A memoir by Manchester P. Davies

Dippity-DoSideburns

Being a Mostly True and Almost Accurate Account of Growing Up in SoCal During the ’60s and ’70s.

Smog. Orange groves. Catholic school. Family fracture. Hollywood dreams. Teenage humiliation. And, somehow, a boysenberry pie. A funny, profane and unexpectedly tender look back at eighteen formative years in Southern California.

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Full wraparound cover art for Dippity-Do Sideburns by Manchester P. Davies

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The book

A childhood soaked in smog, sunlight and holy water.

Southern California, 1956–1974. Manchester grows up in a world of tract houses, orange groves, free-range kids, cigarette smoke, Catholic-school terror, lowriders and the faint gravitational pull of Hollywood.

Decades later, he looks back and realizes that the people he thought he knew—especially his mother, Betsy—were stranger, tougher, more wounded and more human than he understood at the time.

SoCalOrange groves, Route 66, pools, palm trees, lowriders and air you could practically chew.

FamilyA devout mother, a distant father, a mercurial brother and a household that never quite fit together.

HollywoodStudio back lots, Betsy’s moment in a Fox movie, Super-8 filmmaking and a long, bruising love affair with writing.

KindnessBecause after all the noise, failure and family damage, sometimes somebody simply does something kind.

Inside the memoir

A few stops on the wayback machine.

Elephant Ears and Fetuses

A county fair, a mortified teenager and a mother who never did anything quietly.

Smog and Oranges

Free-range childhood among tract houses, orange groves and the Inland Empire’s legendary brown air.

Special Needs Manny

Old family photographs, early memories and the quiet realization that the Davies pieces never quite fit.

Wyatt

A father who was less a monster than a man who simply seemed to live in the same house--but wished he was elsewhere.

The Great Whore

The day the counterfeit family finally comes apart—and the inconvenient problem of really liking the other woman.

Flashback—The Movie

A Super-8 camera, a terrible student film and the moment the writing/movie bug bites hard.

Dippity-Do Sideburns

Adolescence, vanity and the terrible confidence of a teenage boy with grooming products and really bad judgement.

Pioneer Pete

The greasiest of his many and varied horrible jobs, the nightmare of a fast food hell builds to the end of Manchester's youth.

Boysenberry Pie

An eighteenth birthday, an unexpected act of kindness and the quiet door into adulthood.

“My mom always worked the bloody fetus booth at the county fair.”

Imagine you’re me: it’s 1973. I’m a fifteen-year-old zit-faced, gap-toothed goober desperately wanting to both fit in and stay anonymous. Then one of my buddies sidles up to me at school and smirks: Hey Davies, saw your mom at the fair, man.

You couldn’t miss Betsy. And none of my friends ever did.

“And kindness counts for a lot.”

For all its profanity, family weirdness and teenage humiliation, Dippity-Do Sideburns lands somewhere gentler: the older narrator finally seeing the damaged, ridiculous people of his childhood as human beings—and remembering that a small kindness can outlast almost everything else.

The author

Manchester P. Davies

Manchester P. Davies is a wildly unsuccessful screenwriter/novelist whose many writing projects never quite conquered Hollywood. After years in the archives and library world, he retired to the Pacific Northwest, where he lives with his wife, an orchard, beehives and very few regrets.

Dippity-Do Sideburns is his first substantial piece of writing in more than twenty-five years. He says it will also be his last.

Mostly True
Almost Accurate
100% SoCal