"Allentown"

"Allentown"
Billy Joel
Columbia
Featured on The Nylon Curtain
Originally released in September 23, 1982
Rock
Cassette
B

So this opening track is basically the Schrödinger's Song of my adolescence, simultaneously nothing to do with me and everything to do with me at 14.  I was a right-down-the-middle-class California girl, not an edging-into-middle-age blue-collar Pennsylvanian man.  But my father did "fight the Second World War" (OK, he was in the dental corps in the Pacific, but that counts, right?), and Gen-Xer though I am, I understand that Baby-Boomer frustration in the midst of the early '80s recession, and I can see the political realignment that started under Reagan and continues to this day, with the weakening of the Unions, and you know, who can resist the whistle-blows and other sound effects?  "They never taught us what was real: iron and coke, chromium steel."  That line still resonates with me, although my "real" wasn't and isn't that.

I think I bought the single and got the album (which is caseless at this point) a year or two later.