Green Stamps to Hot Pants: Growing Up in the 50s and 60s

by Genny Zak Kieley

Genny Zak Kieley, the author of several best-selling books about the neighborhoods and early history of Northeast Minneapolis, here turns her attention to her own childhood years. Intermixing social research and personal nostalgia, she creates a portrait of a simpler era, when Monday was washday and Tuesday was ironing day, and busy housewives collected green stamps. Drive-ins were the hot spots on Saturday nights, and kids experienced first loves (and first heartbreaks) while listening to doo-wop music on their transistor radios. Cars had fins, bikes were big and bulky, and television had just arrived. Countless Westerns vied with The Wonderful World of Disney for the family’s attention, and Ed Sullivan introduced the nation to those mop-headed youths, the Beatles. “I’ll always remember that time," Kieley writes. "Like many other baby boomers I have a deep sentimental yearning to reclaim the memory of days long past. The music was deep and powerful and also a little crazy. But it was also a time of innocence; this is a memoir of the world as I remember it in the 1950s and 60s.”

Genres: Nonfiction

195 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Arline]

If you grew up in the '40s or '50s this book will bring back lots of memories.I pasted S&H Green Stamps into booklets for my mother (and in the '60s for myself),starched my crinolines (but not with sugar water), and raced home every day to watch American Bandstand.

There were a few things in the book that I had not heard about like making belts out of gum wrappers. Perhaps that fad didn't make it to California.

We dined on Melmac dishes and did not have a TV set until I was seven.
My parents had a Studebaker. How I hated that car! Loved my father's 1949 Ford.

For me, this book is definitely a keeper!

[Cheryl]

This book is more of a ‘coffee table’ book where you pick it up and look at it on and off and would be best for people who grew up in Minneapolis during the 50’s and 60’s since there are several references to stores and places that only people who lived there would know. Still is was interesting to read of different things in the past.

[Pam]

A delightful look back at my youth! Great fun.

[Victoria M.]

Fun to skim for the nostalgia, but not that well organized.

[Dee]

An enjoyable stroll down memory lane!

[Cyndy]

It was OK. There were a lot of pictures that brought back memories even though I was born a decade later than the author. The written content sometimes left a lot to be desired though. I liked the descriptions of Northeast Minneapolis since I'm familiar with that neighborhood so am planning on checking out her other books. The biggest complaint is when the author keeps talking about how the 50's and 60's were a simpler time implying that it was better back then. The thing is, when you're a child, things usually are simpler.

[Carol]

Really good. I enjoyed reading how our grandparents have grown up and how our country was more self sufficient and innocent in those times, making your own clothes, building your own cars, laundry by hand, perming your own hair, children playing outside running around the neighborhood with no supervision(I remember those times myself), paper dolls (my favorite growing up as well) and the big era of Drive-Ins(another of my favorite). Those years were innocent years and I wish we could have that back.

[Betsy]

Badly written, badly edited and gives very short shrift to many, many elements of the two decades. It comes across as a book slapped together by someone who had managed to scare up a lot of old photos and needed words to hold them together. A major disappointment.