JRW welcomes a guest blog by Kay Kendall
Lots of iconic fictional characters are repurposed and plopped into historical settings unlike those they originally inhabited in novels and plays. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, became dancing and singing New York City teenagers in Westside Story. Sherlock Holmes again inhabits London to catch evil doers, but his cityscape now includes the Millennium Wheel.
An icon of my early years was Nancy Drew. She was nosy as could be, always jumping into her roadster and whirling off to uncover clues. When I was eight, I’d no idea that the original series was set in the 1930s. If I’d realized that, I might have understood why no one in my small hometown in Kansas ever drove “roadsters” anymore. If you consider that Nancy’s first adventures took place even before World War Two, then you realize how daring she was for her times.
Many boomers like me grew up on Nancy Drew mysteries. As the years have passed, I’ve realized how much her ethos has stayed with me. When I transitioned into my second career of mystery author—I call myself a reformed PR executive—it seemed only natural to write about a female amateur sleuth. You may not recognize my protagonist Austin Starr as being related to Nancy Drew, but within Austin the spirit of Nancy carries on.
Once I knew the main character, I had to decide what decade she would live in. Since my favorite mysteries are historical, I began to write what I love. I started working on my debut mystery Desolation Row a year before Mad Men made the sixties unexpectedly hot, after being very, very cold indeed for a long time. But that time period fascinates me. After all, I grew up with the Cold War and Vietnam as my backdrops. There was no shortage of drama and violence. I wanted to make that era come alive again, but to treat it like history. And even though I can remember that decade, that doesn’t make it any less historical.
Lots of iconic fictional characters are repurposed and plopped into historical settings unlike those they originally inhabited in novels and plays. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, became dancing and singing New York City teenagers in Westside Story. Sherlock Holmes again inhabits London to catch evil doers, but his cityscape now includes the Millennium Wheel. An icon of my early years was Nancy Drew. She was nosy as could be, always jumping into her roadster and whirling off to uncover clues. When I was eight, I’d no idea that the original series was set in the 1930s. If I’d realized that, I might have understood why no one in my small hometown in Kansas ever drove “roadsters” anymore. If you consider that Nancy’s first adventures took place even before World War Two, then you realize how daring she was for her times.
Many boomers like me grew up on Nancy Drew mysteries. As the years have passed, I’ve realized how much her ethos has stayed with me. When I transitioned into my second career of mystery author—I call myself a reformed PR executive—it seemed only natural to write about a female amateur sleuth. You may not recognize my protagonist Austin Starr as being related to Nancy Drew, but within Austin the spirit of Nancy carries on.
Once I knew the main character, I had to decide what decade she would live in. Since my favorite mysteries are historical, I began to write what I love. I started working on my debut mystery Desolation Row a year before Mad Men made the sixties unexpectedly hot, after being very, very cold indeed for a long time. But that time period fascinates me. After all, I grew up with the Cold War and Vietnam as my backdrops. There was no shortage of drama and violence. I wanted to make that era come alive again, but to treat it like history. And even though I can remember that decade, that doesn’t make it any less historical.
In her first outing, Desolation Row, Austin Starr must prove her new husband did not kill the son of a United States senator. She is in a foreign land, having moved to Canada in 1968 with her draft-resisting husband. Scared and alone, she has to conquer her fears. But she does plow on, and in her second escapade, Rainy Day Women, she discovers she has a real yen for solving murder cases. Besides the fun of including hippies, beads, macramé purses and Bob Dylan tunes, the virtue of the sixties time period is that crime solving did not involve CSI techniques. As a writer I am more interested in character and motivation than in fingerprints and DNA. Austin’s extreme inquisitiveness leads to anomalies that she can figure out through logic and a fine understanding of human nature. That world she inhabits is familiar but at the same time quite gone. Austin is forever searching for a payphone and if she misses a call at home, she doesn’t even know she has missed it. In the late 1960s, answering machines existed but were hardly ubiquitous.
I like delving into that world. And staying there for a long time. I like showing how issues that reared their heads then are still current today. My first mystery takes place during an unpopular war, and Austin develops a viewpoint that is anti-war but pro-soldier. My new book introduces Austin to the women’s liberation movement. Slowly but surely, she learns about what has become known as second-wave feminism. This is a subject I’ve longed to write about for years. Sadly, I just never realized the goal of female equality would remain as relevant as it still is today.
Kay Kendall is a long-time fan of historical novels and now writes atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit and turbulence of the 60s. A reformed PR executive who won international awards for her projects, Kay lives in Texas with her Canadian husband, three house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. Terribly allergic to her bunnies, she loves them anyway! Her book titles show she's a Bob Dylan buff too. New York Times bestselling author Miranda James says, “Austin Starr is back, and that’s great news for mystery fans. Suspenseful and entertaining, this is a worthy follow-up to Kendall’s excellent debut, Desolation Row.”
Find Kay here:
I've often wondered if people forgot [or never knew] that Nancy Drew's stories were originally set in the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteAustin Starr sounds like someone I'd really enjoy meeting; I shall have to check out your books.
Best 1960s memory? Neil Armstrong walking on the moon . . . .
Kay, having been born in 1954, the sixties are a sentimental favorite time period for me. It was my childhood, my entry into high school, my first 45-record (I Want to Hold Your Hand, Beatles), my brother getting his draft number (didn't have to go), formative years in a world changing age. It's been a while since I thought about missing a phone call meaning you might never know you had received it, or making sure you had change for a pay phone if you were going out. I still have the telephone stand that we used when I was growing up for those black rotary phones.
ReplyDeleteSo, I think a series set in the sixties would be a great trip down memory lane, and I like the idea of solving the mysteries without modern science and technology. Austin sounds like a great character, too. Thanks for visiting the Reds blog today and making me aware of this series.
Best 60s memory for me was the freedom of playing outside all day with friends from our neighborhood. Riding bikes, playing hopscotch and jacks, and all the unsupervised activities that today are but a dream.
Thank you for these fun mid-boomer memories. I definitely want to read.your series, Kay.
DeleteKathy, I share many of your memories - we stayed out til dark or when we literally heard our mother holler our name to come on home..no txt message
Favorite album or single cover...the always-gorgeous Cher and Sonny wearing his fur vest.
Welcome Kay! I bet you'll find a lot of sixties groupies here! Joan and Kathy picked two great memories...I also remember beginning to realize that women's liberation was for me too--OUR BODIES, OURSELVES was a wonderful discovery.
ReplyDeleteAlso remember asking for a Bob Dylan record for Christmas, which I played over and over. My parents were polite about the music, but that's about it:)
Sounds very much like my cup of tea, Kaye.
ReplyDeleteMy own particular girl sleuth was Trixie Belden, who first made the scene in 1948, at age 13. She'd be 80 today, and just as feisty, I'd bet. My copies are all early editions, so Trixie and Honey still wear dungarees, a word that got removed from the 1980s editions.
I was a child of the 80s. And since it was almost the end of the decade before I got into high school, the 60s were impossibly "a long time ago." Most of what I knew from the 60s I learned from my parents.
ReplyDeleteBut I still remember going out with a pocket full of change for the pay phone in the 80s. And the thrill of getting a push-button phone!
I must admit, Kay's books have been on my radar for a while now. I was first drawn to the Bob Dylan titles. If I could add about few non-working days to each week, that would really help me to get to all the books I want to read.
ReplyDeleteBest 1960's memory? Ofh gosh, everything formative happend to me in the sixties. Music, boys, reading, writing, independence, college.. (hmmm. in no particular order there…) But many many years between the sweet 1960 and the terrifying and ground-breaking 1968. ANd wasn't music one of the things that held us together then?
ReplyDeleteLucy, my mother would say: how can you tell those people apart? Dungarees, Susan D! (I just had to edit a Charlie book, and took out references to beepers!)
Welcome, dear Kay!
FAvorite album cover? Ah. DYlan, sure, with the poster by…what was his name? (Another boomer problem.) ()Milt…? Mort…?)
ReplyDeleteAnd Sgt. Pepper!
In my line of work (cultural resources management), the '60s' are officially historic--we have seminars on the significance of ranch houses. Scariest 60s memory? My parents anxiously watching President Kennedy on TV during the Cuban missile crisis, wondering if we were about to go to war again. Favorite memory, like Kathy Reel, I'll go with the Beatles--slumber parties, listening to Paul warble "Yesterday" on a blue plastic phonograph my sister purchased with her babysitting money.
ReplyDeleteAustin Starr--looking forward to some groovy trips down memory lane!
A trip back to the '60s is always fun, and I really enjoyed RAINY DAY WOMEN. I look back on the old days with a mixture of shock and awe. Wasn't that a time?
ReplyDeleteA new discovery for my TBR - I too am one of those 60's girls. So many memories. And funny about not realizing as a child that Nancy Drew wasn't set in your time. When my son was 8 he discovered Shirley Temple and couldn't wait for them to both grow up so he could meet her!
ReplyDeleteDear Joan Emerson, of course one of my favorite memories was the moon landing! What an exciting, positive time that was. I'd flown home with my infant son to have him baptized in the Methodist Church I'd grown up in. He was lying on a little blanket watching the flickering screen of my grandparents' TV set. Memories like that sure stick. Thank you for your comment and interest.
ReplyDeleteKathy Reel, did you ever play Red Rover? That's what your message reminded me of. I now can't get that phrase out of my head!
ReplyDelete"Red Rover, Red Rover, send Kathy right over."
Oh my, those were the days, weren't they??
Hi, Lucy Burdette! Thanks so much for having me on the great Jungle Red Writers blog today! I am so honored to be here!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you should mention OUR BODIES, OURSELVES. My husband and I watched the recorded CNN bit from their current series on the seventies just last night that was about what they called "the battle of the sexes," surely right up the street of Austin Starr and RAINY DAY WOMEN. And there it was, OUR BODIES, OURSELVES
Also THE JOY OF SEX. My husband had forgotten we had a copy of it! Imagine that!!
Susan D, hi there. I have a true confession about Trixie Belden. ACH, I missed her, entirely! In fact, I only heard about Trixie in the last five years. I do not know how that happened. Dungarees is sure a telltale word, isn't it? I wonder when it wandered away? Anyone know? Then there were blue jeans. And then just jeans.
ReplyDeleteHello, Mary Sutton, child of the 80s! Did you end up loving the Beatles too, picking that up from your parents? I am surprised at how many kids of us boomers love the Beatles. It makes me feel good. And as a trade-off I am up on the music of the 80s that my son was listening to. Then rap entered the scene, and I won't go there. But over time, I confess, I have gotten used to the rhythms of hip hop. My son refuses to admit that he ever loved ABBA, but boy, he sure did. I still do.
ReplyDeleteHowdy, Kristopher. I feel your pain, not having enough time to read. If you ever do have enough time to pick up an Austin Starr mystery, do let me know how you like it. Thanks for your interest!
ReplyDeleteNancy Humphries, Sonny's fur vest! Wow, is that a memory. So much time since then, and such sadness too. Imagine Sonny skiing into a tree and getting killed. Or even entering politics. I don't know which thing is stranger. Thank you for sharing your memories. Yep, no texts from our moms in our youth. I still feel like I'm living in a space age odyssey these days. I think it's important to keep the wonder alive...at all our tech marvels.
ReplyDeleteHello, lovely Hank Phillippi Ryan. Speaking of Sgt. Pepper! Remember all that nonsense when the rumor flew that Paul had died? I think it supposedly had something to do with one of the album covers...and the walrus mentioned. Such crazy times. Fun too...to say the least!
ReplyDeleteKay, I did. I have a huge playlist on my iPhone for Beatles music, but I like the early stuff better than the late stuff (in the 70s when they got weird).
ReplyDeleteAnd I have passed that love down to my daughter, born in 2000. One of her favorite songs is "When I'm 64."
FChurch...so...you work in cultural resource management. That is just terrific. I can really dig that. :)
ReplyDeleteI live in a ranch house built in 1955. It feels so comfortable to me since it is so much like the house I grew up in, built in 1950. Sure, I'd love to have higher ceilings, but I am so comfy here. And the AC costs are lower, with those lower ceilings.
My idea was to write my mystery series as if the sixties was part of history. When I first began going to writers' conferences and talking about the concept, ca. 2004, I got quite a bit of blowback. "That's not history," the other writers would say. "It can't be...because I remember it."
I've had readers say that when they begin my books the begin by thinking "Why doesn't she just use her cellphone?" Then they realize...she cannot!
I distinctly recall the first time I saw someone walking across a street and talking on a phone. It was 1988. Needless to say, it was a very large, clunky phone, but that man was indeed walking and talking. I watched him until he was out of sight. I could not believe my eyes.
Mary Sutton, I love the idea that your fifteen-year-old daughter loves the song, "When I'm 64." That's so easy to sing in your youth...and then you turn around, and two minutes later, YOU ARE 64!!
ReplyDeleteHowdy, Bill Crider, Texas writer extraordinaire. I enjoy so much the artifacts you dig up from the Old Days. You go back even further than I do. The style of the early 50s is so different.
ReplyDeleteBut I remember those songs too, before Elvis hit big and changed so much. "How much was that doggie in the window?" sang Patty Paige. My parents' era, with bouffant skirts and real dinner parties at people's homes! Who has time these days? Not many, and if you have folks over, then it is way more casual than big then.
Of course women had more time. Few worked outside the home. Boy, did my mom play a lot of bridge. She startled me when, in her 80s, she told me that had she been a young woman today, she would have been....an archeologist. Good grief. Who knew?? She was a ladylike French major in college!
Grandma Cootie, what a sweet memory. Your son wanting to meet Shirley Temple.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up, I was fortunate to have all four grandparents alive and well and sharing their memories with me. And Shirley Temple was one of those things.
I picked up my love of history from knowing lots about the "olden days" from them. I think that's what started it all. Realizing how much has changed and how human psychology doesn't, much, adds a lot of depth to one's life, I think...a lot of understanding.
Ahh, Nancy Drew. I loved her and George and Ned and...Bess? I forget her other friend's name. I still want a roadster.
ReplyDeleteBest 60s memory? So many. I graduated from high school in 1969 so the 60s were my school years. So many good political events, too. Starting with JFK's election, his assassination, meeting Bobby Kennedy, his assassination, summer of 68 in NYC (I was there for a convention of HS students) with a crowd in Washington Square trying to drum up interest in going to Chicago for the Democratic Convention; summer of 69 I spent in Europe and missed so many events in the US - the moon landing (watched it in Germany but it wasn't the same), Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, the Manson murders. Why do I remember so much about that time but I can't remember what I opened google to look up?
And the music of course. I'm a folkie to this day and I still love the 60s music .
I heard Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" the other day and thought of Austin Starr. (I thought about Nancy Drew and remember that she was always changing into "dungarees". They must have been early jeans.) There wasn't anything soft news about those days. Things just kept happening one after the other. Austin Starr takes it all on and it makes her life more difficult but richer.
ReplyDeleteAh, Marianne of Maine, I'm with you. The 60s music is the best. With today's media possibilities we can time travel whenever we want... To hear the music. View the movies. Relive with news reels.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote such a funny line...remembering all that, yet forgetting what you wanted to Google!
Peggy West, you were sure "right on" when you said...there was no soft news in the sixties. The hits just kept on happening.
ReplyDeleteBut we were young and I wasn't depressed. I guess I was too naive to be. I just thought it was exciting and that upheaval ewualed history. I studied a lot in school about revolutions...French and Russian... So I thought it was normal...and wars. World Wars One and Two. My parents and grandparents got through it all and so could I.
And Austin Starr? Well, she just keeps on truckin'.
Kay, we did play Red River and Kick the Can and Red Light, Green Light and cops 'n robbers on bikes. We jumped rope and went sledding. Nancy Humphrys, yes, our mothers called us in at dark. Wasn't that wonderful?
ReplyDeleteKay, I'm always in awe of authors setting their books in the past, as you must be always vigilant about anachronisms. And, I'm thinking that writing a out a time which many people reading the book will remember can be especially challenging. Off to add your books to my wish list.
Kathy, I didn't play cops and robbers. But we sure did lots of cowboys and Indians. Good thing there were no PC cops back then!
DeleteI live so much in my head, in the sixties, that it gets easier and easier to avoid anachronisms. My editor and I have had fun debating possible ones too. I just love it!
I'm a late-seventies teen, so my youthful memories are of disco, Whip Inflation Now and The Brady Bunch on TV. I turned twenty-two in 1983, and it was already a vastly different time and culture, so I have no problem thinking of the seventies as "historical."
ReplyDeleteBut man, when I hear Men at Work or Eurythmics on the oldies station I want to cry. Still waiting for shoulder pads and drapey, high-waisted pants to come back...
Julia, I'm with you on waiting for shoulder pads to return. But I think I'll skip drapey pants.
DeleteThere's nothing like music of a different era to whip us back to a different time. Men st Work was a terrific group.
Yay, Kay, yay, Kay! So glad to see your second novel out in the world!
ReplyDeleteI was a way young kidling in the late 60s, a child of nonhippies, so I didn't have the 60s experience. Yet, some of my earliest childhood memories are very 60s. Going over to a neighbor girl's house--her scary amputee'd Vietnam vet older brother and her flowy mom playing guitar and singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." I remember that everything seemed very loose-y goose-y out in the world.
For music, I remember loud and clear Elton John's Yellow Brick Road album. Always seemed to playing at the neighbor girl's house. (I was there a lot, I guess; or her house just had a profound impact on me.)
Hi there, Lisa. Speaking of memories! I'm sure I'll never forget when I met you at the Albany Bouchercon and you told me how much you enjoyed reading my Desolation Row. Priceless.
DeleteI agree with your young self...what you recall was loose and flowy...and tragic too...that amputeed Vietnam vet.
What I learned when I went around the country talking about Desolation Row was how deep and ever present in many Americans are the festering wounds of Vietnam. A sobering but rewarding experience.
I went to a high school reunion and many make classmates talked to me about their war experiences. Because of my book. It was gratifying.
ACH. Typo. Above should say...many male classmates.
DeleteJulia, I heard Nirvana on an oldies station recently! Yee gads.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest deals for me in the 60's was getting my first transistor radio! I could listen to the radio station I wanted, instead of what our parents did. And I could listen in bed at night, too. We never did have a record player, so that was my music source.
ReplyDeleteI did that too, Karen. Put the little transistor on my bed's headboard and went to sleep, listening to all those groovy songs. I picked up my love from my father for classical music. He had 15 or so 33 1/3 LPs. I still have a few of those treasures...worth some $ now, as relics. Imagine that.
DeleteI'm a child of the 50s/60s too. We sure enjoyed our freedom riding bikes til dark, trick or treating all over the neighborhood, playing games out in the front yard. Swing the Statue, anyone? Crack the whip? Riding bikes and rollerskating without helmets and not worrying about it. At the same time though we had the cold war and threat of nuclear annihilation to consider. Anybody remember bomb drills? They were surprisingly like tornado drills! I sure remember all the military traffic in the air headed for Florida during the Cuban missile crisis.
ReplyDeleteI loved Nancy Drew but quit reading her when the publishers updated the books and took out all that wonderful 1930s and 1940s flavor. As I got older I got frustrated on the restrictions imposed on girls. So many things I wanted to do that were considered for men only. Phooey!
Pat D, hi. What was Swing the Statue? I missed that one.
ReplyDeleteFor the life of me, I cannot recall one single duck-and-cover bomb drill...and my small town in KS (22 miles from Wichita, the Big City!) had an ICBM missile silo beside it. Maybe our school admin folks knew we'd never have a chance and so we could just fry.
Well. All the nuclear stuff never scared me, but being required to read ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute scared the eyebrows off me. I think I got deeper into fiction than I did into real life.
I wanted to grow up to be Roy Rogers. One day I wondered why I wanted to be a cowboy and now a cowgirl. I could never be a cowboy...but Dale Rogers was such a wimp. Much later I found out that the marriage between Roy and Dale was quite advanced for its day and so was Dale in her feminist thinking. I was very, very pleased.
My two grandmothers were quite strong and forthright. My mother was the one who insisted that I act like "a little lady." Heck, that was a tough sell, even back then. ho ho.
Kay, Dale Evans never went by her married name, at least not publicly. I always admired her.
ReplyDeleteI am almost 64, and I also do not remember a single bomb drill. We had plenty of fire drills, but as far as I know we never had to duck under our desks. I also attended Catholic schools, so I don't know if maybe there was a component of faith there, or what.
My first exposure to Nancy drew was in about 1957, when I was in second grade. I could already read, so my brilliant teacher sent me to the library while she was teaching reading. The librarian let me read anything I wanted, so that year I discovered the Bobbsey Twins, then Nancy Drew, and a little of the Hardy Boys. Seventh heaven! The public library was also right across the street, and that librarian also came to know who I was, partly because my grandmother was a huge reader, staying up really late most nights to read mysteries and novels about nurses. There were a LOT of novels about nurses back then.
Later, I became familiar with Beany Malone, and then I was inspired by her take-charge, can do attitude.
Another big 60's memory: Mad Magazine. We lived in our aunt's and uncle's house while they were in Argentina for five years (my uncle was a master electrician who was helping build a power plant down there). My boy cousins, five and four years older than I, left their comic books, Boys' Life magazines, and Mad Magazines galore. On hot summer days I'd go down into the cool basement (no A/C back then) and wallow in the magazines and comic books all afternoon.
Karen, I spent summers in the library too. My small Kansas hometown had a wonderful two story Carnegie building made of stone. It was cool inside even then, before AC hit. The children's section, which was large, was in the basement.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it wonderful, how our early reading adventures stay with us? Reading and music. We were blessed.
Hi, Kay - Loved RAINY DAY WOMEN. During the Sixties, I went from kindergarten to high school in a small conservative town in the Bible Belt. Even though they had the best music, hippies were feared, like cooties.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, the scars of Vietnam run deep. That Jane Fonda is amazed she still has to apologize tells me she has no ties among the working class of the rural south and midwest, both of which sent a lot of ground troops to Nam.
Also, when the Sixties were ending and college protests heated up, families in my hometown kept smart girls home, so they wouldn't be corrupted by sex, drugs, and protest marches at college.
As the only child of a widow, I'm amazed I was allowed to go to college, but my mother knew I needed to go, yet she still gave me this warning: "If I ever get wind of you marching with protestors, I will jerk you right out of that college so fast it'll make your head spin."
Considering she said that in the years following Kent State, hindsight tells me her edict came down more for my physical safety than any fear of new ideas corrupting my pure lil head, but college did make me a broader thinker than my small town could handle. As the old WWI song goes, I wasn't about to stay on the farm after I'd see Par-ree, and not just for the "bright lights."
Good luck to you and Austin!
KAren in Ohio--MAD! My absolute favorite. The song parodies, especially. My mother was beside herself...she really could not understand why I was howling with laughter.
ReplyDeleteKay--that was because of the photo on Abbey Road, right? My dorm mates and I CRIED for days, playing the white album backward, worrying. And "Here's another clue for you all..the walrus was Paul."
ReplyDeleteHello, Rhonda. Nice to see you adding your thoughts here. Thank you for saying you enjoyed second mystery, RAINY DAY WOMEN! It's only been out two weeks, so you are right on the button! (Where did that expression come from? My grandmother?)
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point about Jane Fonda still being amazed. There are so many men in my age cohort who served in Nam who are still furious at how they were treated when they returned from the war they never wanted to go to in the first place. In fact, seeing how well returning soldiers are treated by our populace now reawakens those bad memories. It is just tragic.
I imagine your mother was probably most worried about your physical safety...the way today the parents of young'uns must be worried about their offspring going to movie theaters.
Reading through everyone's comments, I am reminded of the prolific writer Susan Wittig Albert. She is always encouraging women to write up their memories and share them.
Karen, MAD! My cousin (isn't this National Cousins Day?) is three months older than me and he had every issue published.
ReplyDeleteDon't think I can pick a favorite memory from the 60s. Such a crazy time. I always wished I had been just a few years older and could have gone to Woodstock (although I think I would have hated it.) And I would have gone to London and camped outside Paul McCartney's house in St. John's Wood!!
I bought some revised Nancy Drew book for my 80s daughter. They were horrible! As soon as I actually read them, I gave them away and searched out original editions, PC or not.
Kay, good luck with your books! They're going on my TBR list!
Thanks for the correction, Hank. I confess I had to google the Paul-is-dead issue, and boy oh boy, did I just learn a lot. The rumor was around for years, from 1967 on, but rejuvenated with the Abbey Road release, at which point it reached fever pitch, and people began digging up clues, like the one from the White Album, just as you note. (The Google piece was so long and detailed it made my head spin, like an old-fashioned record.)
ReplyDeleteI am older than you so my most fervent Beatle memory is way different. I rushed up to the tower room of my freshman dorm, the ONLY place with a tv set, to join other "girls" to watch the Beatles appear for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show. I had no idea I would see that clip a million times thereafter!
Dear Deborah Crombie! I agree with you. The original Nancy Drew books are real treasures. I never even got past the covers of the new ones so I guess I was lucky to miss the horrors that lurked inside...thank goodness. I always wanted a roadster.
ReplyDeleteMy new mystery RAINY DAY WOMEN opens right after the Manson murders, the week that leads up to Woodstock. Because my amateur sleuth is living in Toronto with her draft-resisting husband (they are both Texans), she thinks about traveling down to Woodstock. Instead she rushes off to help a friend suspected of murder. Later, when things quiet down, she muses that she wouldn't have liked all that mud, all those crowds anyway. But oh, all that music would have been so great. Thank the lord we have clips of most of the performances.
I am thrilled to be on your TBR list, Deborah. I enjoy your books with Gemma and Duncan so much. I am a real anglophile so I always love a chance to go there, if only in fiction, until the next time I can fly over for real.
There is a very interesting piece in yesterday's business section of the NY Times. It relates how millennial women are planning their careers differently from either Gen Xers or boomers.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/upshot/more-than-their-mothers-young-women-plan-career-pauses.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
The key difference is...
"The youngest generation of women in the work force — the millennials, age 18 to early 30s — is defining career success differently and less linearly than previous generations of women. A variety of survey data shows that educated, working young women are more likely than those before them to expect their career and family priorities to shift over time."
Since the background of my new mystery is second-phase women's liberation, I thought this was relevant to our discussions.
Swing the statue? I have a feeling it is a hybrid game we came up with. A cross between crack the whip and freeze tag. That last one, you froze in position like a statue when you were tagged by "it". It's been too long; I can't remember our rules. I loved Mad magazine. What, me worry? Spy v Spy. Their parodies were priceless. I still remember "Is Paris Boring?" Much more action-packed than "Is Paris Burning?" And regarding bomb drills...you don't think duck and cover would improve our chances to survive a nuclear bomb? What I like best about the times was you could hear folk, rock, orchestral (like from spaghetti westerns) and country music all on one radio station. At least I could in Austin, Texas in college. Boy, do I miss that!
ReplyDeletePat D, it sounds plausible, that you combined Crack the Whip with Freeze Tag. I did play both of those. The radio stations I listened to also played a bit of everything...except for classical and jazz. I listened to Wichita stations and the great WLS down from Chicago at night. Those were the days, my friend...think of Mary Ann Hopkin singing that. Think that was her name, ca. mid sixties.
ReplyDeleteHow long before we see Hippie reenactors?
ReplyDeleteHi, S.E. Warwick. Now there is something whose time may have come. Hippie reenactors! I have the clothes and accessories for it, having taken advantage of the current rage for what is now called boho chic, and I think of fondly as retro hippie. I never dressed that way in my youth but love it now!
ReplyDeleteI read all the Nancy Drew books as a pre teen/early teen. I also recall watching an updated version of Drew on TV in the late 70's and it worked for me as I recall enjoying the more modern characters too.
ReplyDeleteJoan Farrell, I only saw a few episodes of Nancy Drew on TV in the 70s, but it did work pretty well for me too. I had to look up the name of the actress, but Pamela Sue Martin played Nancy. She left and later went on to play somebody or other on Dynasty. When I was wandering around various websites reading about Miss Nancy, I saw that glorious word...CHUM. I haven't seen that word in so long that all the old memories from reading Nancy's adventures so long ago came rushing back. It was great!
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