Quite interesting what we understand as "a personal song" isn't it? By one definition you sure can see "Handful of Songs" as a personal song, because it comes straight out of someone's history. It is obviously popular because it could have come out of many different people's lives. I am sure that is why EBarnacle's boat song works as well.
I have all but stopped writing "personal songs" to the extent that even if something is triggered off by an event in my own life, I try to pass it off as if I was just the narrator of someone else's history. It becomes a character singing it rather than myself.
Another thing that occurs to me is that it is very easy for a listener to assume that a song is personal when in fact the singer is telling someone else's tale using first person narration - a technique I like very much myself. I am sure that this happens in particualr with a lot of Bob Dylan songs.