The Last Road Rebel and Other Lost Stories: Growing Up in a Small Town—and Never Getting Over It

First-time author Gilberg’s memoir of life growing up in the 1950s in the small town of New Bremen, Ohio, is like taking a leisurely Sunday drive down a country road. The impetus of his book was a reunion in his hometown of friends he hadn’t seen since 1958, “fifty-five years earlier.” The Road Rebels were teens who, inspired by James Dean and the early days of California hot-rod car culture, decided to get “some shirts, bumper plaques, and a club name” to be both “cool and different from all the other teenagers in New Bremen,” as well as show the town that the Road Rebels “could be organized and do something important.” As a group they helped stranded motorists and organized road rallies and car shows. Gilberg’s life revolves around the group, as well as typical teenage activities like school and dances, but his memoir isn’t a warmed over American Graffiti. He delivers a sympathetic look at his desire to leave his small town for the bigger world of Ohio State University where he first hears Joan Baez’s “incredible, crystal-clear, haunting voice” drifting down his apartment hallway. While he ends up in California designing microcircuits for mainframe computer companies, his heart clearly is back in Ohio. Gilberg’s book beautifully evokes 1950s small-town America. [em](BookLife) [/em]