I suppose I took comfort in the illusion that I could go back. But I'd been around long enough to know history is sealed and unchangeable. You can mo… - Bruce Springsteen

The country no longer felt like the innocent place it was said to be in the Eisenhower fifties. Political murder, economic injustice and institutionalized racism were all powerfully and brutally present. These were issues that had previously been relegated to the margins of American life. Dread — the sense that things might not work out, that the moral high ground had been swept out from underneath us, that the dream we had of ourselves had somehow been tainted and the future would forever be uninsured — was in the air.

Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote. And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat. We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle, No flowers no wedding dress.<p>That night we went down to the river. And into the river we'd dive. Oh down to the river we did ride.

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact, But maybe everything that dies someday comes back. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, And meet me tonight in Atlantic City.