A favorite song of mine is Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days." Whenever I hear those lyrics sung I'm taken back to another time. One of the strengths of being born and raised in North Dakota is that so many of us attended small schools where it was easy to participate in sports and activities. With a bit of thought and maybe a little imagination, we can conjure up the times we experienced glory days. My hometown, Sheldon, celebrated its 125th anniversary this past summer. The large crowd in attendance gave ample opportunity to share and laugh about those old times. We do not see each other often so many of those stories have not gone stale.
But Springsteen sings of those whom life has passed by like the baseball player who "could throw that speedball by you." All he wanted to talk about were those days. We can imagine him as not having had many other successes in his life. He sings of the girl who married early, had kids, and has separated from her husband. She says "when she feels like crying she starts laughing about glory days." In the final verse he fears he will suffer the same unremarkable fate as he heads to the barroom for the evening. He fears it but states he "probably will" because "time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days."
The moral, as I read it, is fortunate are the people who have developed beyond this predicament and built a life full of other glory days.
