Growing Up Simple--In Texas: An Irreverent Look at Kids in the 1950s - Hardcover

George Arnold

3.64

11 ratings by Goodreads

9781571686879: Growing Up Simple--In Texas: An Irreverent Look at Kids in the 1950s

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1571686878 ISBN 13: 9781571686879

Publisher: Eakin Pr, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Growing Up Simple is a collection of 16 chronologically-set vignettes about the unbelievable hijinks of a group of hellishly creative pranksters as they come of age during a far, far simpler time for kids-in a placid, black and white world of the 1950's.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Publisher:

An Introduction by Liz Carpenter

George Arnold invited me to write an introduction to this book—Growing Up Simple ... In Texas. He felt I would understand simple living because I grew up in small-town Texas—Salado and Belton. As a child, I experienced simple delights—feeding the baby goats with a bottle, riding a tame mare from my grandmother’s house to the post office for the mail, feeling the wind blow through my hair in our Model T Ford as we drove from Salado to Belton. I have written about that now and then.

This author pretested his text on twenty-four readers from across the U.S. and received twenty-one answers with positive reactions.

One of the values of George’s story of his days living the simple life is that he sets you reflecting on your own, remembering a world that has become overpowered by meetings, conferences, cell telephones, and e-mail—all those time-taking events which we add to our lives to fill every minute and crowd out all else.

I wasn’t far into his chapters of hitchhiking, fixing broken cars, attending summer revival services when preachers could cure your ailments on the spot, when suddenly the words to a song—"The Way We Were"—kept running through my mind.

"...Can it be that it was all so simple then...

About the Author:

George Arnold wears a lot of hats these days. Retired advertising agency executive. Texas Hill Country rancher. Horse breeder. Rotarian. Father, grandfather and husband. Baseball nut.

But the hat he’s fondest of carries the label "storyteller."

He was born in the family farmhouse near Smithville, Missouri – just north of Kansas City – in September 1942. Four years later, his family gave up farming and moved to Texas where he attended public schools in Uvalde, San Antonio, Waco and Austin. He grew up in Austin in the placid 1950s, graduating from Austin High School in 1961.

Arnold worked his way through The University of Texas, earning a Bachelor of Journalism degree, with honors, in 1965 and a Master of Arts in Communication degree in 1966. In college, he majored in advertising and earned minors in mathematics, marketing, English and statistics.

Driven by an urge to create, he entered the advertising and public relations field and, in 1973, joined a small Dallas-based ad agency. In 1975, he was elected vice president and two years later president and chief operating officer. Under his leadership, the agency grew from 13 employees and about $3.5 million in annual billings to 58 employees and $60 million in annual billings by 1998, when it was sold to Publicis SA of Paris, France, one of the five largest agencies in the world.

He retired to a small ranch in the Texas Hill Country in 1999. He and his wife of 38 years raise coastal Bermuda hay, registered half-Arabian horses, BB English Red bantams, geese, dogs, cats and invisible goats. They have four grown children and two grandchildren.

Arnold is active in Rotary International, serving as president-elect of the Fredericksburg Rotary Club and chairman of Rotary District 5840s international project in Mexico. He is an advisory director of HungerPlus, Inc. and a member of the executive committee of the North Texas Division of March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. He is past president of the Dallas Advertising League and the Texas Public Relations Association.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.