Stingray Afternoons

'Charming and heartfelt, hilarious and touching, Rushin's Sting-Ray Afternoons is a pitch-perfect portrait of growing up in middle America during the Brady Bunch era. A gem of a memoir, a tribute to family, and a delectable slice of American history.' ― Nina Sankovitch, author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair and The Lowells of Massachusetts. Discussion Questions We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Sting-Ray Afternoons. Sting-Ray Afternoons paints an utterly fond, psychedelically vibrant, laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of an exuberant decade. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, whole lotta love.

Get out that vintage bike—or imagine the one you always wished for—and join award-winning Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin on a wild ride through his ’70s boyhood in fast-growing Bloomington, Minnesota. Once the proud owner of his own Sting-Ray bike, Rushin was born just in time to watch the first man land on the moon. Sting-Ray Afternoons takes it from there in this fiercely funny memoir about family, sports, music, food and fads.

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Rushin is the middle child of a frequently traveling, hardworking 3M salesman and a stay-at-home mom who somehow remained sane and mostly in control of four brawling boys and an unflappable daughter. A candid observer of his own troubles—sleepwalking, night terrors and sibling wars among them—Rushin adds wit with a comic’s timing to his tales. Meanwhile, the Sears Wish Book catalog promised grand Christmases, the new Weber grill delivered backyard barbecues, and the Vikings went down in Super Bowl defeat an ignominious four times. Pringles were pretty new, and who knew that their creator would someday ask to be cremated and buried in a Pringles can? Rushin is a wealth of such odd facts.

Mixing in more sports and popular trivia than any board game can provide, Rushin offers up a time capsule of the 1970s. The affection he bestows on his family—foibles and scars notwithstanding—colors the details of their times together. “Childhood disappears down a storm drain,” Rushin concludes. “It flows, then trickles, then vanishes. . . .” Sting-Ray Afternoons does its best to ensure the devil in those details lives on.

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

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This is a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Of brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons. Of growing up in a magical era populated by Bic pens, Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles, lightsabers and those oh-so-coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. And of a father — one of 3M's greatest and last eight-track salesmen — traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home.
In Sting-Ray Afternoons, Steve Rushin paints an utterly nostalgic, psychedelically vibrant portrait of a decade overflowing with technological evolution, cultural revolution, as well as brotherly, sisterly, and parental love.
'Funny, elegiac... a remarkably sunny coming-of-age story about growing up in a Midwest world.' — NPR