Publisher's Synopsis
Remember your first bicycle-the expanded world it brought? Your first date? (Not in your dad's car, but before then when you were just discovering the opposite sex).1946 to 1964 was an amazing time to be a kid.Imagine looking up, seeing a tiny dot race across the night sky every ninety-eight minutes and realizing that, for the first time, space travel really was possible. But mixed with wonder were events that were both confusing and frightening. Only a few years after Sputnik dazzled imaginations, millions of children watched tiny black and white TVs as an island, just ninety miles from Florida, pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. Then, just one year later, on that same TV, a rider-less horse and military procession traveled slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue to lay to rest an assassinated American president.TV also brought images of violence and brutality as a subset of the population struggled to secure their rights as Americans. Then, images from a far off land called Vietnam vaulted to the forefront and tore at the very soul of the nation. Cheese Grits tells stories from the unique and unfiltered view of the children who lived them--stories about events that would split a nation and engender values that defined a generation.
