Tramps Like Us Know There’s Only One Good Thing About the Month of August
A light in the darkness
With apologies to those of you with birthdays or wedding anniversaries this month, I firmly believe that August is the worst month of the year. The heat here is so oppressive that in August 1866 it prompted General Philip Sheridan to quip that if he owned Texas and Hell, he’d would rent out Texas and live in Hell. For the kids, it means school is about to start, earlier than ever it seems; I never started school before Labor Day. And for Dallas Cowboys fans, the pre-season always gives us false hope for another Super Bowl that will surely be dashed by December.
Despite these and many other horrors, the month of August has one redeeming quality, and it’s a big one. August 25th is the anniversary of the release of the greatest album ever, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Born to Run. And for anyone who thinks the title of this article was a sneaky way to get you to click on a story about Springsteen, you should have recognized what it was about by the title’s first three words.
In my admittedly strange world, there are only a few dates of immense importance. My daughters’ birthdays, Easter, the first time I saw Bruce in concert, and August 25, 1975, the day the Born to Run album descended from the heavens and changed my…