425. "Straight Time" Bruce Springsteen

"Straight Time"
Bruce Springsteen
The Ghost of Tom Joad
1995

I love acoustic-story-song Bruce. Tom Joad and Nebraska are without a doubt my two favorite albums by him.
The line in this song that twists the knife for me is "Tossin' my little babies high/ Mary smiles, but she's watches me out of the corner of her eye".
I like to imagine that the "Mary" that shows up in a lot of Bruce's songs is all the same woman. She graduated high school in 1975 and ran off with some guy on a motorcycle ("Thunder Road"). Here in 1995 she's married to Charlie, an ex-con she doesn't quite trust, who has an uncle who sells stolen cars. Things will get better for her, though; by The Rising in 2002 she will open a bar where people meet to have a party.