Trouble in The Heartland

Short background: after a death in my family, I was experiencing guilt for being alive. Then one day as I was listening to Springsteen album, Darkness on The Edge of Town, a line from “Badlands” stood out: “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” Long story short, that resonated with me but I felt the need to write about dying and I dig Bruce Springsteen and this is the strange way those two things coupled in my mind during this season of life. If you want a little deeper dig, read the intro of pt 1. This is part five.

The title of this tale comes from one of my favorite Boss songs: the aforementioned, “Badlands” as seen here from the 1978 tour. I recently learned that the ’78 tour was supposed to come to my hometown of La Crosse, WI except the show didn’t sell enough tickets. So the show never happened. Weak.

Trouble in The Heartland

Bobby dated Sue for four months. It was a hot, physical four months which made the whole relationship last longer than it should have. They met at a bar, the Crow Bar, in Rockland, Wisconsin. Sue was wearing jeans that had manufactured holes in them and a sweater that showed off her shoulder. When she arrived, Bobby wasn’t quite drunk enough to start thinking about approaching her and his immediate thought was, “Shoulders aren’t even sexy.” But he couldn’t stop staring.