Another reader, Dave in South Africa, emails following my Bulawayo Chronicle post:
Howzit, Norm, you pulled my nostalgia chain as well as Jeff's. 1958 was my matric year. I had finally won the right to wear stovies, two-tone jarmans, a flat-top ducktail and a long float. Bliss it was in that dawn. Rock Around the Clock opened in Germiston, my home town, with a riot that spread from the Rialto Bioscope three blocks to the Library Gardens. Police broke it up with high-pressure hoses. Street fighting was pretty common, with perfectly ordinary lower middle-class suburbs spawning gangs of rebels bent on evil causes. We started a rock band, like everyone else. The talk of the clubs was a ravishing girl called June who played kickass piano and sang 'Whirlpool of Love'. Never heard of her again. And there were jukebox selectors in the cafes, motorbike gangs at the roadhouses, and hot-rod cars. And the Bomb gave me nightmares.Christopher Hope's Private Parts nails it pretty well. He also wrote Me, the Moon and Elvis Presley, a title derived from a popular parody.