Category Archives: 60s

FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL / Tura Santana

May 21, 2021 – 10:13 am

The South Shore Drive-In was located off 128 outside of Boston over the Blue Hills from my suburban development of split-level houses. No one went to the twin screens in the daytime, but on summer nights my father drove my mother and their six children to the open-air theater, where we watched THE TEN COMMANDMENTS […]

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Demo Derby Redux

April 17, 2021 – 11:13 am

Three Labor Days ago Richie Boy drove to Ditch Plains for a morning surf session. His Brazilian wife was intent on taking in the sun. The incoming morning tide was building green glassy tubes held up from a rare offshore breeze. Within an hour they’d be overhead. I wasn’t joining my longtime friend in the […]

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DEMO DERBY Paintings by Jane Dickson / Writing by Peter Nolan Smith

April 17, 2021 – 5:16 am

On a summer night in 1969 a high school friend Dave Quaan drove my older brother, next-door neighbor and me to Norwood Arena in his family’s station wagon. The Ford Country Squire hit its top speed of 115 on Route 128. We got off the highway at US 1 and drove south to a ball […]

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PAPER BOY by Peter Nolan Smith

April 17, 2021 – 4:18 am

Boston published three morning newspapers in 1960; the Boston Globe, the Record American, and the Herald Traveler. My family moved from Falmouth Foresides, Maine to a a suburb south of Boston. The Neponset River separated the city from the town. Our neighborhood had been constructed on an abandoned army base. Several hundred newly-constructed split-level houses […]

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A Baguette and Butter

March 16, 2021 – 4:05 pm

In the Sixties on the South Shore my Irish grandmother Nana served her grandchildren sugary tea and buttered Wonder Bread toast upon our return from parochial school. We dipped the crisp slices into the sweet milky tea and each bite revived our bodies and souls from the New England cold and eight hours under the […]

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