A Place Called Alice

by Dennis McMahon

Overview

As one of the very first "Baby Boomers" I grew up in the North Dakota of the 1950's I lived in a little prairie town, that like a lot of prairie towns is mostly gone anymore. It was a time before God got put into the Pledge of Allegiance, a time when Washington and Lincoln and a copy of the Ten Commandments in gothic script had an honored presence on the walls at school and World War II was still a part of the short term memory. Kids today would more than likely say our lives were boring. Our bicycles only had a single speed, baseball bats were made of wood, and you had to check to see who was on the line when you used the phone that stuck up off the desk like in a scene from a 1930's movie. It was a time when finding that perfect slingshot crotch in the trees behind the Alice Hall was an event worth remembering. We had to use imagination then . My horse, the one that was killed along with me in the charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and his North Dakota Rough Riders was a lath I pulled from a snow fence down by the railroad yard. We were cowboys and adventurers, Visigoths and Vikings and scientists and explorers riding and running for miles into the country and back again experiencing our world of farms and ranches inhabited and abandoned and gravel pits and sloughs and creek beds and ravines and waving grass and wheat fields and the occasional grove of trees under a sky so wide it defied explanation. Goose-down and Gore-tex and four wheel drive were concepts we hadn't even imagined. A cap with flaps over your ears, a coat with a collar of imitation fur and four buckle overshoes was high winter fashion in 1955 North Dakota. I guess I never realized just how unsophisticated we were. We were like some 1940's movie and to tell the honest truth, I miss it. I miss the honesty, the innocence, the wide eyed naiveté . We've got smart phones and iPads, digital cameras and computers. But we've lost our sense of joy I think, our sense of wonder at it all. To tell the honest truth, I miss it. You see, for me, it's a journey of no distance, from my heart to A Place Called Alice Dennis "Mac" McMahon

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668528990
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	08/15/2021
Pages:	322
Sales rank:	987,020
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

As one of the very first “Baby Boomers” I grew up in the North Dakota of the 1950’s I lived in a little prairie town, that like a lot of prairie towns is mostly gone anymore. It was a time before God got put into the Pledge of Allegiance, a time when Washington and Lincoln and a copy of the Ten Commandments in gothic script had an honored presence on the walls at school and World War II was still a part of the short term memory. Kids today would more than likely say our lives were boring. Our bicycles only had a single speed, baseball bats were made of wood, and you had to check to see who was on the line when you used the phone that stuck up off the desk like in a scene from a 1930’s movie. It was a time when finding that perfect slingshot crotch in the trees behind the Alice Hall was an event worth remembering. We had to use imagination then . My horse, the one that was killed along with me in the charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and his North Dakota Rough Riders was a lath I pulled from a snow fence down by the railroad yard. We were cowboys and adventurers, Visigoths and Vikings and scientists and explorers riding and running for miles into the country and back again experiencing our world of farms and ranches inhabited and abandoned and gravel pits and sloughs and creek beds and ravines and waving grass and wheat fields and the occasional grove of trees under a sky so wide it defied explanation. Goose-down and Gore-tex and four wheel drive were concepts we hadn’t even imagined. A cap with flaps over your ears, a coat with a collar of imitation fur and four buckle overshoes was high winter fashion in 1955 North Dakota. I guess I never realized just how unsophisticated we were. We were like some 1940’s movie and to tell the honest truth, I miss it. I miss the honesty, the innocence, the wide eyed naiveté . We’ve got smart phones and iPads, digital cameras and computers. But we’ve lost our sense of joy I think, our sense of wonder at it all. To tell the honest truth, I miss it. You see, for me, it’s a journey of no distance, from my heart to A Place Called Alice Dennis “Mac” McMahon