played H-O-R-S-E, keeping score on a napkin, but ran out of shots before running out of letters and rejoined Bert and Packy who were in the midst of a heated discussion with Scuppie and the other two men about who was the greatest 3rd baseman of all-time. Santa was checking his list twice for the eighth and final time when one of the poker players threw his chair back and yanked the cord from the wall.
“I’m surprised they lasted that long,” Stan said.
“Mike Schmidt,” Scuppie said. “Best 3rd baseman ever. Not even close.”
“You been talking up that Tastykake-eating shit-bum like he’s the second coming of Brooks Robinson,” Fat Man said. “What about Eddie Matthews?”
“Matthews, Brett, Traynor, Robinson, they’re all great,” Scuppie said, “but Schmidt’s the greatest. And before you Boston guys go labeling me as bias, I’m a Pirates fan, grew up in Pittsburgh. Schmidt’s been making my life miserable for 15 seasons.”
“What’s Tastykake?” Stan asked. He had already turned a cup upside down on the bar, preparing for last call.
“They’re like Hostess snacks, except the filling taste like shit,” Fat Man said.
“You can’t beat their Krimpets,” Thin Man said.
“Can you get any around here?” Stan said.
“Not at this hour,” Fat Man said.
The card game was breaking up behind us.
Bert, eyes at half-mast said, “What about Wade Boggs?”
“Wade Boggs?” Scuppie said, “You shitting me? I hope this guy’s not driving, which reminds me, that’s last call, fellas.”
I did my best to retrace our steps to the parking lot. Stan and Packy followed along holding up Bert who’s coordination had been reduced to that of a new-born colt.
“What happened to him?” Packy said, “His legs are like a tangle of silly-string.”
“You know Bert,” Stan said, “he drinks like a major league pitcher pitches; every fifth day or so, he warms up, drinks way beyond his pitch-count, then has to be carried off the field.”
“I think I drank myself sober,” Packy said.
“What do you mean?”
“I was drunk, then I kept going. Drank until I was straight again.”
“Can you do that? What would be the point?”
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“I feel like a fucking guide-dog for three idiots,” I said. I was tired and grumpy due to my failing sense of direction and the chill night air was adding pressure to an already constricting beer-on-tap headache.
“What’s your problem?” Packy said. “We’re the ones carrying the professor.”
“Drinking yourself sober?” I said. “Maybe if you had lung cancer you’d cure yourself with cigarettes.”
“Hey, Pack,” Stan said, “I think what he’s trying to say is you’re an oxymoron.”
Packy said, “You can’t be an oxymoron, you asshole.”
“Of course not,” I said, with bountiful sarcasm, “but you can drink yourself sober.”
Just then, the top of the stadium appeared up ahead and we pressed on quietly toward the parking lot. It was easy to locate my car. It was the only one left.
We strapped Bert into the passenger seat and I gave Packy a half-hearted punch to the shoulder. He returned the favor and then some. No hard feelings. Just a bruise.
It was 2:45 am when we got to the hotel. No longer concerned with the manager, or being asked to leave, we staggered into the thick, soupy air of our room and settled into the uneven rhythms of alcohol-induced slumber. Before dozing off, I popped Springsteen A to Z: tape 4 into the boombox, cued up “Meeting Across the River,” lowered the volume...
...Change your shirt, ‘cause tonight we got style...
...and fell asleep before the song was half over.
-------------------------------------------
The next morning, after sleeping through the 11:00 checkout, I woke to a soft knock at the door. I cracked it open and squinted at a cleaning woman who couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall. She said she would come back and I blocked her view of the bodies strewn about and the mess she would be coming back to.
Without a show to look forward to, the ride home seemed twice as long as the ride down. It was a pleasant afternoon, but the car was uncomfortably warm, and it took me an hour to realize the heat was still on from the night before. My three passengers took turns dozing off and waking up to ask where we were before falling out again. I didn’t mind. Yes, these were my friends, but 48 hours of constant exposure to one another had left us all in need of separation – even if the only option was to curl up and away from the person beside you.
In the tape deck was a Westwood One broadcast of a Tunnel of Love show from Sweden. Toward the end of the tape, Bruce introduced Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” with the official announcement of his inclusion in the Amnesty Tour, “...and when we come to your town, come on out, support the tour...” It was like coming across an invitation to a party you’d already attended, and I found myself wondering how long we’d have to wait for the next Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band tour announcement.
The answer: ten years.
------------------------------------------
In 1989, Bruce fired the E Street Band, married his back-up singer, and moved to California. That same year, MTV unveiled a new series; MTV: Unplugged, and suddenly everyone was taking a stool, stripping down, and playing acoustic versions of their greatest songs. It was rock and roll anorexia. Bruce tried to rescue us in 1992 by plugging in after one acoustic number. The problem was, with the exception of E Street’s Roy Bittan, he had the wrong band backing him.
I attended two of the four Massachusetts shows Bruce performed in 1992-93 on what most fans referred to as the Other Band Tour, but what Me, Stan and Packy called the Shit Band Tour. They were all qualified musicians; it was not about who they were, but who they were not.
We got our hopes up in 1995 during the brief E Street reunion to promote Greatest Hits, and then stayed local again for the Tom Joad solo tour of ‘95-‘97. With the exception of Bert, me and my Bruce friends just didn’t feel it was worth traveling for if The E Street Band wasn’t part of it.
Them came 1998.
Toward the end of that year, two things happened to get us thinking that maybe, just maybe, Bruce would come to his senses: First, Tracks, the long awaited collection of outtakes was released. Then it was announced Bruce would be a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class of 1999. I wasn’t happy about Bruce going in without the E Street Band, but rumors were circulating that they would be included in the presentation.
By the time they performed at the Rock Hall ceremony in March, the itinerary for the opening European leg of the E Street Band Reunion Tour was set. During his acceptance speech, before introducing The Band, Bruce quoted Steven Van Zandt, saying, “Rock and roll, it’s a band thing.” He had indeed come to his senses.
---------------------------------------------
We had to wait until August for the tour to reach Boston where we were treated to five sold-out shows at the Fleetcenter.
Prior to the third show, as I walked to the arena, my past caught up to me in the shadow of a ridiculous mini-Ferris wheel erected to make Bostonians feel they’d been transported to the Jersey Shore of Bruce’s youth. There in the protective dimness, older, but just as industrious, was the scalper who’d stolen my girl thirteen years earlier. I considered turning him in, but figured I’d become the bait in some half-baked sting operation and continued on.
Inside, breaking away from the merchandise booth, clutching a tour shirt, was The Girl herself, mother of two, still a fan. As I shook her husband’s hand, she presented me, not by name, but as “the guy I told you about, the one who introduced me to Bruce.”
She said it as if it were never in doubt and I almost shucked it off so she wouldn’t know how much it meant to me. A wonderful way to be remembered.
------------------------------------------
The Boston stand was sensational, and left us wanting more, so Bert, Stan, Packy, and I made plans for a return trip to Philly in September. A scheduling change due to Hurricane Floyd turned what was to be a one-show trip into a double-header weekend; the final two shows of an incredible six-night stand in which the band would end up playing 58 different songs. Mind-blowing, even by Bruce standards.
Bert and I were both still single, and Stan and Packy had pretty much written a Possibility-of-E-Street-Band-Reunion clause into their wedding vows. Stan’s wife took some convincing, however, and her agreeing to the Reunion Clause was contingent upon the counter-inclusion of an I-Pledge-Not-To-Come-Home-Shitfaced clause.
We promised to behave.
After the first show, which took place at the old Spectrum – and at which several rarities were played, and “Born to Run” and “No Surrender” were performed the right way, and not one acoustic guitar showed up where it didn’t belong – we went straight back to our hotel to rest up for the next night.
“Can you believe that setlist?” I said.
“Unbelievable,” Packy said. “And, thankfully, no ‘Hungry Heart’ or ‘Dancing in the Dark’.”
We were sitting around in sweat pants, watching Sportcenter, drinking beer at a leisurely pace, not worried about finishing or where the next one was coming from.
“This is the first time,” Bert said, “that I can remember you three not bitching about something after a Bruce show.”
“I can’t believe Bruce is fifty,” Packy said. “My knees hurt just watching him.”
“He is a marvel,” Bert said. “Works his ass off just like us.”
“Just like us?” Stan said. “You’ve been a substitute teacher for over twenty years.”
“All right,” I said, “lights out.”
Still keeping the peace; I wasn’t going to remind Stan of his earlier career as a professional freeloader.
------------------------------------------
The next night, as had become my habit due to chronic low back pain, I waited in the concourse for the last possible moment before finding my seat.
I thought about how much had changed over the past ten years. JFK Stadium was long gone; demolished shortly after the Amnesty show. Packy, a father of three, had taken over his father’s liquor business, and Stan, father of one, had done two years of community college before taking a supervisor’s job with an office products company. I found myself wondering how the two backseat power-drinkers got married before I did.
I was renting an apartment, still in construction, but contemplating how much longer my body would tolerate it. Bert was still Bert, though. He remained living at home, and every day he extended his record streak of consecutive days as a substitute teacher.
The concert and road trip experience had changed as well. Coolers of beer had been replaced by lumbar supports, anti-inlfammatories, and cell-phones. And those cell-phones were replacing lighters as the beacon of choice to lure bands back to the stage for an encore. Bert didn’t own a computer, so I assumed responsibility of ticket purchasing and hotel reservations. Ticketron had been cannibalized by Ticketmaster in 1991, and, through the advent of internet onsales, I found that buying single seats got us closer to the stage – sitting together was overrated. A clean, cozy Days Inn could be booked at a great rate for four on Priceline. Even customized door-to-door driving instructions were just a few clicks away on MapQuest. And for those unable to make it to the show, there were a growing number of chat rooms and message boards dedicated to delivering blow-by-blow, song-by-song, realtime accounts from the arena.
It was almost 8:15, the concourse nearly empty. Sixteen shows behind me; a long way to go to a hundred. I was thinking I’d better get to my seat before my nostalgia trip cast a melancholy shadow over the opening of the show.
Then I saw him.
Not someone I’d ever met, but still, someone recognizable.
He emerged from the beer stand and out of the past like an embedded Japanese soldier from the jungles of The Philippines. Dark hair, a bit long and streaked with a gray, flared from under a red sun-bleached bandana. The sleeves of his vintage bootleg t-shirt had been removed and although his arms retained some semblance of musculature, his middle was soft like a Bundt cake. Suds spilled over the brim of his paper cup as he scanned his ticket stub for a seat location.
I thought about my old flattop haircut and how I used to laugh at guys like this. His presence now was strangely comforting, his look now, almost original. It was as if he’d been hibernating, the lone torchbearer for all the Rambos of the 80's who’d grown impatient with the ten-year wait.
I stepped back as he made his way through the tunnel. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he clenched his stub into a fist and raised it high above his head. Turning three-hundred-sixty degrees, he threw his head back and gazed up at the rafters.
I found myself thinking of a line from a song out of the Shit Band era:
..I couldn't quite recall the name
But the pose looked familiar to me...
But the pose looked familiar to me...
I waited....
Let it out, brother....
And just as the lights went down, he did...
“Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!”
I followed him into the darkness as the place went crazy.
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