Working-Class Smug

There was a time when I was a real snob about Bruce Springsteen, and I had no patience for rich kids talking about how the Boss "spoke" to them.

Please. Springsteen was one of us , scrappy and restless and aching to leave a neighborhood just like ours. He was there on our street, where mothers dug into sofas for loose change, fathers poured out of factories and everyone drank whatever beer was on sale. What did suburban kids know about that?

When you're working-class, you don't have many chances to feel smug and superior to anybody , but Springsteen made us proud to be the kids who drove beat-up cars and rushed out screen doors that slammed because the springs were broken and no one had the time to fix them.

A kid whose daddy gave him a car and a legacy of higher learning could never understand our kind of hurry. We may have attended the same schools and lived in the same dorms, but we spoke entirely different languages when we talked about our plans.

Springsteen's "Born To Run" album came out during my freshman year in college. For the first time, I felt someone had set my life to music. Here was this guy from Jersey singing about some of the very things I was raised not to mention such as Dad marrying Mom after she got pregnant with me or the way your dreams can end up in anonymous graves. I was a full-time student working two jobs, but humming "Thunder Road" or "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" brought a mission to the madness.

Time passed, and I learned how foolish it was to think any class of people holds the market on life's struggles. Some of the wealthiest people I know are also the unhappiest, maybe because they've figured out that what really ails us can't be blamed on bills. That requires some heavy-duty thinking, and it's bound to hurt heart and head.

My possessiveness of all things Springsteen has morphed into a reluctance to suggest he ever speaks for me. You can't say anything about what his music means to you without stepping onto someone else's story.

More than 30 years later, Springsteen's songs continue to churn up something in us that we didn't even know had a name until he said it.

My friend Jay is more than a decade younger than I am, and that's only the beginning of our differences. He's on a steady climb up and drives home to suburban Virginia. He has a wife who loves him and two little girls who think he orders the sun to shine in the morning and paint their rooms red as it sets. Hardly a Springsteen kind of life.

But Jay has lived long enough to know things. His beloved father is gone, some friends have let him down and he loves a woman who understands more about him than he ever meant to let out. So, of course, he loves Springsteen.

For weeks, Jay has kept me posted on every budding detail leading up to Tuesday's release of Springsteen's latest album, "Magic." We've shared every snippet of song found on the Internet, every new announcement of concert dates.

Earlier this week, another one of my friends suggested Springsteen isn't working-class anymore. "Did you see what he paid for his house?" he said.

I've heard this before, and with the best sigh I could muster I explained that when you come from the working class, you never leave it — unless you're trying to hide where you come from, and then you're just a disappointment. I wish Springsteen's tickets didn't cost so much, but I don't hold it against him. It's human to show off once in a while.

On Tuesday, I stopped at a bookstore and bought Springsteen's latest. I slipped it into the player on my dash and went for a ride.

He still has a lot on his mind, from girls in their summer clothes who pass him by to all the Americans wondering who will be the last to die for a mistake. He swears he'll work for the kind of love some guys want for free, and he sings mournfully about a father who still believes the flag flying over the courthouse comes with promises about "who we are, what we'll do and what we won't."

I turned up the volume, rolled down the windows and took the long way home.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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