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Abilene, Texas 79697

(325) 793-4682 w Fax: (325) 793-4754

 

Latest in the Texas Heritage Series

Back Then

Simple Pleasures and Everyday Heroes

By Archie P. McDonald

1-880510-81-2 cloth  $17.95

5x7. 152 pp. 17 b&w photos. Social history. Texana.

 

 

 

Noted Texas historian Archie McDonald draws on his reservoir of experiences to write about shoe shines and men’s hats, corner drug stores and neighborhood groceries, first cars and full-service gas stations, favorite hymns and Vacation Bible School, John Wayne and the Big Bopper, war rationing and spinster aunts.

He tells about presidents and teachers he has known, music and books he has enjoyed, his first garden, and his first time to eat in an integrated restaurant.

Admitting to being “older than dirt,” McDonald remembers Butch wax, Howdy Doody, Studebakers, Packards, mimeograph paper, and other icons of days gone by.

What emerges is a kind of report of what it was like to live in Texas, or in the South, “back then,” a half century ago.

 

Archie McDonald is professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University and director of the East Texas Historical Association. He broadcasts weekly commentaries on Red River Radio, an affiliate of National Public Radio. The forty-five short essays in Back Then were adapted from those Friday commentaries.  To interview the author call (936) 468-2407 or e-mail him at amcdonald@sfasu.edu

 

For More Information about the book, contact State House Press associate editor Carlyn Kahl at 325-793-4697 or ckahl@mcm.edu

 

State House Press is a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium and is operated by the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation in Abilene, Texas.  For further information on Back Then: Simple Pleasures and Everyday Heros or other State House Press titles, please contact Carly Kahl at (325) 793-4697, by e-mail at ckahl@mcm.edu or visit the web, www.tamu.edu/upress/MCWHINEY/mcgen.html

 

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