Greetings from Colts Neck, New Jersey! Today, I did a driving tour of Bruce Springsteen houses and then headed back to Asbury Park to walk the Boardwalk, looking for Sandy and Madame Marie. I’ll post on the latter tomorrow morning.
Bruce Springsteen’s current house (actually a large ranch) is less than five minutes from where I’m staying, at the historic Colts Neck Inn Hotel (built in 1717). I had no reservations about photographing Bruce’s childhood homes, but doing the same with his current house made me feel a bit like a stalker. That’s especially the case since Bruce performed in Newark two nights ago and is almost certainly at home.
That said, there is a famous story about Bruce Springsteen doing the same―actually worse. When Elvis Presley was still alive, Bruce climbed the fence around Graceland in an attempt to meet Elvis (he was caught). So me just driving by and shooting a photo from the road is nothing.
It was probably good that I had my BMW rental car, so I didn’t look too out of place among all the high-priced horse ranches. That’s because when I stopped to take the photo, two people came out of the gate on bicycles (both about the age Bruce and Patti’s children would be), and they did a double-take when they saw me. I quickly moved on.
Photo #1: The house where Bruce lived from six years of age to high school.
Photo #2: The house Bruce lived in while in high school. This makes me think about the story Bruce tells of his father opening the heat grate from the kitchen to his room upstairs when Bruce played his “God damned guitar” too loud and turning up the gas on the stove to “smoke him out.”
Photo #3: The ranch in Colts Neck, where Bruce and Patti live now.