Sting-Ray Afternoons

A Memoir

De: Steve Rushin

Narrado por: Greg Baglia

A wild and bittersweet memoir of a classic '70s childhood.

It's a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons and advertising jingles that they'll be humming all day. A father - one of 3M's greatest and last eight-track-salesman fathers - traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home.

It's Steve Rushin's story: of growing up within a '70s landscape populated with Bic pens, Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles, lightsabers, and those oh-so-coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Sting-Ray Afternoons paints an utterly fond, psychedelically vibrant, laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of an exuberant decade. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, whole lotta love.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2017 Steve Rushin (P)2017 Hachette Audio

memory lane

Enjoyed this book immensely, it was almost as if I was looking into a mirror of my own childhood. I will treasure this book for a long time to come. And listen to it many times over, especially when I want to take a, stroll down memory lane.

Brilliant Reflections on Childhood in 70's /early

I have always liked Steve Rushin's work with Sports Illustrated. The Chicago born, Minnesota raised writer packs a lot of nostalgia, humor, warmth and some interesting trivia in the ode to life in Suburban Minneapolis in the 70's -to early 80's. You don't have to come from the Midwest or be a sports fan to appreciate this book. I think for a lot of American kids who grew up in that time, this book will resonate with them. I really enjoyed this book and plan on telling some of my other baby boomer and post baby boomer friends about this book.

Loved the memories. I also lived through much of that period.

Narrator was good except for mispronouncing some names important to the story such as the prestigious suburb of Edina. It’s not Ed ee na. It’s Edina with a long I. Some of the hockey names incorrect also. Kind of picky but still important.

enjoyable book

it brought me back...relived some memories. Good book....some interesting facts I Didn't know. laughed out loud at times

WOW!

Amazing! It's like Steve knows me..... what a fantastic book if you grew up in the 1970's, or ever wondered what it was like. Fantastic Book Steve !!

Perfect Gen-X time capsule.

This might not be for everyone - there is definitely a heavy dose of nostalgia. So if you didn’t live it, you might struggle. But it is perfectly written by someone who knows how to craft a story – seems to be an oddity nowadays. And while no Gen-X version of “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ – Rushin doesn’t have Bryson’s wit - it is genuine and often funny snapshot of life growing up in middleclass, nowhere special, 1970s America.

Sting-Ray Afternoons

This novel takes be back to simpler time when I was growing up with very little to worry about and all the time in the world. #tagsgiving, #sweepstakes

great trip down memory lane

a light humorous book to listen to or read at anytime when you need to smile!!

Brought me back to my childhood!

I had so much in common with the narrator/ author that I started wondering how he captured my memories.

I waited to review this book, because I wanted to do it justice. If you grew up in the ‘70’s, you will love this book I was age 2-11 in the ‘70’s and the author was just a little older. If you are from Minnesota you will also appreciate it (I’m not!)

Great credit purchase.

Uneven, quirky, nostalgic, heartfelt

This book was really all over the road for me...the hyper attention to period brands, the rhythm of the narrator...I almost quit the book several times in annoyance. But at some point I decided to forge ahead and eventually the book settled into an actual memoir and not just an infomercial for period products and norms.

It seems a bit odd that the author, now over 50, can manage to recall, in moment to moment detail, events from when he was six to around 14. But it was great to read about a family with both the usual sibling rivalries but also lovingly crafted portraits of his parents. I think this book is both a love letter to his parents, and to the period he grew up in...from Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, to Sting-Ray bikes, to the Mary Tyler Moore show, it’s all in there.

Both the book and the narrator grew on me, and I came to enjoy the book quite a bit after an initially rocky start. If you read the book, be sure to check out the PDF...the old photos are fun.