In my newspaper writing days at the Tampa Tribune, I once wrote a feature article about old movie serials, an inconsequential but fun piece of journalism. Unfortunately, the article was scheduled to appear on the front of the features section on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2001. A few days before that publication date, terrorists attacked the United States. By the time Sunday rolled around and the article appeared in all its derring-do splash, the country was not in the mood for something so frivolous — or so I thought. In a guest essay for the Brevity Blog, I explore how sometimes what we write can offer hope and escape even in times of darkness. Read the full essay here.

Adapted in part from the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV. By Ronnie Blair New York City began as New Amsterdam. Atlanta was originally called Terminus. San Francisco was Yerba Buena. Cities don’t always stick with the first names bestowed on them. My hometown, Cumberland, Kentucky, is a less famous example. Cumberland was founded in the 1830s with the uninspiring name Poor Fork, a case where geographic happenstance took precedence over shrewd marketing. The town lay along the Poor Fork of the Cumberland River. It took nearly a century for anyone to realize — at least officially — that this was an undignified name if the community wanted the respect due it. Finally, in 1926, town leaders opted for something classier and less emblematic of hard times. This year, Cumberland is celebrating 100 years of its reenvisioned identity, with the centennial the theme of the annual Swappin’ Meetin’, a festival hosted Sept. 18-19 by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College. Cumberland’s population was about 4,200 when I was born, but it was less than half that in the 2020 census, a decline that coincides with the loss of coal mining jobs. But it proved to be a nice place to grow up from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. At that time, the mines thrived, and each day trains hauled coal out of our community to parts unknown — at least unknown to me. Train tracks crisscrossed the town, and traffic on the main streets would come to a halt as train cars rumbled past with mounds of coal peeking out from their open tops. My parents waited patiently through these interruptions, but I fidgeted anxiously in the back seat until the welcome sight of the caboose appeared. When no trains were in sight, we children walked those tracks because they provided shortcuts to a friend’s house, a store, or a swimming hole. We balanced on the rails or skipped from tie to tie, avoiding the gravel packed in between. Our journeys were always limited, but the rails stretched into infinity. Books, Local Eccentrics, and a Supermarket Baron Like many small towns, Cumberland had its characters. One man walked the streets loudly talking to himself, as if explaining something of importance to an unseen companion. He was harmless, though, much like the character Elwood P. Dowd in the movie Harvey. We ignored him and any 6-foot, 3½-inch invisible rabbits tagging along at his side. Books weren’t that easy to come by in Cumberland, but the community did boast the Rebecca Caudill Public Library. The town named the library in honor of a children’s author born in Cumberland in 1899 when the community was still Poor Fork. Rebecca Caudill wrote more than 20 books, including Tree of Freedom, a 1950 Newbery Honor Book, and A Pocketful of Cricket, a 1964 Caldecott Honor Book. For me, though, Rebecca Caudill was the name of a building, and that building held enchantment. On an otherwise dull Saturday afternoon, I could entertain myself by examining the titles on the spines of a seemingly endless supply of reading material. I would pluck from the shelves a biography of Stephen Foster or a copy of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and dedicate the remainder of the day to immersing myself in a book’s pages, roused only when my parents reminded me it was my night to wash dishes. During my childhood, Cumberland showed signs of economic progress, and Little League baseball gave me my first taste of how such progress could nonchalantly bulldoze tradition and never look back. Soon after my first summer in the league, we fledgling baseball players learned unsettling news. Our beloved baseball field was slated to be demolished and paved over to make way for a Cas Walker Supermarket, a grocery chain with several dozen stores in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. The chain’s crusty founder, Cas Walker, lived in Knoxville, where he served on the city council and often embroiled himself in controversy, such as in 1956 when a heated debate with fellow council member J. S. Cooper exploded into a fracas. Life magazine published a photograph of Walker with his fist drawn back, ready to slug Cooper as they tussled. Walker’s supermarket empire had grown steadily since he opened his first store in 1924 — presumably without fisticuffs. By 1967, Cas Walker and his chain set their sights on Cumberland and the one piece of land in the town’s commercial district large enough to hold a store and a sizable parking lot — our baseball field. The construction crew could knock down a couple of dugouts, dismantle the backstop behind home plate, and get right to paving and building. The Cas Walker Supermarket became a popular destination for Cumberland grocery shoppers, so Walker certainly knew what he was doing. But we 9-year-olds did not see a shrewd and knowledgeable businessman. Cas Walker was our Dr. No, whose evil emissaries invaded our small town and carried out his diabolical plot to overthrow our childhood happiness. Early Adopters of Cable TV Progress involved more than supermarkets. Since Cumberland was deep in the mountains, TV reception with an antenna was problematic. In the 1950s, a cable TV company opened in Cumberland, giving us access to five channels — two CBS affiliates, two NBC affiliates, and one ABC affiliate. Only years later did I learn that cable TV was a foreign concept to many people living in cities. How could my tiny town in the mountains have been more technologically advanced than them? The answer lies in the reason someone invented cable TV to begin with. As television gained popularity in the 1940s, it became apparent that many areas of the country were just like Cumberland — too remote or too mountainous for TV viewers to pick up a signal with an antenna. The problem began to be solved in 1948 when cable was introduced simultaneously to communities in Oregon, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, according to the California Broadband and Video Association. “Community antennas” were installed on mountaintops or other high areas. This magical device brought our family an enormous amount of entertainment and in my parents’ view was well worth the price to keep my sister, my brother, and me occasionally occupied. The three of us sat transfixed as we watched such shows as Wagon Train, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, Dennis the Menace, and Car 54, Where Are You? My mother tried to dissuade me from television’s more intense offerings, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and Thriller. “You will have nightmares,” she warned. But I would plead, and she would relent. Then I would have nightmares. Another source of entertainment in Cumberland was a one-screen movie theater. My first visit there happened when my teenage cousin and her boyfriend volunteered to take my sister and me to see a movie. At least I think they volunteered. Perhaps they already had a date planned and my parents suddenly needed emergency babysitting help. The details didn’t matter to a 4-year-old who had never stepped inside a theater. I knew I was in for an adventure, and that surmise proved correct as we entered to see rows and rows of padded seats facing a mammoth curtain. In a while, the lights dimmed, and the curtain parted to reveal an enormous screen. The featured movie was Bon Voyage, a comedy about a family embarking on a cruise. Bon Voyage starred Fred MacMurray, a familiar face to me because he played the father on one of my favorite TV shows, My Three Sons. I never saw Bon Voyage again, and I recall no details, yet that two hours in Cumberland’s one-screen theater seemed magical, and I felt a little older sitting with my cousin and her boyfriend, basking in the glow of Fred MacMurray. An Encounter with the Law For the most part, Cumberland was a law-abiding town, and a small police force helped keep it that way. My earliest personal encounter with a police officer came around the same time I saw Bon Voyage. He arrived at our door investigating the case of a miscreant youth who, armed with a BB gun, had shot out windows in the neighborhood. A poorly informed stool pigeon told the officer that the Blairs had a son and perhaps the officer would be wise to interrogate my mother about her boy’s whereabouts at the time of the crime. The officer loomed large in our doorway, and I peeked out from behind my mother, wondering if I was about to be hauled off to jail like those evildoers on 77 Sunset Strip, my favorite TV detective show at the time. The officer appeared amused as my mother introduced 4-year-old me and assured him that I did not own a BB gun (she would not allow such a thing) nor was I permitted to roam far from her watchful eye. The investigation evolved into a friendly chat, easing my worries of being led away in ill-fitting handcuffs. The officer noticed that I could not take my eyes off his gun, which looked so much more powerful than the cap pistols my mother did allow me to carry. He winked at me. “You like the gun?” he asked. “When I run out of bullets, I’ll come back and give it to you.” My young mind began to calculate how long it might take him to exhaust his bullet supply, and I prayed for a massive crime spree to hit Cumberland. This day was turning out pretty well after all. My name had been cleared, and I was a few Untouchables-style shootouts away from owning an extraordinary prize. My father laughed when my mother and I told him of the day’s adventure and the officer’s carefully crafted promise to me. “I don’t think he will be running out of bullets any time soon,” Dad said. Presumably, he did not. Happy birthday, Cumberland, and thanks for the memories. Ronnie Blair is the author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

By Ronnie Blair On my left knee is a faint scar, put there nearly 60 years ago by Adam West – sort of. He was responsible indirectly anyway. Anyone who was around in the 1960s remembers the extraordinary impact Batmania had on the nation when the TV series Batman debuted on ABC on Jan. 12, 1966. West, in full Batman regalia, even made the cover of Life magazine, which more typically featured luminaries such as Robert Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, or Sophia Loren. I was enthralled the moment I saw the first commercial previewing the upcoming show. Among other things, that commercial featured Batman and Robin bursting from a hollow statue of a mammoth to finally put a halt to one of the Riddler’s nefarious schemes. Soon my friends and I were riveted to our black-and-white TV screens each Wednesday and Thursday nights as we joined the Caped Crusaders on their adventures, trying hard to ignore ABC’s cruel reminders that the show was “in color” on more fortunate children’s TV sets. Like many youngsters, I was an imaginative boy who turned many of the things I saw on my TV into backyard adventures. I could be Roy Rogers , galloping across the lawn on a battered broom that doubled as a horse, or Tarzan , climbing a handy apple tree not far from the back door. In the spring of 1966, when I was eight, it was time to add Batman to my repertoire. As a millionaire with elaborate gadgets at the ready, Batman was more of a challenge than cowboys or jungle lords, but my imagination was up to the task. At the time, my family rented a two-story house that stood on a hillside in our small southeastern Kentucky community. Behind the house was a pasture and at one end of that pasture was a barn. At least, that’s what dull-minded adults saw. Eight-year-old me saw something more majestic: a millionaire’s mansion (the barn loft) and a fully equipped Batcave (the barn’s dirt floor). I raced down the hill to the barn, wasting no time. Who knew? Commissioner Gordon might be calling at that very moment, in dire need of my assistance. I easily climbed to the loft, something I had accomplished before without any Bat Plans brewing. But, like any millionaire playboy with loftier missions in mind, I did not plan to stay there. I needed to get down to the Batcave posthaste. Here was the first obstacle in my elaborately crafted scenario. On the TV show, Batman and Robin used Bat Poles hidden behind a book shelf to slide from Wayne Manor down to the Batcave, somehow changing into their costumes along the way. Unsurprisingly, the barn loft had no Bat Pole – or anything that could even vaguely mimic a Bat Pole. I was a determined young Batman impersonator, though, and so I improvised. I decided I would simply hang from the loft and drop to the barn floor. This could have been a brilliant solution except for one thing. I lost my grip on the loft before I was ready. My body plummeted to the ground and a sharp pain shot through my left knee the moment I landed. I’m not sure exactly what I landed on, but that jarring end to my fall ripped a deep gash in my knee that would require nine stitches. Just like that, Wayne Manor and the Bat Cave reverted to a rather dismal-looking barn. I was a forgiving child, though, so I never held it against Adam West that his TV exploits had led to the unfortunate scar on my knee. To this day, I am ready with an answer when people pose the question about which actor made the best Batman. Michael Keaton ? Christian Bale ? Ben Affleck ? Nope. Adam West. Knee scars and all. Ronnie Blair is lead writer for Advantage Media and the author of Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV .

This is an excerpt from the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV . By Ronnie Blair One Christmas, probably 1962, snow blanketed the hills and covered the narrow road leading to the house we rented. My sister, Shelia, and I peered out the windows at our personal wonderland, excited at the thought that Santa Claus would soon visit our tiny abode deep in the Kentucky mountains. Our younger brother, Ricky, was too young to grasp the full magnitude of what was happening, but he would be the first that Christmas Eve to benefit from Santa’s generosity. Mom and Dad kept reminding Shelia and me that we needed to go to sleep if we expected a nocturnal visitor from the North Pole, but our overhyped minds refused to cooperate. As the clock ticked later and later, my parents’ frustration grew, since they probably wanted some sleep themselves. What occurred next remains a mystery. Something—we weren’t sure what—was happening on the front porch. Did Shelia and I hear a sound? Did Mom and Dad tell us they heard someone rattling around out there? My parents crept toward the door, and I followed, unconcerned about the rush of freezing air that would penetrate my pajama-clad form when one of them tugged the knob to reveal the night’s secrets. Something lay on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t a person. Sitting on the porch was a spring-mounted rocking horse, Ricky’s gift from Santa. I looked to the snow-covered road. Were those reindeer hoof marks leading away from our house, or small drifts transformed into something more magical by a four-year-old’s overactive imagination? Dad carried the horse inside as Mom reminded Shelia and me of a crucial Christmas Eve fact. “Ricky is asleep,” she said. “That’s why Santa Claus left something for him. If you expect Santa to come back with your gifts, you better get to sleep yourselves.” We raced to bed. I tumbled beneath quilts and shut my eyes tight to will myself into a slumber, praying that Santa would not lose patience and give up on this house where two wide-awake children dwelled. Soon, sleep did overtake me, and as the final minutes of Christmas Eve ticked toward Christmas morning, Santa returned to finish his job. Christmas was childhood’s most magical time, whether we watched breathlessly as the Christmas tree lights flickered on for the first time each year or searched the night sky on Christmas Eve to spot a red glow that assured us Rudolph was on the job at the head of Santa's sleigh. Not every Christmas proved a winner. In 1966 I longed for a Johnny Seven , a toy gun made by Topper Toys and promoted as seven weapons in one, with such glorious functions as a grenade launcher and an antitank rocket. It was just what any 1960s child needed to defend the backyard from encroaching enemy forces. On Christmas morning I awoke early as always and sped to the living room to feast my eyes on my Johnny Seven. But unless my eyes were deceiving me, the Johnny Seven was not there. I searched desperately beneath the tree, behind the couch, and anywhere else Santa in his haste might have inadvertently placed it. My first surmise was correct. No Johnny Seven. Instead, my presents included a toy chest/shelf for storing assorted toys and books, a plastic bugle, a Fairy Tales book with Puss in Boots prominently featured on the cover, and a toy rifle that shot a puff of air. The rifle came with bubbles, so you could blow a bubble and then blast it out of existence with the air that burst from the rifle. Really, it wasn’t a bad haul. It just wasn’t Johnny Seven. I am not sure why Santa failed to deliver. My parents were usually good about making sure I received whatever toy I placed first on my Christmas list. Perhaps Johnny Seven was a hard-to-come-by item that year, the must-have toy for too many boys across the nation. Luckily, I was a stoic eight-year-old (at least in this case) and hid my disappointment. Despite the Johnny Seven letdown, Christmas of 1966 was not without its merits. That year, the animated version of the Dr. Seuss classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas debuted, giving children something fresh to watch along with year two of A Charlie Brown Christmas . Also, Kentucky enjoyed a white Christmas, never a guarantee. The snow began falling on Christmas Eve, and by Christmas Day the neighborhood and the surrounding mountains resembled the winter wonderland that singers always promised but the skies infrequently delivered. Santa Claus redeemed himself a year later, although by then I no longer believed, made cynical by 1966’s unfulfilled expectations. This time, instead of a Johnny Seven, I longed for a Captain Action , a GI Joe-size action figure who could transform himself into any one of several superheroes. An extraordinarily accessorized toy, Captain Action boasted nearly as many clothing options as Barbie as well as a secret hideout and a car that doubled as a boat, allowing the good captain to take a spin around your bathtub.  As befitted the hero he claimed to be, Captain Action rescued my Christmas spirit, arriving under the tree with his car, his hideout, and his Batman and Spider-Man costumes. Outside of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, he was probably my last real toy, and Captain Action and my imagination enjoyed numerous adventures before he took a final bow and was shoved into a closet to lie dormant, if not forgotten, as the years sped up and left him behind.   Ronnie Blair  is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV .

Over the last few years, the book website Shepherd.com has asked me to list my three favorite reads of the last year. Shepherd considers the year to be the final quarter of the previous year and the first three quarters of the current year. This is so these lists can be used as ideas for presents during the holiday season. I read more than 60 books during that time period, so narrowing it down to three is no easy task. You can read about the three books I chose and the reasons why here .

What approaches can writers take so that a reader will recall our words long after time has dimmed the memory for everyone else? My latest guest essay for the Brevity Blog explores that question by revisiting two magazine articles I read as a child that have stuck with me for decades. Read the full essay here .

By Ronnie Blair   The em dash would seem to be an innocent enough punctuation mark, doing its job without asking anything in return and never displaying jealousy of the comma or the period, whose services are called on more often.   But of late the em dash has become the unfair target of torch-bearing zealots who insist that any writer who uses an em dash might as well have confessed to allowing ChatGPT to do their work for them.   An em dash—these punctuation witch hunters insist—is proof positive that AI is involved because no human writer would ever use an em dash. Not once. Ever.   This is unsettling news for many reasons, not the least of which is that the first chapter of Moby-Dick  has two or three dozen em dashes, putting Herman Melville and his prose (if it is in fact his prose) under scrutiny. Sadly, the man is no longer around to defend himself, but the em dash police have many questions.   In addition to littering Moby-Dick  with those em dashes, did AI also come up with the name Ahab? Did Melville do any revisions at all after ChatGPT spit out "Call me Ishmael" and the thousands of words that followed? Or did Melville just go with whatever the AI fed him, possessing the skills to do the work himself but mumbling under his breath, “I would prefer not to”?   It’s all so unsavory, Herman.   The em dash isn’t the only victim of AI suspicions. Those who claim to know AI when they see it have a long list of words they insist are clear indicators of a robot writer at work, such as "navigate," "delve," and “tapestry.” (We’re looking at you, Carole King.)   There are also phrasings ("In a world where...") or writing conventions (the rule of three ) that raise the eyebrows of the AI detectives.   It's enough to make you just shelve this whole idea of writing altogether. AI is cornering the market on punctuation, phrasings, prose devices, and, it would seem, eventually the entire Merriam-Webster dictionary, leaving human writers with nothing in their arsenal except perhaps one lonely hyphen and the word “the.”   Hatred toward em dashes picked up in recent months on LinkedIn, where person after person has taken a turn at exposing the time-honored punctuation. Some of these people were clearly unfamiliar with this poor dash that has drawn their ire. The first time I saw a post on the topic, several months ago, the em dash was referred to as a “long hyphen.” Why does ChatGPT use these long hyphens, this poster wondered. Someone else claimed that ChatGPT invented the em dash. Yet another person allowed that em dashes existed prior to AI, but insisted that no one had used them—until now.   Others graciously acknowledged that the em dash has long existed and that writers used it, but they are convinced ChatGPT is causing it to be used more often—so would everyone please exterminate it from their writing like the pest it is.   I don't think the em dash is appearing more often. Nor do I think it is indicative of AI writing. Instead, I suspect that those decrying the em dash are victims of two cognitive biases— frequency illusion  and recency illusion . Frequency illusion is where someone learns a word or concept that is new to them, and suddenly they start noticing it everywhere. Somewhat similarly, recency illusion is the belief that just because you recently noticed something, it is in fact recent.   As Herman Melville would tell you, the em dash is in fact not recent.   Are em dashes sacrosanct? Of course not. If you don’t want to use them, don’t use them. And let’s even agree that some phrasings ChatGPT has stolen from human writers, such as “in a world where,” are hackneyed and best avoided for reasons other than accusations of AI use.   But we also should ask ourselves this: How many words, punctuation marks, and writing conventions are we willing to surrender to dodge the AI accusation? For me the answer is few because if we capitulate, AI is taking as much control of our writing as it would if we actually wrote with it.   In a world where writers need to navigate AI detectors—and the humans who think they are AI detectors—let’s be bold enough to delve into whatever words, phrases, and punctuation we need to achieve our writing goals so we can create a rich tapestry of language.   Em dashes forever!     Ronnie Blair   is the author of the memoir  Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV .

By Ronnie Blair The 78-year-old juvenile novel stood out in the book dealer’s booth at the annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair  in St. Petersburg. Perhaps what did the trick was the colorful cover with the gruesome sight of a Native American and his horse, both on fire, flying above treetops in the night sky. Despite their fiery appearance, horse and rider seemed unfazed, although perhaps a little surprised at their circumstances. The book was Tom Mix and the Mystery of the Flaming Warrior  by George Lowther. In small type above the title, barely noticeable, was the word “Radio’s.” Yes, for readers not paying close attention, this book, targeted for children, was connected to the radio show version of Tom Mix, and only indirectly to Tom Mix , the actual man and actor who appeared in movie Westerns from 1909 to 1940. Without hesitation, I purchased the book, published in 1947, seven years after Mix’s death. Lowther knew how to grab young readers’ attention. His opening line: “The incredible thing happened a short time after big, burly Mike Shaw, Sheriff of Dobie, entered Tom Mix’s office at the TM Bar.” But then, the author had plenty of practice. In addition to books, Lowther wrote scripts for radio and television , including for the Tom Mix radio show, which aired from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Although Mix agreed to allow his name to be used on that show, he did not act on it. Instead, over the course of the show’s run, four actors––Artells Dickson, Jack Holden, Russell Thorsen, and Curley Bradley––served as the voice of Mix.  Tom Mix and the Mystery of the Flaming Warrior  includes black-and-white photos from the radio show and it is Bradley––clearly identified––who played Tom Mix at that point. (Since this was radio, not TV, the photos are presumably publicity shots, even though one of them is an action shot from a scene.) The novel’s plot involves the threat of a Sioux uprising and the supernatural appearance of the flaming warrior of the title to further agitate things. Interestingly, although the setting and plot feel 19th century, the story is contemporary, or at least it was contemporary to the late 1940s. It is mentioned that one character was a fighter pilot in the RAF during World War II, and there is a reference to the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico. This likely did not strike children at the time as odd. Movie Westerns in that period often combined the contemporary West with the old West. A few years later, singing cowboy star Roy Rogers was featured in a 1950s TV series that mixed horses, six-guns, and 19th century-style bandits with telephones, electricity, and automobiles. Reruns of Rogers’ show in the early 1960s were such a staple of my childhood that I devoted an entire chapter to him in my memoir, Eisenhower Babies . Beyond the anachronisms, the Tom Mix book also crosses a few lines that might no juvenile novel today likely would. At one point, Tom holds a knife to a man’s throat. He later throws the knife and wounds the man. The novel also is filled with racial and ethnic stereotypes, which unfortunately was typical of children’s books at the time. This is one of the reasons early titles in the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series were revised beginning in the late 1950s. As for that fiery apparition in the sky, Tom Mix takes the route Scooby Doo and gang would two decades later, revealing that it was a human creation and not supernatural. The big reveal is disappointing and a stretch. The warrior astride a horse image is formed by wires that have been set on fire and carried through the air by a helicopter. The criminals would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the meddling Mix.   Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

Designed by Freepik at https://www.freepik.com/ By Ronnie Blair Christmas in Florida is what you would expect. Air-conditioning systems humming instead of fireplaces roaring. Parents wearing shorts and flipflops as they watch their child try out the new bicycle Santa Claus delivered. Northern birds reveling in the fact they migrated south for friendlier weather. Which is why I was surprised one year when our water pipes froze on Christmas Eve. It’s disconcerting to awaken on Dec. 24 with a host of holiday activities to attend to only to discover that nothing happens when you turn on the kitchen faucet to make coffee. I stared uncomprehendingly for a few moments and experimented with other faucets before I accepted the brutal truth. Nothing was going to come out of any of them. This was an inopportune time for the city water system to experience problems I thought as I called to find out how soon the city expected to remedy the situation. “Nothing wrong on our end,” a chipper water department employee assured me. “Probably your pipes froze.” “My pipes froze? This is Florida, remember?” He remembered and suggested I find a plumber. I didn’t yet know it but our home was just one more victim of what became known as the Christmas Freeze of 1989 . The freeze caused consternation  – and tragedy – throughout the state. The temperature dropped to 23 degrees in the Tampa Bay area where I live, but some parts of Florida endured even worse conditions, probably making newer residents wonder why they bothered to move down from Michigan or Maine. In the tiny North Central Florida community of High Springs, the temperature plunged to a record-low eight degrees. Pensacola clocked in at 11 degrees, and the state capital in Tallahassee experienced a low of 13. Everywhere, Floridians joined in a collective and unfamiliar “brrrrr.” A fact sheet that the Florida Department of Health put together sometime later called the period from Dec. 22 to 26 of 1989 “one of the most severe cold waves in [the state’s] history with record-breaking temperatures, snow, ice, sleet, and hard freezes. Claiming at least 26 lives, power and transportation were shut down over much of Florida, with heavy losses in the agricultural industry.” Gov. Bob Martinez was quoted in the Sun-Sentinel  in Fort Lauderdale as saying, “From what I have seen, there is no question that Florida has suffered devastating losses and that our state is a disaster area. We must now do everything we can to help those whose lives and livelihoods have been ravaged by unmerciful weather.” Fifteen years later, reporter Bill Bair of The Ledger  in Lakeland wrote a retrospective article  in which Charlie Paxton of the National Weather Service explained how weather patterns 4,000 miles away contributed to Florida’s bizarre Christmas woes. In late December 1989, an unusually large pool of frigid air collected over Alaska as a high-pressure system dominated weather off the West Coast of the United States. “When a low-pressure system formed off the southeast coast of the United States,” Bair wrote, “the cold air from Alaska rode a deep trough in the jet stream straight into the Sunshine State.” My frozen pipes were a mere annoyance in comparison to what many others were experiencing. Still, those pipes needed to be dealt with – and quickly if holiday plans were to remain intact. The Yellow Pages helped me locate a plumber and the plumbing company’s dispatcher added me to the growing list of frantic customers. Then I waited, eying the blueberry muffins I had baked the night before. One of those would have provided a tasty treat with the Christmas Eve morning coffee, had there been any Christmas Eve morning coffee. My caffeine fix would need to wait. Fortunately, I was an early riser so I was near the top of the plumbing company’s list. A middle-aged plumber soon arrived along with a roughly 20-year-old apprentice, who was adding “how to unfreeze pipes” to his growing repertoire, although it was a skill he might never use again. The plumber tried out my faucets and puzzled over where to begin. Then, as he, the apprentice, and I stood back outside in the un-Florida-like air, our breath visible in a manner unfamiliar to Floridians, the plumber’s expression changed from perplexed to “aha!” He had spotted a ditch near the road and a pipe that was briefly exposed as it crossed that ditch. That pipe connected my house to the city’s water supply. This exposed pipe was the culprit behind my woes. “Technically, that’s the city’s pipe and it’s their responsibility to fix it for you,” the plumber said. But no one from the city stood in my yard at that moment. The plumber did. I told him I would be more than happy to pay for his services right now rather than wait to see if the city could or would send someone out before nightfall. He nodded and retrieved a small torch from his truck. Then he walked over to an outside faucet, turned it on (nothing came out, of course), and told me to act as lookout. When the water flowed, I was to let him know that he had been victorious. I kept an eye on the faucet as, back near the street, the attentive apprentice watched as the plumber went to work with the torch, a tricky task because he needed to heat the pipe enough to melt the ice without damaging the city’s property. My faucet-watching assignment was much easier, though frustrating. Nothing. Nothing … until something. Water gushed out; beautiful unfrozen water that flowed without restraint and heralded that Christmas was coming after all. So was coffee. “It’s working,” I yelled. The plumber didn’t hear, but the apprentice did, relayed my message, and the torch stopped. The two of them followed me inside the house where I wrote the check. As a bonus, I offered each of them a blueberry muffin. Then off  they went, muffins in hand, two of Santa’s elves bringing the gift of unfrozen pipes to every household they visited. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

This blog entry about my father, Ellison Blair, is an excerpt from the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV . By Ronnie Blair The world faced difficult times in the late 1930s. The Great Depression lingered, and Dad struggled to find reliable employment. Finally, at age 20 and with job opportunities scarce, he decided the army could provide the regular paycheck he so desperately needed. Not that it would be an extraordinary amount. The peacetime army paid $21 a month [for new enlistees], according to Pearl Harbor Ghosts: The Legacy of December 7, 1941 , by Thurston Clarke. Regardless, Dad enlisted and was inducted on July 5, 1940, in Richmond, Virginia. Although the United States was not at war yet, Germany was already causing problems across Europe, and five days later the Battle of Britain would begin. Once Dad became a soldier, he was not destined to stay on the mainland for long. Two months after his enlistment, he shipped out for Hawaii, arriving in Oahu on September 26, 1940, where he reported for duty at Schofield Barracks. Moving in such a short period of time from the back hills of Kentucky to the tropics of Hawaii must have been quite the culture shock. But in a sense Dad had traded one geographically secluded place for another, and Hawaii wasn’t a paradise for the 1940s infantry in the same way it is for tourists today. Clarke wrote in Pearl Harbor Ghosts  that “many servicemen loathed the Islands. Some had not seen their families for almost two years, and they pursued the lonely-man pastimes of beer drinking and card playing, fighting with local youths they called ‘gooks,’ and sitting on shoreline rocks, heads in hands, staring toward San Francisco. Their suicide rate was higher than on mainland bases, and in October 1941, one despondent soldier the newspapers called a ‘human bomb’ threw himself from the roof of the University Cinema onto the orchestra seats.” The army was busy making changes in Hawaii as the summer of 1941 drew to an end. From August to September, the Hawaiian Division was reorganized into two divisions—the Twenty-Fourth and the Twenty-Fifth. As a result, the Nineteenth Infantry that Dad belonged to became part of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division . On the fateful morning of December 7, 1941, Dad was assigned guard duty, though I’m not certain whether he was at Schofield Barracks’ main gate, somewhere else on the base, or perhaps at another location on the island that the army felt warranted a soldier’s presence. That he was both awake and on duty at that early hour made him unusual among the men of the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Divisions. In his book Day of Infamy , Walter Lord wrote that many Schofield soldiers “were on weekend pass to Honolulu; others had straggled home in the early hours and were dead to the world.” Dad was neither on a weekend pass nor sleeping off a night of revelry on what, by all accounts, started off as a serene morning. Somewhere around 7:55 a.m. he heard the hum of airplanes and looked up to see a fleet of planes in the distance. He had no reason to count, but they numbered 353. Initially, Dad paid them little mind. He knew they didn’t belong to the army, but the navy also had planes, and he assumed these might be navy pilots on maneuvers. An explosion from the direction of the harbor told him otherwise. In an instant, the island was under attack. Smoke billowed from Pearl Harbor as the ships there were bombed and torpedoed. At Hickam Field next to Pearl Harbor, about 25 Japanese dive bombers dropped their bombs on army planes that were neatly lined up and provided easy targets. The Japanese also attacked Wheeler Field next to Schofield, similarly taking out aircraft. Once they finished at Wheeler, the Japanese pilots turned their attention to Schofield Barracks, strafing the quadrangles and buildings. Soldiers at Schofield responded as best they could, firing machine guns, Springfield rifles, and pistols at the swooping Japanese planes. Here’s how one soldier quoted in Thurston Clarke’s book described the scene and the mood: “We wore World War I pie-plate helmets, were lightly armed, and our average age was nineteen. We all thought we were going to die.” Dad spoke little about his actions after the attack began, other than to say, “I guess I had enough sense to shoot my gun.” Years later, he was still haunted by the memory of seeing “the dead bodies of all those 18-year-old boys,” likely a reference to sailors since Schofield did not suffer the brunt of the attack the way the navy’s fleet in Pearl Harbor did. Dad’s Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division saw nine men wounded and one killed, while two soldiers with the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division were killed and seventeen wounded, according to the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division Association’s website. Corporal Theodore J. Lewis earned the unenviable distinction of being the first member of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division to be killed in action in World War II. The attack lasted one hour and 15 minutes. As the Japanese planes retreated, their work done, no one on the island thought it was over. Military commanders assumed the air attack was the first wave, and they anticipated Japanese ships carrying an invasion force would soon arrive to take control of the island and make prisoners of everyone on it. The soldiers of Schofield Barracks established positions all around the island to await that invasion, constructing pillboxes and stringing barbed wire along the beaches. Dad’s Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division was assigned the task of defending northern Oahu while the Twenty-Fifth took care of the island’s southern half. Throughout the night of December 7 and into the morning of December 8, as President Roosevelt gave his “infamy” speech to Congress nearly 5,000 miles away, the soldiers eyed the darkness over the Pacific and braced themselves for a battle that never came. The island, under martial law by now, remained jittery until June 1942, when an American victory at the Battle of Midway lessened the likelihood that my father would need to help defend Oahu from a second Japanese attack. Still, Dad remained in Hawaii for another year after Midway, but by September 1943, he and the rest of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division had relocated to Camp Caves, a training facility in Australia, where they prepared for battle against the Japanese in Dutch New Guinea. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

The book website booklisti.com approached me about creating a recommended reading list of books that, preferably, were at least somewhat similar to my memoir Eisenhower Babies . I came up with five memoirs that I have read in the last few years, and titled my list "Lessons Learned from the Lives of Others." As I said in the intro to the list: " Memoirs give us a peek into the lives of others. We can learn from their experiences or live vicariously through their adventures, whether that’s training a hawk, studying penguins in the Antarctic, or facing mortality." Read the list here .

By Ronnie Blair In Dunedin, Florida, up a not so long and winding stairway, you will find Penny Lane: the Ultimate Beatles Museum , which boasts a massive Beatles memorabilia collection more than 4,000 miles from Liverpool, England, where the group got its start. This unexpected find in the Florida town of 36,000 people was the idea of longtime Dunedin resident Dr. Robert Entel, with the help of former Liverpool resident Colin Bissett. The museum opened in 2017, tucked in the back of an art gallery it shares space with. If you visit, you will see a pair of John Lennon’s sunglasses. You will see old newspaper clippings, including some from the days when Pete Best was still the drummer and had not yet been replaced by Ringo Starr. There is a plastic toy guitar with the images of the Fab Four. There is an actual guitar played by Paul McCartney. There are records and posters and other miscellaneous memorabilia. The items seem endless, giving visitors a magical mystery tour of a time that is long past (the Beatles disbanded in 1970) but still has an impact. Admission is free but there is a donation box where you can toss in $5 or $10 or whatever amount you are so inclined to contribute to the cause of keeping the museum operating. Like many Baby Boomers, I have memories tied to the Beatles. When they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, I was among the millions of Americans watching, although I was a mere 6-years-old and my memory of that February night is slightly faulty, placing me in the wrong house from my childhood, as I once explained in an essay I wrote for the Brevity Blog . Beatles music made up a good portion of the musical library we had in my home growing up, with 45 singles such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Paperback Writer,” along with albums like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” On TV, beyond Ed Sullivan, we watched The Beatles  cartoon  that was broadcast on ABC from 1965 to 1967. For a brief period, until I outgrew them, I owned a prized pair of Beatle Boots  that my mother bought at a bargain price at one of our town’s thrift stores. Perhaps it’s a tribute to the world of the 1960s that a British pop band could influence the fashions of a boy growing up deep in the mountains of Kentucky. Penny Lane: the Ultimate Beatles Museum will bring back many such memories for nostalgic Baby Boomers – or for anyone who is captivated by pop culture history, whether they lived in that time or not. In the fall of 2025, the museum is scheduled to move to a new location in the Ybor City area of Tampa. Until then, you can find it on the second floor at 730 Broadway in downtown Dunedin. Plan your visit carefully because the museum is open just four days (not eight days) a week. Hours are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Just look for it beneath the blue suburban skies. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.