Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore
Anyone who knows me, knows I spent a good part of my formative years hanging out at the Dairy Queen. I loved it all, Buster Bars, Mr. Mistys, chocolate covered cones all with the curly cue on top. As a teenager, I hung out every summer evening in the Dairy Queen parking lot with friends talking about our hopes and dreams for the future and a variety of other teenage stuff.
When I saw the title of this book on a list of must reads, I had to have it. Catherine Grace Cline did all her best thinking with a Dilly Bar at the picnic table at the Dairy Queen in Ringgold, Georgia in the 1960's and 70's, the same time I was solving the problems of the world over a soft serve cone. Her Daddy was the preacher in town, her Momma died when she was six. And the only thing Catherine Grace wanted in life was to get out of that small town and move on to bigger and better things.
On her eighteenth birthday she did just that, packed her bags and got on the Greyhound bus headed to Atlanta. She worked things out in the big city and met a whole new cast of characters. But when fate forces her to return the the small town she couldn't wait to escape, Catherine Grace found what she was searching for.
This Dairy Queen was in the south and the one I knew was in the north but the similarities between the life lessons learned there were identical. I loved this book and all the people in it. Even though they spoke with a southern drawl, they spoke to me in Dairy Queen, a language I could relate to. When I recently returned to my hometown and found the Dairy Queen I loved had been torn down 15 years ago, I cried. Catherine Grace and the Ringgold, Georgia Dairy Queen touched me in the very same way.
Anyone who knows me, knows I spent a good part of my formative years hanging out at the Dairy Queen. I loved it all, Buster Bars, Mr. Mistys, chocolate covered cones all with the curly cue on top. As a teenager, I hung out every summer evening in the Dairy Queen parking lot with friends talking about our hopes and dreams for the future and a variety of other teenage stuff.
When I saw the title of this book on a list of must reads, I had to have it. Catherine Grace Cline did all her best thinking with a Dilly Bar at the picnic table at the Dairy Queen in Ringgold, Georgia in the 1960's and 70's, the same time I was solving the problems of the world over a soft serve cone. Her Daddy was the preacher in town, her Momma died when she was six. And the only thing Catherine Grace wanted in life was to get out of that small town and move on to bigger and better things.
On her eighteenth birthday she did just that, packed her bags and got on the Greyhound bus headed to Atlanta. She worked things out in the big city and met a whole new cast of characters. But when fate forces her to return the the small town she couldn't wait to escape, Catherine Grace found what she was searching for.
This Dairy Queen was in the south and the one I knew was in the north but the similarities between the life lessons learned there were identical. I loved this book and all the people in it. Even though they spoke with a southern drawl, they spoke to me in Dairy Queen, a language I could relate to. When I recently returned to my hometown and found the Dairy Queen I loved had been torn down 15 years ago, I cried. Catherine Grace and the Ringgold, Georgia Dairy Queen touched me in the very same way.
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