No. 964 – Atlantic City

Performer: Bruce Springsteen

Songwriter: Bruce Springsteen

Original Release: Nebraska

Year: 1982

Definitive Version: The studio version

When I went on my sojourn through the heartland in 1989, it seemed appropriate to bring along Nebraska: stark music for a stark countryside. And it was particularly stark in some places. By taking the back roads, I saw up close the effects of policy that benefited big corporate agriculture and why there was a need for Farm Aid.

In Iowa along one stretch, every third house had been abandoned, sometimes even more frequently. And the abandonment had been recent, because the houses still were in fairly decent condition with not too much overgrowth yet.

One house in particular compelled me. It was on an S curve where you bent around the white house. It was still in good shape, roof intact, no broken windows. It was nearly surrounded by tall, lush corn crops. It wasn’t the land that failed that farmer, that’s for sure.

When I was coming back from Colorado Springs, I made it a point to stop at the house and take a closer look to see what’s what. A door in the back was unlocked, and although the interior started to show wear and tear, and what I remember the most was how stifling it was upstairs where the hot air couldn’t escape.

Evidence of the family that until recently had lived there remained in bits and pieces, beyond the thin white drapes that still hung at each window hopefully awaiting the master’s return. My brother Scott had this Choo-choo train when he was a kid that would play basic tunes, such as Jingle Bells or Freres Jacques, in high-pitched screeching train whistles. Well, the yellow record from that train was lying on the floor in one of the bedrooms in the farmhouse. It was as if the family up and left so quickly that the kid (or the parents) there didn’t even have time to grab all of his or her train records.

I kept the record as an artifact and a reminder that although “maybe everything that dies some day comes back,” there was no going back for this family farm.