Songs and Other American Experiments

It's Tuesday, and I began as I almost always do on a Tuesday, reading Dave Bonta's Poetry Blog Digest, which almost always takes me in interesting directions. This morning, it's been a bit of a trip down memory lane, courtesy of Shawna LeMay's blog post which mentioned Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train."She quoted lyrics, which I didn't remember from the song:"Now I work down at the car washWhere all it ever does is rainDon't you feel like you're a riderOn a downbound train?"So of course, I went in search of the song, which instantly catapulted me back to the fall of 1984, when the album Born in the USA came out. I bought it at Wal-Mart, along with a fan for my dorm room. A few weeks later, my boyfriend went back to Memphis where his mom needed him. He'd been wearing my DC101 (a rock radio station) jacket that my sister had won somehow and given to me. That jacket smelled of sweat and the Players cigarettes that he smoked, and I wore it all fall, feeling sad as my smells replaced…