Driving by your old house Bruce style

From 4 to 10 I grew up in a rented house on Kline Place in Rahway. It's where my mom and dad's marriage went bad, where a lot of things went off track, where I picked up a lot of anxieties that haunted me for a long, long time. Last night we did a segment talking about my crazy desire to contact the strangers who own that house now and ask if I could come see it for just a few minutes. To breathe in the past and let it all go. When I was explaining my feelings on this at the start of the hour I spoke of this bootleg concert video where Bruce Springsteen tells this story of how he used to drive past his old house and what his therapist told him about it. Here's that video.

I was blown away by the endless phone calls from people who had done the Bruce thing and driven by their old house on a regular basis. Some did it for bittersweet reasons, some because they felt haunted by something, many simply because of all the good times and memories there. Whatever the reason I wonder how common this is.