by Patrick Sullivan

Imagine, U2 spending a week in your hometown. Hard to decide what you would do. Would you take a week off work and spend every minute of every day trying to meet the only band that you have ever cared about? Or would you give them their space to prepare for what was going to go down as the greatest tour in rock history? I won’t bore you with the stories of friends getting arrested trying to sneak a peek from rooftops. Or stories of female friends sitting in a hotel bar waiting for a chance to meet any one of them (only to have Bono walk in and sit two feet behind them for a hour as they sat and said nothing). So let me break the week down. They came. They practiced. They were seen doing various things around the greater Harrisburg / Hershey area. Thursday they announced that they wanted to have a rehearsal concert the next day. I sent my 60 something year old retired father to stand in line for tickets. They put on a show that will never be forgotten by any person who was lucky enough to be there. You can find many people in this town that will tell you that they were dragged by friends to this show and all they keep saying is "It's like a religious experience". I was lucky enough to see them two more times in the month to follow and all I can say is that the Hershey show was different. Not better, just different. Maybe it was the seats 10 feet from the stage. Maybe it was more relaxed. Or maybe it was the fact that for one week U2 turned our town into their town.

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