Before the onset of the ’70s, the sky really did turn turquoise like this. Not plain old cornflower blue like today—it turned the peculiar turquoise of kidney-shaped Bakelite ashtrays and the leatherette seats inside a Crown Victoria Skyliner. Back then red was not just red, but eyes-squeezed-shut, blood-vessels-popping, Norwegian poppy red, the color of stewardesses’ lipstick and the color of bear tongues, like in the Polaroids that happy campers took as grizzlies ate trash and licked their chops in Yellowstone Park. Back then the color gold was so bright it left tracers and auras in your eyes, made you feel like you’d poked yourself in the eye; the air always smelled like spearmint chewing gum, and moms hardly ever topped 350 pounds or wore bad shoes or forgot to comb their hair before leaving the house. To be little on the Zoo Train before the smoggy descent of the 1970s meant looking at ABC book animals from an open window as you sat in your grandmother’s lap, cheap straw cowboy hat on your head, red Sno-Cone mustache on your lip, your soul still bright turquoise and red and gold.
