Scenes From My 1960s

By Rosalind M. Flynn

When we remember events from our past, we remember them not as fluid, summative prose, but as scenes. In this memoir of the 1960s decade, Rosalind Flynn recreates scenes filled with characters, clothing, objects, food, scenery, and dialogue from her childhood on into her adolescence.What was it like to be a second grader the weekend that President Kennedy was shot and then a sixth grader when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated? How did people manage with rotary dial phones, busy signals, black and white TV, flashcubes, typewriters, and pay phones? What was living through John Glenn's trip into orbit, the Blackout of 1965, the Vietnam War protests, the six-day Arab Israeli War, and the first moon landing like?The 1960s. It was a decade that introduced polio vaccines, touchtone phones, pantyhose, eight track tapes, Polaroid Swingers, the Beatles, Twiggy, hippies, and color TV. It was a decade of go-go boots, Green Stamps, Flintstones glasses, mini-skirts, cigarette jingles, Long Distance, transistor radios, Romper Room, rosary beads, rabbit ears TV antennae, Captain Kangaroo, Creepy Crawlers, Burger Chef, Woolworth's, 45s, flower power, and more. It was one of the last decades for prank phone calls, milk boxes, roller skate keys, 15-cent hamburgers, saccharine tablets, carbon paper, cigarette commercials, cars without seat belts, party lines, and record players.Rosalind recreates the scenes from her 1960s through the lens of an Irish Catholic suburban New England girl. She presents her memories primarily through dialogue, giving readers a virtual experience of what happened and how she and the youngsters and the adults in her life lived it. A major character in the scenes about then-current events is the TV, its newscasters' voices figuring prominently in the book's dialogue and providing a revealing glimpse into what viewers actually heard back then.Rosalind began the decade of the 1960s as a 4 year-old and left it as a 13 year-old. In this memoir that's a blend of memory, research, and imagination, she tries to capture one girl's perspective of growing up in a decade of three shocking assassinations, a Blackout, the Beatles, black and white TV, the Vietnam War, and the first moon landing. Some scenes are grounded in these major events of the decade. Others are simply childhood memories of coming of age incidents. The conflicts are simple and complex; the questions are large and small; the scenes are both particular to the author and universal to others who spent their young years in 1960s America.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1480182044
• ISBN13: 9781480182042
• Release Date: May 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 2.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"