04/24/16 - NNHS Newsletter

By R. Hatten on April 20, 2016

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

All of us who were born before 1950 and grew up in the early 1950s remember and cherish the vignettes of our own childhood that Pam Arnold brings vividly back to our minds in this retreat to the sweetness, safety and simplicity of those long ago days. Days before divorce was commonplace – when being the child of a single mother was uniquely painful and created insecurities, loneliness and separateness from other children. Days when having the security of a single friend in the first grade became a substitute for security of a complete family. Days when life itself was so safe that 6 year olds could walk to school and explore a creek on the walk home with no worries or danger from attack. Days when childhood games were jump rope, when Santa really came but only brought one or two presents, where families ate dinner together, and where young children were totally safe outside and alone. To millennials, the world of the 1950’s must seem like a different planet, but for those of us who lived it and cherish those memories, Arnold’s autobiographical trip down memory lane is a delicious treat.

“Growing up in the 50s” begins in Miami, Florida where pre-school age Pam begins to become aware of the world around her and the limitations of being the only child of a divorced mother who made “bad choices”. Pam and her divorced mother, Waller, soon leave their comfortable home with Pam’s grandparents and migrate to the shipyard community of Newport News, VA for “independence”, where an extended family of cousins welcome them to a blue collar town.

Waller, a young nurse, must soon abandon her low paying career to work as a secretary. Pam learns to adapt to a friendless and challenging lifestyle. But none of these challenges daunt the spirit of Pam, who cheerfully charges forth into every minute of her new life with the determination of Lewis and Clark, finding pleasure in the simplest of new experiences, fantasies and even temporary setbacks.

Arnold’s conversational dialogue – with her family and friends – is so real that you might think she actually had a recorder, and to those of us who grew up in Newport News, the landmarks and vivid descriptions of our home town consistently bring a smile of recognition and nostalgia. But the most real part of her very personal book, written primarily for children, is the emotion she shares about her first and lifelong friend, Patsy, the love that she receives from her extended family, her raucous sense of humor at a mock funeral for a rat, and the joy of life as a six year old that she infectiously spreads onto every chapter of this lovely life story. For those of you who may have forgotten life as a child in the 1950s this is a must read; for those of you born into the age of McDonald’s, iPhones and computer games, this will be very foreign, but you will be jealous. Well done Pam.

		WOWZERS! Thanks, Dools!

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