Hummingbird Memories (ePub)

Book Summary

The story begins with the main character attending a 50 Year Class Reunion and then flashes back to her four years in high school. At that time she lived in a small southern California town where everyone knew everyone else, and there wasn't much for teenagers to do, and yet they manage to keep busy somehow. Life at that time (before the electronic age) went at a much slower pace, and people who grew up in the 50's and 60's were part of the last innocent generation. The book describes Elaine's relationship with her family, her life on a poultry ranch, and the closeness of a small community. It also describes many high school activities, classes, boy-girl relationships, and problems and heartaches, the euphoria and the sadness that are a part of life at that age. The story is based on an actual town and high school, and many incidents in the book actually happened the way that I described them. I did change the names of the town and the high school however.
Back in those days it was much easier to work on your own car, the old hot rods and jalopies. Gas was thirty one cents a gallon, and one could buy a hamburger and Coke for less than fifty cents. But the monthly income for the average working family was only about $300, so the budget had to be stretched to make ends meet. A few women worked outside the home, but most did not. Many of the television sets were black and white, but color TV was on its way in. There was no reality TV at that time, but there were plenty of Westerns and family programming.
Of course music played a huge part in the lives of young people, and it was the era of Rock and Roll. Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers were household names. Dick Clark's American Bandstand was on TV in the afternoons, and everyone rushed home from school to watch the latest dances. There were only records at the time, 45's and 78's, which were played on phonographs. It would be years before cassettes, CD's, and iPods were invented. The music was portable though because everyone was getting transistor radios. If a group of kids got together at a lake or somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, they would just tune their car radios to the same station and turn up the volumne.
I have tried throughout the book to portray life back in those days, with many details depicting the culture and fads of that time. I am hoping that this book will give today's teenagers a different perspective on life at that time, while giving my own generation a chance to walk down Memory Lane.