Fourth of July, Asbury Park
We’re driving up the Northway on our way to Lake Placid. I’m playing an excellent little mix of tunes that seemed fitting enough for the Fourth of July for me to burn them onto a disc — “Indoor Fireworks,” “American Woman,” and the like. And a most excellent rendition of a Bruce Springsteen song, “Fourth of July, Asbury Park,” done by Richard Shindell. I have never been a Bruce fan; in fact, I really can’t stand his stuff. But this rendering of this old nugget is transcendent, revealing the song to be something deeply nostalgic, sweet and sad at the same time, to be something it never was when Bruce sang it. But it turns out the song’s a piece of art, the exact painting of lost summers long ago that I was wishing I could bring about last week. Not my lost summers, but someone’s. And we’re all singing along. I tell Lee about the Apple Music Store’s Independence Day list, which is vastly inferior to mine, and which includes the execrable Bruce song “Born in the USA.” I tell her that if I make the disc again, I might rip John Candy’s intensely funny take on the song from “Canadian Bacon” — they’re trying to sing the song, but no one knows anything but the chorus, so they kinda hum the in-between parts.
This is all going somewhere — trust me.
We pull up and pass a pair of motorcyclists. We notice them because one has a flag on his jacket, and the girls are counting flags, and then because the other is riding a beautifully restored Indian. Lee gives him a thumbs up as we pass, because of the gorgeous bike. He looks over at her, and to me she rags on his unfortunate facial hair, a soul patch. Then we, and the bikers, pull off at the next rest area. The bikers flop out on the grass to stretch themselves, we set up a picnic lunch at a table not far away. During lunch, I speak more of my new appreciation for Richard Shindell’s version of the song, and my disdain for the original.
The girls run around a little while and then we potty up (which, it just occurs to me, may not be the phrase other people use to describe herding children through the bathroom process). The bikers also potty up. When I come out of the bathroom, someone has accosted the Indian rider and is getting him to sign a tourist brochure she has in her hands, which strikes me as odd. The bikers proceed to their bikes and then as I get another look, I realize who the guy with the dumb soul patch is: in the words of the Jersey girls I went to school with, “Bruuuuuuce!”
So, now, we’ve given him a thumbs up for his bike, but which he may well have thought was aimed at him, and we’ve insulted his music, within earshot, without even knowing he was there. Not bad for one potty stop. (I’m just thankful we weren’t still doing the John Candy imitation. THAT would have been embarassing.) And it was only the second of July!
Years after the original post, the miracle of YouTube can present you with visual illustrations for this story:
No one knows the words to the song “Born in the USA,” from Canadian Bacon.
Related Posts
A musical journey
