Stoolhardy has it closest to the feeling and sentiment captured by the song, for the people of the Lehigh Valley. Billy Joel spent a lot of his early career playing Allentown, Northampton and a few of the other towns around the ABE metropolitan area. So he really knew the mood of this area and ones very much like it throughout the Northeast and the Rust Belt. The guy is the Woody Guthrie of his era.
I grew up in the LV Area, graduated from a local high school in the late 70's (Thank you Jimmy Carter for ruining my adolescence) and literally lived the sentiments conveyed. My friends' parents worked at "the Steel" or Western Electric or Mack Truck or any number of apparel factories and small manufacturing operations that made up the local economy. We all were raised to believe that if we worked hard, studied in school and kept our noses clean, we could expect the same middle class, suburban, affluent lifestyle that these companies afforded our parents. Then the roof fell in. And the best our leaders could offer were WIN buttons, recommendations to turn our thermostats to 58 degrees and be patient waiting in gas lines for rationed gas. That was the 70s in Allentown and the LV.
As for the line about throwing an American Flag in our face: someone said something about Reagan. The decline started long before RR. By the time of the 80s these businesses were in long, fifteen and twenty year declines. I think the line is a reference to the sentiment of the region at the time, as stated at the Bethlehem Plant and the Martin Tower complex, "Buy American". The unions and the management used to threaten, protest and even vandalize any non-Detroit vehicles in the company lots. So here was a company that was cutting and outsourcing jobs out from under the employees and appealing to the workers patriotism. And telling the workers that they had a responsibility to buy substandard products like Pintos and Vegas and other shabbily built American cars, cast out of good old BSC steel, because we are all in it together.
And the Allentown of today: wear kevlar. It will give you a fighting chance.
Stoolhardy has it closest to the feeling and sentiment captured by the song, for the people of the Lehigh Valley. Billy Joel spent a lot of his early career playing Allentown, Northampton and a few of the other towns around the ABE metropolitan area. So he really knew the mood of this area and ones very much like it throughout the Northeast and the Rust Belt. The guy is the Woody Guthrie of his era.
I grew up in the LV Area, graduated from a local high school in the late 70's (Thank you Jimmy Carter for ruining my adolescence) and literally lived the sentiments conveyed. My friends' parents worked at "the Steel" or Western Electric or Mack Truck or any number of apparel factories and small manufacturing operations that made up the local economy. We all were raised to believe that if we worked hard, studied in school and kept our noses clean, we could expect the same middle class, suburban, affluent lifestyle that these companies afforded our parents. Then the roof fell in. And the best our leaders could offer were WIN buttons, recommendations to turn our thermostats to 58 degrees and be patient waiting in gas lines for rationed gas. That was the 70s in Allentown and the LV.
As for the line about throwing an American Flag in our face: someone said something about Reagan. The decline started long before RR. By the time of the 80s these businesses were in long, fifteen and twenty year declines. I think the line is a reference to the sentiment of the region at the time, as stated at the Bethlehem Plant and the Martin Tower complex, "Buy American". The unions and the management used to threaten, protest and even vandalize any non-Detroit vehicles in the company lots. So here was a company that was cutting and outsourcing jobs out from under the employees and appealing to the workers patriotism. And telling the workers that they had a responsibility to buy substandard products like Pintos and Vegas and other shabbily built American cars, cast out of good old BSC steel, because we are all in it together.
And the Allentown of today: wear kevlar. It will give you a fighting chance.