The Traveling Ridleys: Sunday Journal

Just as we were planning our return to North America in 2024, Bruce Springsteen announced his European tour for the summer of our return. Melissa is an avid Bruce fan. Like addict level. We saw him in Denver several years ago when the Big Man (Clarence Clemons) was still on the sax. She had seen him several times previously. So, for her birthday, despite the hastening date of our departure in that same week, we booked tickets and a flight to visit Milan to see the Boss.

Alas, it was not meant to be. 74 year old Bruce had overdone it playing in the rain and was told to rest his vocal chords and had to postpone a few of his European concert dates. We canceled our non refundable hotel and non refundable flight and expected to have to eat the cost of the tickets as Viagogo claimed no refunds or exchanges would be allowed and we were set to return to America for several months.

Fortunately, the Boss rescheduled for a date after our planned return to Europe and just before we had planned to visit southern France, so we tacked on a couple of days in Italy to make the show.

We saw him on July 3. Somehow that just seemed fitting to watch a man who has spent more than 50 years singing about America. He’s sung for us about hopes and dreams, about pain and heartache, about kids on the Jersey Shore and auto workers in Ohio. He’s sung for us about riding on backstreets, diving in rivers when hope is lost, about the glory days of high school and of dancing in the dark. After 9/11, he helped us heal and sang to us about rising up. It was a little taste of the USA in the heart of northern Italy. American flags, and Americans, everywhere.

Our Milan born and raised cab driver on the way to San Siro had been to 25 Bruce shows, including the first Milan show this year three nights ago. He spent six months in the U.S. twenty years ago driving from one coast to another and back. We had much to talk about.

Bruce hasn’t been quiet about how he feels with what is going on in our country. He’s taken some heat and also been cheered. Our President intends to sue him for defamation for saying what he thinks.

For a couple of people who worry about what is happening to free speech and due process and about the future of a free, independent and truthful press, seeing Bruce on the eve of America’s Independence Day was kind of like going to church. And it gave us hope. Because in the end, the people will decide. In the end, America is a good country that looks out for the downtrodden and lifts the spirit. All over Europe, as we travel around we hear young people talk about wanting to come to the USA to experience the American dream. Even now. That dream is not dead. Because in the end courage must and will prevail over cowardice. It’s time for the poets to write and not just stand back and let it all be. Happy Birthday America and God bless the USA.

“There’s a chapel in Kansas 
Standing on the exact center of the lower forty-eight. 
It never closes. 
All are more than welcome 
To come meet here, in the middle. 
It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately 
Between red and blue 
Between servant and citizen 
Between our freedom and our fear. 
Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. 
And as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few. 
It belongs to us all. 
Whoever you are, wherever you’re from 
It’s what connects us. 
And we need that connection. 
We need the middle. 
We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground. 
So, we can get there.
We can make it to the mountaintop 
Through the desert 
And we will cross this divide. 
Our light has always found its way through the darkness 
And there’s hope on the road up ahead.” —- Bruce Springsteen.