Over the handle bars of Old Faithful #1
My worst scare after my eighth birthday happened with my bike.  Having taken off with some of the guys in a mad dash down the street - each of us pedaling like little hellions - I hit a bump.  Each sequential moment turned into a blurred, freeze-frame.  The front tire went down. The back went up.  Way up.  I sailed over my handle bars and down.  The bike was in the air, but I didn't know that.  The chip-and-seal street surface was coming fast. 

"Drop and roll," came to me from somewhere with complete confidence and clarity.  And in a sideways roll, I came up on my bottom. After all, the drill sergeants in those World War II parachute movies repetitively barked the phrase, "Drop and roll." 

Before realizing what had happened, someone yelled, "It's going over your head," and I ducked.  Sure enough, the bike landed ahead of me.  It must have missed my head by fractions.
                                                                        - from Waking Up in the Studebaker

Waking Up in the Studebaker
by Kevin L. Gray

World Audience Publishers
ISBN 978-0-9820540-5-5
Cost $23

Paola, Kansas, 2008 - Waking Up in the Studebaker is the memoir of Kevin Gray, who proudly came of age in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, and who captures an era, two actually, in his pages. 

Starting with his earliest memories in the 1950s, he covers a lot of ground - including impressions about racism in the former Capital of the Confederacy.  Teen music and rites from the 1950s drew him in by age 10.  He offers personal insights on Vietnam, music and the drug culture, and the turbulent times right into 1968 and violence of his own indirect making.

Gray admits, "I thought America the greatest place on the face of this earth to grow up in, but, then, I realized my color (white), my religion (Methodist), and my parents' middle-class income helped.  Then, I wasn't so sure." I was what one might commonly refer to as one of the haves, and most people of color or the wrong religion fit the have-nots.  Or the left out ones.

Asthma and an extreme shyness when indoors, affected him, but an overriding act-first-think-later attitude actually drove the boy. He also admits, "Life could be pretty boring and quite confusing for a suburban kid in those days.  I didn't live in New York or San Francisco or any of those exciting places. I had to make my own fun and my own life well away from places in the news.  Or on television or in the movies. 

The 1960s really weren't what they were cracked up to be in the media - that is for a kid stuck far from any "happening place."  At least we had the music!  And he still managed to make his own fun and deal with an overriding loneliness a part of being an only child. 

Yet, in so many ways, events in both the 1950s and 1960s reached out and made an impact on people nationwide, even to a young boy growing up in Richmond.  Waking Up in the Studebaker is Grays' very personal story set during those changing times in America.

'This is my story," he said, "and, more than anything, I didn't want help in most anything I did. I had to live my life my way, even if it gave me many bruises and very low grades along the way."

Quebec, Canada, 1967 - "My awareness turned to envy on the parapets of the old fort overlooking the river.  As I studied the battlements above the river below, a group of kids my age, dressed in mod fashions - Carnaby Street's bold colors and prints transplanted in the New World - the guys with shoulder-length hair and girls in long, straight bangs (one with a French-style, boyish but sexy short cut) and short skirts (like Twiggy) passed by, jumping and teasing one another.  Struck by the mini-shirts, a fashion statement just starting to hit Richmond, I could only stare...I figured that Quebec night life resembled England's, where young teens could go see groups like the Beatles, whenever they were playing.  I wanted to follow this youth brigade so badly, but I was with my parents..."