12 Days of Christmas: Freehold

Waiting for a fire in Freehold.

Given the news yesterday that Bruce Springsteen sold his music and publishing rights to Sony for about a half billion dollars, I thought it timely to post a few images from his blue-collar hometown.

I had visited Freehold for the first time this past summer to catch the "Springsteen: His Hometown" exhibit at the Monmouth County Historical Association before it closed.

At the time, I also posted here that although I enjoyed the exhibit, I didn't buy $650 a seat tickets to Springsteen's subsequent Broadway revival at a theatre on streets surrounded by burgeoning, and since worsening, homelessness.

Something about all this money doesn't seem right. It seems at odds with the Freehold that inspired this performance in 1999, posted on YouTube.

When I think back to my favorite Springsteen song, "Thunder Road," I think back to something my wife said when we visited the exhibit. "He could have only written that song when he was young," she said.

Her point? Passion changes form. You can't replicate an earlier time in your life. Operatic excess ages poorly.

Springsteen pulled out of Freehold to win.

He did, and here's what survives: the local firehouse and pizza parlor, and the remnants of faith, made manifest by its churches.

Overcoming Faith Temple, on Haley Street in Freehold.