Looking Back - Wait Till Next Year

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Memoir
1998 Simon & Schuster
Finished in August 1998
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Wait Till Next Year is the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries. We meet the people who influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a 70-year-old when she was only in her 30s and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to which she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers. This is also the story of a girlhood in which the great religious festivals of the Catholic church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce a passionate love of history, ceremony, and ritual. It is the story of growing up in what seemed on the surface a more innocent era until one recalls the terror of polio, the paranoia of McCarthyism reflected even in the children's games, the obsession with A-bomb drills in school, and the ugly face of racial prejudice. It was a time whose relative tranquility contained the seeds of the turbulent decade of the 60s. Shortly after the Dodgers left, Goodwin's mother died, and the family moved from the old neighborhood to an apartment on the other side of town. This move coincided with the move of several other families on the block and with the decline of the corner store as the supermarket began to take over. It was the end.


My Original Notes (1998):

Excellent memoir! I loved it. Very entertaining. You don't need to be a baseball fan to enjoy it, either. I think it's a beautifully written cultural history of growing up in the 50s. Playing outside until dark. Walking home from school for lunch. Owning the first TV on the block. First Communion. Howdy Doody. The Mickey Mouse Club. Polio. The Cold War. Air raid drills. McCarthyism. The Rosenbergs. James Dean. And, of course, the Brooklyn Dodgers! Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider. After reading so many books about dysfunctional and abusive families, I found this very refreshing.

My Current Thoughts:

I can't believe I no longer own a copy of this book! After reading my original notes, I thought I'd like to read the book again, but I can't find my copy. I either loaned it to someone or decided not to keep it when we were packing for our move to Oregon. Rats!