Memories Are Like Clouds (Paperback)

by Diana J. Dell (Author)
Key Phrases: candy business, East Vandergrift, Memories Are Like Clouds, Aunt Veronica (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Memories Are Like Clouds, a touching memoir, is a fond remembrance of growing up when life seemed simple.

Gliding on the porch swing while listening to their mother’s stories of her youth, counting dead goldfish at the five-and-ten cent store, playing pick-up baseball games down near the dump, collecting Ralph Kiner and Stan Musial baseball cards, helping Daddy at his candy business, devouring Sgt. Rock comic books, and running numbers for the neighborhood bookie in a housedress filled Kenny and Diana’s innocent days in East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania.

The author weaves together the universal experiences shared with millions of other baby boomers such as that first television set, iceboxes, “Amos ‘n Andy,” hula hoops, and the milk man and the individual memories specific to this family (the rag man and his tired old horse, the Polish Barber’s dirty adventure magazines, and shotgun weddings at the Slovak Club).

This coming-of-age tale, filled with hope and old-fashioned values, will delight and engage and then, long afterward, persist in memory.

About the Author
Diana Dell was born in 1946 in East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, where she grew up, and graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in journalism. She worked as a journalist on a newspaper and also taught second and seventh grade classes. In 1970, after her brother Kenny was killed in the Mekong Delta, she went to Vietnam as a civilian with USO. There she was a program director in Cam Ranh Bay and director of public relations in Saigon, where she hosted "USO Showtime," a daily program on American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) radio. In addition, she set up "Feed the Children" programs in orphanages, coordinated programs and publicity for the 14 centers in-country, and escorted USO shows and visiting celebrities around Vietnam--from the Delta to the DMZ. Upon leaving Vietnam, following the Easter Offensive in 1972, she worked in Europe for a year as publicity director at the Frankfurt USO and two years as a freelance writer and photographer in Athens and Madrid. After owning an advertising agency in Massachusetts for 10 years, she taught Vietnam War history and journalism classes at Tampa College. Diana divides her writing time between Boston and Clearwater, Florida. She is also the author of Memories Are Like Clouds, a childhood memoir set in the 1950s.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: IUniverse (February 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595001416
• ISBN-13: 978-0595001415
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,840,041 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recollections of growing up in a small ethnic community, September 4, 2001

By	Marc J. Yacht "MJY" (Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I enjoyed this book. The title is perfect for a work that snapshots growing up in a Polish community. My grandparents were Russian Jews (both sets) who came to America about 1912. Both my parents were born here. So much of the anecdotal tales of local characters, mom and pop shops, numbers running, close communities, mirrored so much of what I remember as a child. Overlaying the story and presented initially is the loss of a loved one in Viet Nam. This book relates how immigrant families sacrificed for their children encouraging their education that resulted in 2nd generation Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants etc. Its a wonderful book to read and struck many chords for me.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Story of Post World War Two Coming-of-Age, November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Memories Are Like Clouds (Hardcover)

What makes this book so appealing to a "Baby-Boomer," like myself, is that it brings back memories of what it was like growing up in a small town in the fifties. The wiry humor and interesting characters make the book hard to stop reading. Fact is---I read it twice, and would certainly recommend it for its entertaining aspects, as well as its literary merit. Dell's other book, "A Saigon Party," is a must read for those desiring a different view-point of the Vietnam war. Her writing is poignant, sincere, and manages to capture a little of the American spirit that is in all of us. Sincerely, Franklin D. Rast, author: "Don's Nam," and "Ghosts In The Wire."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique accomplishment, a delightful adventure, May 5, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Huntington, West Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memories Are Like Clouds (Hardcover)

MEMORIES ARE LIKE CLOUDS Author: Diana Dell

Scenes from Diana Dell's MEMORIES ARE LIKE CLOUDS float into the reader's mind as a fresh mist that puts all of life into a saner perspective. This sharp and focused narrative begins with little Diana's discovery of her brother Kenny sleeping in her very own crib.  It continues by detailing the developing relationship between brother and sister based on similar interests: the love of a good story, an interest in people - family and neighbors especially, and the drive to get across the street and then keep moving on. Ms. Dell's relationship with her brother Kenny is the link, which ties together the delightful, the funny, the sad, and the devastating happenings of the book. Contrasting threads -- the telling of various war-time stories and living the easier life in East Vandergriff - weaves through the minds of the children, creating an awareness of their own family's history from Eastern European roots.  They see through the stories their mother tells that wars are motivation for change and moving on. They become very aware of our country's history, and see other traumatic events such as the economic depression as a mover of people to places they would not have been otherwise.  As the children are nurtured by their mother's stories, we readers see the Dell family history as a microcosm - the social and emotional setting that emphasizes man's humanity toward man, the ultimate theme of this volume. Ironically, this proves to be a startling contrast to the way Ms. Dell's beloved brother Kenny actually died in the horror of man's greatest inhumanity to man - war. That Pennsylvania town had only one road leading in and out. This means safety and togetherness for the duo until that bitter day when the twenty-one gun salute put the twenty-one year old Kenny to rest - this time a final rest in a coffin, not a crib - finalizing the twenty-one year history for the little brother and sister team. Through the colorful accounts of the people and happenings in Diana's childhood, I find myself making comparisons between the life I remember in the fifties and life today. I absorb the daily insights and epiphanies through the eyes and mind of the child Diana, and find that I also knew all my neighbors, their dispositions toward children and animals, and consequently their situations financially, mentally, morally, physically, and spiritually. Today, with a swoosh of the automatic garage door, we prevent even a glimpse of the neighborhood.  I wonder what we have lost and what we have gained in the interim.  Through it all - the gains and the losses - the memories float on. They keep us moving on.  They help us cross streets.

Rebecca Phillips Payne