Sting-Ray Afternoons

Narrator Greg Baglia reads this nostalgic memoir of boyhood with a nod to its humor and a poke at the psychedelic colors of the cars, bikes, and common household products of the 1970s. The features and history of each product are described in minute detail in an uninflected, unemotional tone. In this ode to growing up in a suburb of Minneapolis, Baglia takes on the role of the author at the age of 8, expressing his boundless curiosity about the world around him. Rushin's childhood is recounted with childish jokes and asides that range from silly to funny. Sadly, the sound volume's cycling up and down at the beginnings of sentences mars the listener's experience. But each scene is described exhaustively and delivered in one continuous stream, and the narrative is steady and intensely descriptive. M.B.K. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

May 8, 2017
Best known for his back-page slice-of-life vignettes in Sports Illustrated, Rushin (author of The Caddie Was a Reindeer, an essay collection, and the novel The Pint Man) describes growing up in the 1970s. He employs such cultural references as Romper Stomper toys, the 1971 antilittering commercial featuring a Native-American (who it turned out was actually Italian-American) crying by the side of the road, the Sting Ray bike of the book’s title, and contemporaneous advertising jingles and adolescent chants (“Beans, beans the musical fruit... ”). Rushin uses his family as the book’s focal point, capturing the nonstop zaniness of growing up with four siblings in Bloomington, Minn. Some of these asides are funnier and more interesting than others, but ’70s kitsch and nostalgia are evident throughout, as for example in his family’s 1978 Ford simulated–wood-grain station wagon and a visit to the newly opened Disney World. But it’s Rushin’s dad, a child of the Depression, who steals the show. Whether quoting his father as he describes his five kids (“I have one redhead and four shitheads”) or retelling stories about him being drunk on what was the then new Boeing 747, it’s through his father that Rushin captures the mystery and magic of childhood. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

June 1, 2017
An award-winning sportswriter looks back, mostly fondly, at a childhood in the 1970s in a Minnesota suburb.As the anxious middle child in a Catholic family with four boys and one girl, overseen by a housewife mother and a father who traveled around the world selling eight-track tape for 3M, Sports Illustrated writer Rushin (The 34-Ton Bat: The Story of Baseball as Told Through Bobbleheads, Cracker Jacks, Jockstraps, Eye Black, and 375 Other Strange and Unforgettable Objects, 2013, etc.) may not have been able to compete with his athletic older brothers for glory on the playing field, but he pleased his parents with a talent for puns and other wordplay and himself with a collection of baseball cards. For a future sportswriter, he had the good fortune to grow up in Bloomington when the city was home to all the major Minnesota sports teams: the Vikings, the Twins, and the North Stars. While Rushin still appears to bear a bit of resentment toward his oldest brother, the administrator of the "Indian Burn" and the "Dutch Rub," he clearly respects and admires his lovingly involved father and particularly his mother, with her concern that her children should avoid the awful fate of being perceived as "hillbillies." The author devotes much of the narrative to the pop culture of the 1970s: the titular bicycle, the candy cigarettes the boys brandished, the near worship of Farrah Fawcett, and the fear-inspiring experiences of seeing The Poseidon Adventure and Jaws on the big screen. Although frequent sidetracks into generic comments on life in middle America (the absence of seat belt use and the frequency of smoking) and asides about the history of Midwest-created objects such as the Nerf ball and the Weber grill sometimes detract from the author's personal story, the nostalgic sweetness of his memories carries the book along comfortably. Rushin provides convincing evidence that life in the '70s wasn't as chaotic as it's often made out to be.

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May 1, 2017
It didn't get much better than a shiny Schwinn Sting-Ray for a boy growing up in a Minneapolis suburb in the 1970s. Parking the banana-seated bicycle so its kickstand started to sink into driveway asphalt, a candy cigarette dangling from his lips and temporary tattoos on his skinny armsnow that was the height of cool, in young Rushin's mind. The Sports Illustrated writer recounts his childhood with a warm nostalgia, darkened only by the threat of being offered a Hertz donut. His childhood, from the ages of 3 to 13, was perfectly encapsulated in the 1970s, and he celebrates the excesses and excitement of the decade with ardor. He crams his writing with the brands that had their heyday during this time, and the stories behind them, from the designer of the Bic pens used as spitball machines in his classroom to the origin of the recordable tape his father sold for 3M. Rushin's everykid upbringing and the touchstones of childhood he recounts make Sting-Ray Afternoons a fun-filled and charming trip.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)