Jack Foley - Ambler's Grass - Growing up in Kensington in the 1950's

Jack Foley will read three excerpts from his manuscript Ambler's Grass: Growing Up in a Suburb of the Cold War.

Jack grew up in Kensington on Ambler Drive between September of 1947 and January of 1961.Ambler's Grass is a book of closely linked essays exploring, analyzing, but above all dramatizing a certain place in time with claims to being uniquely new in history. It looks at the development of the American suburb after World War II, focusing on Montgomery County, on Kensington, on Ambler Drive. One short piece tells about the ploughing of Ambler and Puller Drives in 1947, a classic example of how the American suburb grew after World War II. Then he will leap 12 years to describe a mini-Odyssey through the pre-Antiques Heaven of Kensington circa 1959-1960, featuring a meander down Howard Avenue. He will also act out a brief comic scene from the beginning of his father's Kensington political career, which culminated in election to Congress in 1958.

Jack Foley is one of the editors of FlashPoint: A Journal of the Arts and Politics (www.flashpointmag.com), where two essays from Ambler's Grass, 'Our Friend the Atom: Walt Disney and the Atomic Bomb' and 'An Inpost of Empire' have already appeared.