Coming of Age in the 1950s includes 64 illustrated short stories, sprung from the pages of the author's diaries, which she has kept since she was 10 years old. Most of the stories are based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the last few feature Los Angeles, California. The stories incorporate historical facts and sociological commentary on such subjects as apartments, cars, clothes, college dorm life, dating, death, friendship, high school, illness, junior high, meals, modeling, marriage, Miss America, music, newspapers, part-time jobs, pets, religion, shopping, snow, sororities, teachers, television, and travel.
Gary Ashbaugh - I just finished reading your book. Boy, did that ever turn the clock back. I think that described life in those small towns to a tee. Congratulations on getting it published. TOWN and TIME ... My cycle of life began January 12, 1945, seven months before the end of WWII, in Emlenton, Pennsylvania, a borough of some 800 souls, where generations of my father's family had lived and died. Emlenton, which lies partially isolated in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, offered few outside distractions, so we relied heavily on our imaginations and the natural resources that surrounded us. The swimming holes along Richey Run Creek, the Indian cave below the town cemetery, and long hikes along the railroad tracks that followed alongside the majestic Allegheny River offered plenty of adventure and diversion. Our lives revolved around paper routes, baseball, pin ball machines, hotdogs, French fries, 5&10 stores, dances, and dating. The freezing cold winters involved basketball, deer hunting and fur trapping. A youthful fertile mind, interested in science, led to rocketry, homemade motors, crystal radios, moonshine, and motor scooters that provided a lifetime of memories. The stories shared are sometimes funny, poignant, and often laced with mischief. Emlenton seemed to be magical, and those times now seem idyllic. This is where I grew up, and this book is about the time, the place, the people, and the events that formed my coming of age in the 1950s.
AMERICAN BOOMER captures the humorous side of coming of age during the late 1950's. Enjoy many laughs as a young man tries to stay one step ahead of his parents, teachers, and the law, only to end up two or three steps behind. When the mysteries of religion, sex, and the world around him are rationalized within an immature mind and a wild imagination. American Boomer is a fun read meant to take you back to when the world moved at a much slower pace, cause you to smile often, and on occasion, make you laugh out loud.
According to an old story, a woman concealed her sex and ruled as pope for a few years in the ninth century, but her downfall came when she went into labor in the streets of Rome. From this myth to the experiences of saints, nuns, and ordinary women, The Oldest Vocation brings to life both the richness and the troubling contradictions of Christian motherhood in medieval Europe.
The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement—a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person’s ability to affect change. “Anne Moody’s autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage.”—Chicago Tribune Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was . . . the fear of being killed just because I was black.” In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life. A straight-A student who realized her dream of going to college when she won a basketball scholarship, she finally dared to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC, she experienced firsthand the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement—and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs, and deadly force that were used to destroy it. A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation’s destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement. Praise for Coming of Age in Mississippi “A history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed . . . a timely reminder that we cannot now relax.”—Senator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review “Something is new here . . . rural southern black life begins to speak. It hits the page like a natural force, crude and undeniable and, against all principles of beauty, beautiful.”—The Nation “Engrossing, sensitive, beautiful . . . so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down.”—San Francisco Sun-Reporter
Motivated by insatiable curiosity and undaunted by rules, young Kate MacCallum entertains herself in a 1950's world void of television, computers, smart phones or apps. Captivated by her heroes, she envies Huck Finn's freedom and Amelia Earhart's independence. Always looming over Kate's ideas and forbidden plans is the promise of stinging pain from her mother's red plastic belt if her plots fail and she is caught. Mentally, Kate puts her schemes on one tray of the Scales of Justice: on the other she coils the red belt covered with small holes. If Kate's plans outweigh the belt, she proceeds; if they are not worth the guaranteed spanking, she abandons them. When Kate wakes to bloodcurdling screams from the bed next to hers, she discovers a family skeleton; when she wakes to her own terrifying nightmares, she breaks a promise and reveals a horrific secret. Kate reads books and body language. She questions religion, hypocrisy and authority and learns about murder, incest, and decapitation. Hell-and-damnation preachers have left Kate uncertain about the church and God, and first kisses have left her puzzled about unfamiliar stirrings of sexual feelings. Ever curious, Kate pressures her mother to explain all unfamiliar terms such as shock treatments, falsies, and vagina. Mysteries and the long-awaited freedom of the adult world beckon to Kate as surely as the Mississippi River called to Huck Finn and the wide blue skies lured Amelia Earhart. With equal parts of reluctance and eagerness, Kate leaves behind childhood games and sets foot on the inescapable path to womanhood. ~ An excerpt from "Shaping Kate" ~Suddenly a trap door in the rock wall flew open. A huge, winged, fire-breathing dragon shot up and hovered over her. His eyes blazed, wild and bloodshot, and a crusty forked tongue darted in and out between shooting flames. Gray smoke rushed from his flaring nostrils, and scabby, dirty paws, tipped with thick, yellowed talons, came straight toward her face. Kate screamed and screamed. "Wake up! Sit up right now! Wake up!" Her mother's face replaced the dragon's head, and the room's overhead light replaced the fire and smoke. Her chest heaved and her heart pounded. Cautiously, she sat up and looked around. Gone were the scaly reptile, the block wall, her dad, and the sidewalk. She was in her bedroom, in her bed, and she was eleven years old, not seven. "All right, Kate. You're going to tell me-this minute-what's bothering you. This is the fifth night in a row you've had a nightmare. When you tell me what's wrong, they'll stop." All week Kate had held back. She didn't want to break her promise, but she hated the horrible nightmares. Maybe if she told, her mother could fix the problem and help Lucy. "Talk to me. What is it?" Kate knew her mom was out of patience. "Well . . ." She started, then stopped. "You told us we shouldn't break promises, and I promised." Her mother used her no-nonsense voice. "Sometimes we have to break promises. When they cover up secrets that are so bad they cause nightmares night after night, they should be broken. Then the problem can be fixed. Is that the kind of promise you made? One that covers bad secrets?" Kate nodded.
This is the story of five young In-Betweeners whose sometimes almost unbelievable hijinks give the reader an unfiltered glimpse of the life in the 1950's, a simpler time--a time when it was still possible to Grow Up Simple.
Filled with the hilarious musings of a playful boy growing up in the 1950s, Lyle Manley's memoir Adventures of a Misfit: Coming of Age in the 50s and 60s is sure to delight anyone from the young to the young at heart. Manley recounts his escapades as a mischievous, graffiti-scribbling boy who moves from the Californian suburbs to the Wild West of Pony, Montana, and eventually to Bozeman, Montana. Whether dodging the gaze of meddling adults with his clan of cousins, facing the trials and tribulations of fitting in at a new school, or etching his 'prose' on any surface he can find, young Lyle's adventures and misadventures are a nostalgic trip back to childhood and the mid-century West.
“Marc Straus has written an astonishing memoir full of humor and hilarity, heart and vision. This year’s sleeper hit, I predict. A must read!”—Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club It's June 1953, and 10-year-old Marc Straus is in his mother's car, getting sick from her cigarette smoke on his way to a Hebrew lesson. He and his brother, Stephen, are transferring from public school to a Yeshiva. His parents haven't said why-the family isn't religious. All Marc knows is he'll have to protect Stephen, a delicate kid other kids pick on. Marc's a street fighter who knows how to wall off pain. So begins One-Legged Mongoose, Marc Straus's vivid, compelling, you-are-there memoir of two years in the life of a precocious, scrappy Jewish kid carrying a dark secret as he embarks on the journey to young manhood in 1950s New York. When school starts, Marc begins commuting four hours daily to a different world, where kids are smart like him and a caring principal takes the troubled truant under his wing. On Sundays, Marc works at his dad's textile store, learning about honor and hard work. At home, he faces his volatile mother. A perceptive, courageous kid, Marc encounters anti-Semitism in public school, the community, and the Boy Scouts. On a camping trip, his troop leader asks the boys to search for a half-man-half-beast predator called the One-Legged Mongoose who devours human prey. "Why not?" Marc reasons. "I know all about monsters." Sidelined too often by illness and accidents, including a bout with polio and being hit by a car, Marc starts rethinking his risk-taking way of life and realizes he's not invincible. Life will wound him, but the rest is up to him. One-Legged Mongoose is a warm, funny, searing memoir about the challenges of crossing from childhood to young adulthood. It's an inspiring story of one boy's struggle to survive an abusive home, understand the world around him, and embrace responsibility for his own life.
"A lovely and passionate evocation of a time and place and the evanescent self we all inhabit." - T.C. BOYLE Philadelphia in the '50s: Barson's Soda Shop at 60th and Cedar was the center of the universe, hanging out was the point, and the height of cool was to be kicked out of the Cedar Theatre for public displays of passion. In this engaging memoir of teenage life amid the transformations of post-World War II America, Leo Braudy reveals his younger self as a somewhat clueless narrator in the throes of deciphering the innuendo and subterfuge of a confusing world. Was rock 'n' roll really a Communist plot? Was "juvenile delinquency" actually a threat to social order? Was "conformity" truly the era's norm? Weaving a personal narrative through the wider social context of disillusionment and apocalyptic fears, Trying To Be Cool reveals the vibrant eclecticism of a decade too often dismissed as a period of conventionality. "I love this book. The irony of Trying To Be Cool is that the book is so damn cool. It's Rock Around the Clock for smart people. Leo Braudy captures an American moment. This book distills and extrapolates at once. Braudy can play lead and rhythm at the same time." - PERCIVAL EVERETT
