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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.

An excerpt from the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV . By Ronnie Blair In 1966, my favorite Saturday-morning cartoon was Space Ghost , which featured an intergalactic hero who flew like Superman, piloted a spaceship, and fired powerful beams from his wrists. As Halloween approached, I decided to trick-or-treat as Space Ghost. I encountered a slight roadblock—or perhaps in honor of Space Ghost I should say force field. At that time, we bought our Halloween costumes at Hazen’s 5 & 10. Eyeing that year’s selections, I discovered that Hazen’s sold a plastic Space Ghost mask but not a full costume, which I confirmed after thoroughly searching the inventory, searching it again, and then searching a third time for good measure. My trick-or-treat plans were disintegrating like a spaceship targeted by a laser in a Space Ghost adventure. Then my mother came to the rescue. “Let’s get the mask,” she said. “I can make the rest of the costume myself.” My outlook brightened. This was no idle boast. Mom was a top-notch sewer, quilter, and general whiz when it came to all things crafty. On Saturday morning she sat down with me as the cartoon’s narrator, Gary Owens, intoned in his deep voice, “Spaaaace Ghooost!” and the exciting theme music blared from our TV. I watched enthralled as Space Ghost battled intergalactic villains while Mom studied his costume. Then she and her sewing machine went to work, the rat-tat-tat of the mechanized needle proclaiming each thread of progress. Soon she handed me the outfit to try on, complete with a cape to tie around my neck. I added my plastic Space Ghost mask, and staring back at me from the mirror stood Space Ghost—or a passable little kid variation. At school on Halloween, we always marched from classroom to classroom in a costume parade, showing off what we planned to wear on our trick-or-treat rounds that night. As we prepared for the parade, one boy regarded Mom’s Space Ghost handiwork with approval.  “Where did you get that costume?” he asked in awe. Like me, he clearly was a Space Ghost admirer and Saturday-morning-cartoon devotee.  “My mother made it,” I replied. “Your mother didn’t make that,” he scoffed. “That came from a store.” But I knew the truth. That evening, as the neighborhood grew dark, Space Ghost set out on his latest adventure—a quest to gather candy and memories on a chilly October 31. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

By Ronnie Blair Artificial intelligence has been in the news a lot over the last couple of years, especially the AI known as ChatGPT. Recently, I had the questionable (some would say “quite foolish”) idea of asking ChatGPT to read my memoir, Eisenhower Babies , and offer feedback. So, I fed the book into ChatGPT and then asked a series of questions. The answers were, uh, enlightening – or something. To start, I kept it simple. The first question was: What is the book Eisenhower Babies  by Ronnie Blair about? ChatGPT, which reads a book faster than I can open one, swiftly penned a three-paragraph answer that was a basic but accurate summation, calling Eisenhower Babies a “nostalgic and evocative memoir” with “tales of humorous and unusual family adventures.” In this short book report, ChatGPT correctly described the setting (a Kentucky coal-mining community) and the time period (the late 1950s to the early 1970s), and understood that the book’s title referred to children born when Dwight Eisenhower was president. ChatGPT concluded by describing the book as “a celebration of the spirit and resilience of a community navigating the complexities of mid-20th-century America​.” We were off to a promising start – until I discovered that ChatGPT can sometimes get things puzzlingly wrong, which happened when I directed the AI to choose the funniest anecdote from the book. I expected the reply to be that "funniest" is subjective and outside ChatGPT's domain. But ChatGPT, a valiant AI, threw caution to the algorithm. One of the funniest anecdotes in "Eisenhower Babies" is the Halloween trick involving the author's prank during a musical performance for his mother. Ronnie Blair and his older brother, Junior, arrange a deceptive musical performance where Ronnie pretends to play the trumpet. Junior, hidden and actually playing the trumpet, impresses their mother enough to make her consider contacting a variety show host. The joke concludes with Ronnie's mother laughing heartily when the truth is revealed, showcasing a moment filled with humor and family bonding​​.   OK. This is wrong on so many levels that it's tough to know where to begin, but let's first dispense with the part that is correct. There really was a trumpet prank in which Junior and I tricked my mother into thinking my musical abilities were far beyond what they were. Nearly every other detail is inaccurate. The prank had nothing to do with Halloween. Junior was not my older brother; he was a neighbor. The variety show host ChatGPT refers to was Ed Sullivan, but to my knowledge, my mother never considered contacting him. I did write, jokingly, that perhaps she considered trying to book me on his show when she heard my faked trumpet brilliance, but literal-minded ChatGPT’s humor radar was faulty. (Or maybe I need to work on my delivery.) I will give ChatGPT a grade of D here, sparing it a failing grade only by giving points for effort. Next, I asked ChatGPT what readers can learn from Eisenhower Babies . Since Eisenhower Babies  is neither a textbook nor a self-help book, the correct answer is "not much." But ChatGPT does not take "not much" for an answer and responded with this: Readers of "Eisenhower Babies" can learn about the societal changes and cultural dynamics of America during the mid-20th century through the lens of a childhood memoir. The book offers insights into the influence of significant historical events, such as World War II and the space race, on everyday American life, especially in a Kentucky coal-mining community. It explores themes like the impact of technological innovations on families, the sense of community in small towns, and the nostalgia associated with growing up during this era. Additionally, the memoir provides a vivid depiction of the quirks and charms of rural American life in the 1950s and 1960s, reflecting on how these experiences shaped the author's personality and values. Through humorous and poignant anecdotes, it celebrates the resilience and eccentricities of families navigating the complexities of that time, offering readers a chance to reflect on how past experiences shape collective and individual identities.   OK. That one is impressive. It's accurate, thoughtful, insightful, and better than I could have come up with. Maybe there are lessons that discerning readers can take away from Eisenhower Babies  after all. ChatGPT gets an A this time. I may even hire ChatGPT as my PR manager.  Finally, I asked ChatGPT this: What is the dumbest thing author Ronnie Blair does in Eisenhower Babies ? Now ChatGPT could have been polite and diplomatic and assured me that "author Ronnie Blair" did absolutely nothing dumb in Eisenhower Babies , but was at every turn the embodiment of wisdom and sound judgment. And I would have been satisfied and happily awarded another grade of A. It turns out, though, that ChatGPT is a blunt and insensitive AI. In the book "Eisenhower Babies," Ronnie Blair recounts an incident from his childhood that could be considered quite foolish. As a child, Ronnie decided to "borrow" a pony without permission. He managed to get the pony to a pasture but had significant trouble trying to mount it. After failing to ride the pony and needing help to even get on it, he ended up being thrown off as the pony sped up. To make matters worse, when his father returned home, he found the pony not in the pasture where Ronnie left it but unexpectedly in their backyard. This misadventure led to a stern lecture from his father about responsibility, highlighting Ronnie's lack of foresight and preparation for handling the pony​​.   I asked for "dumb" and ChatGPT upped the ante to "quite foolish." Quite foolish, ChatGPT? Quite foolish? In what universe is it considered "quite foolish" for an equestrian-challenged 8-year-old to borrow a pony? Yes, I put that exact question to ChatGPT and I am pleased to report that the tactless AI backed down. You're right to point out that from the perspective of a child, the idea of "borrowing" a pony might seem more adventurous than foolish. The innocence and curiosity of children often lead them into situations that, from an adult perspective, might be considered unwise or risky. Ronnie Blair's decision to try and ride a pony, despite not knowing how, reflects the kind of whimsical and bold thinking typical of children exploring their boundaries and the world around them. It's these kinds of stories that add charm and humor to childhood memoirs like "Eisenhower Babies," offering a nostalgic look at the sometimes reckless, yet bold and explorative nature of youth.   Ah. "Whimsical and bold." That's more like it. You get an A, ChatGPT. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

In my latest guest essay for Brevity Blog, I recall those astonishing days when I was a faithful letter writer to comic books. An excerpt: "The idea that my name and my words could appear in a comic book was intoxicating. One day, filled with eight-year-old hubris, I took a piece of lined notebook paper, picked up a yellow No. 2 pencil marred by bite marks, and scribbled my thoughts about a story in one of DC Comics’ Superman titles. "I am unsure what intellectual insights I shared with the DC editor, but I placed my letter in the mail, confident that the U.S. Postal Service would grasp the magnitude of the moment and whisk my words off to New York City without delay." Read the full essay here.

By Ronnie Blair The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair always holds treasures, and a year ago on my annual pilgrimage there I uncovered one, a book of questionable literary value but of personal interest that made up for any artistic failings. The book was The Silent Alarm by Roy J. Snell, an adventure novel for girls originally published in 1926. Perhaps you have heard of it. Likely you have not. Snell was once a popular author of many such adventure stories for both girls and boys, although these days he hardly registers as a footnote in children’s literature. It wasn’t always so. A 1938 newspaper article claimed at that point in time, total sales of Snell’s 60 books had reached 800,000 volumes, or roughly an average of 13,000 sales per title. (For perspective, this line from a 2022 New York Times article illustrates how difficult it is these days to sell that many books: “Of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked in 2021, fewer than one percent of them sold more than 5,000 copies.”) Eventually, Snell would write 82 books with over 2 million copies sold. It was not Snell’s prominence as the R.L. Stine of his day, though, that attracted me to The Silent Alarm. Instead, it was the book’s setting, Harlan County, Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised. The book resonated on a personal level. Snell, who was not from Harlan County, had something of a Jack London-like literary career. He was born in Missouri and grew up in Illinois, but as an adult he traveled to or lived in what were considered exotic or remote places at the time. Like London, Snell turned his experiences and the people he encountered into fiction. Harlan County, a coal-mining area in the Appalachian Mountains, is one such place where Snell ended up for a brief time as a school teacher, and so it became the setting for a few of his novels. Others were set in such places as Alaska, where, according to that 1938 article originally published in the Chicago Tribune, Snell had been sent by a missionary group and “found himself in charge of 350 Eskimos and 1,500 reindeer.” “He crossed the Bering straits in a skin boat, and life in the Eskimo village had its tribulations,” the article said, “but out of the experience in 1916 came the first of Mr. Snell’s 60 books, ‘Little White Fox and His Arctic Friends.’ ” Snell was writing at a time when the powerful Stratemeyer Syndicate had a strong hold on the juvenile series market and provided stiff competition with its seemingly endless inventory of series, such as Tom Swift, Ruth Fielding, the Motor Boys, and the Rover Boys. The 1926 publication of Snell’s The Silent Alarm just slightly predated the creation of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s two most enduring series: the Hardy Boys, created in 1927, and Nancy Drew, who debuted in 1930. The 1938 Chicago Tribune article describes my home county as one of the “feud counties of the Kentucky Cumberlands,” which is likely how Snell portrayed it to the reporter. At the time, this may not have been that far off the mark because in the first half of the 20th century Harlan County did have a violent reputation that drew national attention. Snell included quite a few threatening characters in The Silent Alarm, though the opening is a placid prelude to the tension-filled moments to come. Here is how the novel begins: “In a cabin far up the side of Pine Mountain, within ten paces of the murmuring waters of Ages Creek, there stood an old, two roomed log cabin. In one room of that cabin sat a girl. She was a large, strong girl, with the glow of ruddy health on her cheeks. “Her dress, though simple, displayed a taste too often missing in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, and one might have guessed she was from outside the mountains.” Let’s ignore the poor editing of the first sentence that seems to place a cabin inside another cabin. We also will ignore Snell’s casual insult of the fashion senses of 1920s Harlan County girls and women, and simply note that the novel comes with plenty of plot twists to keep girls in 1926 reading, including hidden treasure, a kidnapping, a small child with a mysterious background, election intrigue, and an effort to save a financially failing school that is providing mountain children their best chance at an education. “Almost all successful children’s books are a series of adventures tied together with one or more threads of mystery,” Snell told the Chicago Tribune. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew would have agreed. The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair may or may not have some of Snell’s books this year, but it certainly will have thousands of other old books to draw in bibliophiles. The fair is March 1-3 and, as always, is held at The Coliseum, 535 Fourth Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL. Here are the hours: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. March 1; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 2; and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 3. Admission on the evening of March 1 is $10 and that is good for all three days. Admission March 2 is $6 for the day or $10 for the weekend. Admission March 3 is $6. The box office is cash only. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

By Ronnie Blair Each morning in the 1960s my mother prepared Hershey’s cocoa for my sister, brother, and me, a ritual she religiously engaged in just before awakening us, so that clear glasses filled with the chocolate concoction greeted us as we wiped sleep from our eyes. This guaranteed that every day started well, even the ones that weren’t destined to end that way. On winter mornings when our coal stove valiantly but ineffectively warmed the house, we huddled near a small electric space heater, sipping the cocoa and wondering if those flurries visible through the window meant a snow day and freedom from the rigors of school. My mother perhaps wondered if those same flurries heralded a stressful day of finding ways to entertain three youngsters whose time would be better spent taking spelling tests and puzzling their way through math problems. But if she ever harbored such thoughts, she concealed them, perhaps under the philosophy that children shouldn’t be made overly aware of the strains of parenthood. We took the cocoa, the space heater, and any snow-day interruptions to her plans as simply the way life and mothers were meant to be. In other words, while we weren’t ungrateful children, we likely were too absorbed in our childhood itineraries (coloring, playing, watching cartoons) to be properly appreciative of the sacrifices she made. I suspect she forgives us. Church, TV, and Proper Attire Oct. 20, 2023, marks 100 years since my mother, Jeanette Scott Blair, was born, arriving on a fall day in Harlan County, Kentucky, as one of the youngest siblings in a family with eight or nine children. She would live 77 years, long enough to see all seven of her grandchildren, as well as the Great Depression, a world war, television, moon landings, and the internet. Two months before her birth, President Warren G. Harding died and Vice President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in to succeed him. Two months after her death, terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Both events give evidence that the world carries on before we arrive and after we are gone without taking much note of us. But my mother’s life serves similarly as evidence that we can be towering figures within our own small spheres, and for my sister, brother, and me she was such a towering figure. To visualize that figure’s image, know this: She always wore a dress or skirt; never slacks and certainly never undignified shorts. When we visited a Florida beach in 1965, she stood on the sand in a dress watching the three of us cavort in the water, waves crashing into us. She abstained from drinking alcoholic beverages and preferred to keep her distance when anyone else drank them. Once while visiting relatives in Tennessee, she balked at going to a restaurant when she learned that the restaurant served alcohol. A niece playfully gibed her about this, saying that if she lived in their community, she would have a hard time dining out because nearly all the restaurants served alcohol. My mother just shrugged. If she lived in their community she would never dine out. It would be as simple as that. This distaste for the very existence of beer and other such beverages sprang from her Primitive Baptist beliefs. She insisted on our regular attendance at church where Sunday school teachers regaled us with tales about Noah, Jonah, and Moses, and the preacher baffled us with stream-of-consciousness sermons. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, my mother’s strong religious beliefs never interfered in any significant way with her children’s popular-culture interests. If we wanted to read novels about zombies, buy comic books about Norse gods turned into superheroes, listen to the Beatles and other “hippie” music, and spend 35 cents at the movie theater to see Bonnie and Clyde’s bloody demise, she wasn’t one to object. At least not vociferously. She had her own pop-culture interests anyway. The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits regularly appeared on our black-and-white TV screen as much because of her viewing interests as ours, although she did fret about the nightmares these shows might give us. She also loved scary movies, but watched them only on television, never accompanying us on our trips to our hometown’s one-screen theater. Her tastes weren’t limited to the frightening fare, though. In the early 1960s she was devoted to the television series Wagon Train, which to my childhood mind was the most boring of the TV Westerns, except for that one episode in 1964 when guest star Barbara Stanwyck showed up with a bullwhip and an attitude, refusing to take any guff from the cowboys. At the time I did not know who Barbara Stanwyck was, but a year later she was starring in her own Western series, The Big Valley, and I recognized her as the no-nonsense whip wielder from my mother’s precious Wagon Train. Quilts, Fudge, and 13 Cents One of my mother’s favorite pastimes was quilting, sometimes engaging in this hobby solo on our living room sofa as she watched TV, and at other times gathering with quilting buddies, making it a social activity. Over the years, she created personal masterpieces that her children and grandchildren used to keep themselves toasty when winter nights turned harsh. She had an old Singer sewing machine, possibly from the 1930s, that was powered by a foot pedal. When I was small, I amused myself by sitting on the floor beside it and pushing the pedal up and down, an activity my mother tolerated except when she needed to spring into action with the sewing machine herself. By the 1960s, Singer no longer manufactured such treadle sewing machines, and before my childhood ended my mother moved into modern times with the purchase of an electric-powered version. After we three children all reached elementary school age, my mother took on part-time jobs as a store clerk and waitress, bringing in extra money to supplement my father’s coal-miner salary. She carefully set out 13 cents for each of us every school day so that we could buy three-cent cartons of chocolate milk during the elementary school’s morning break and a dime soft drink during the afternoon break. On what seemed like special occasions, but were just random Saturday nights, she revved up her mixer and soon fudge and divinity appeared on the dining room table, testing our resolve to wait until it had properly cooled. After my mother died in 2001 and we sorted through her belongings, someone discovered a cardboard box filled with newspaper clippings. They were articles I had written when I was starting out as a journalist. Most of them were two decades old, and the subject matter in nearly every case was, I am certain, of no interest to her. It was the byline that mattered, and clipping the articles and adding them to the box was perhaps a variation of taping your child’s crude drawings to the refrigerator door. Crude drawings. Crude articles. In her mind, if it was the work of her child or grandchild, it was worth treasuring. Not all of us leave a significant stamp on history, but we do make a difference in our own small ways. Sometimes that way is cocoa, quilts, and memories that linger for decades. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

Lake Buena Vista, FL—The 2023 Annual Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards recognized Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV by Ronnie Blair, in the category of Autobiography/Biography/Memoir, as a silver medal winner. Hosted by the Florida Authors and Publishers Association, this prestigious national award was open to books published between 2021 and 2023. The judges for this national competition are librarians, educators, and publishing professionals. The FAPA President’s Book Awards recognizes book publishing excellence and creativity in design, content, and production for authors, illustrators, cover designers, and publishers. This contest isn’t limited to Florida; it is open to anyone worldwide, as long as the book is written in English. We hope to encourage entries from all who share our complex and wonderful language. Eisenhower Babies is a memoir, published by Advantage Media, about growing up in a Kentucky coal-mining community from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It weaves history, popular culture, and geography into a nostalgic journey interspersed with tales of coal-strike tensions and humorous family adventures. “I wish to congratulate all of our winners," said FAPA’s President, Robert Jacob. "Our book awards program is vital to the publishing industry because it serves to recognize excellence and creativity not just for authors, but for publishers and everyone involved in creating the book. It also serves as a tremendous boost of confidence for beginning authors who win. This year, we had the finest quality books in recent memory. The competition was exceptionally close and scores were unusually high. Our judges had a difficult time narrowing down the finalists. Earning a medal is a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to each winner’s skill and talent.” The Florida Authors and Publishers Association is an organization for authors, publishers, illustrators, editors, printers, and other professionals involved in the publishing industry. Its mission is to provide information, resources, professional development, and networking opportunities to the writing and publishing community throughout Florida, the United States, and the world.

By Ronnie Blair Authority Magazine recently interviewed me about the book that changed my life and other topics. Below is an excerpt from that interview in which I discuss that book and the impact it had on me. Read the full interview here. For many people, the book that changed their life could be a literary classic like Moby-Dick or a bestselling self-help book like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Mine is a little different; OK, quite a bit different. It is The Secret of the Caves, part of the Hardy Boys series by Franklin W. Dixon. An aunt gave me that book for Christmas when I was about 7, and although it took a while for me to finally read it, when I did, I was captivated and couldn’t wait to read every Hardy Boys book listed on the back cover. I imagined Franklin W. Dixon as a literary genius, but it turned out he didn’t even exist. That was a pen name for a stable of ghostwriters for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which churned out all kinds of series books for children. And in truth, they weren’t particularly great books. But The Secret of the Caves, even if it was poor literature, and author Franklin W. Dixon, even though he wasn’t a real person, launched my interest in writing. As a child I tried to duplicate what I read in the Hardy Boys. Over time, my writing interest led to my career in journalism and later in public relations, all because of a rather pedestrian but somehow inspiring book like The Secret of the Caves. When I was in sixth-grade, my interest in writing went into overdrive. Instead of just writing stories in a notebook, I began to create my own “books.” I put the word “book” in quotation marks for a reason. Here’s how I did it: I would take several sheets of paper and fold them. Then I would staple the fold (much the way comic books are stapled) and voila! I had a small book with blank pages. Within those pages, using a handy No. 2 pencil, I crafted stories that were modeled after The Secret of the Caves and the other Stratemeyer Syndicate series books that I read, such as Tom Swift Jr. and Nancy Drew. I even copied the syndicate’s gimmick of mentioning previous books in the series early in the tale, and promoting the next title in the series at the end. For the syndicate this was clearly a marketing ploy, but to me it was just part of the story, so in it went. My books had titles such as The Mystery of the Whistling Coffin and Scott Jacobs and the Ghost of Long Ridge Mountain. They were heavy on dialogue, occasionally punctuated with action, such as: “Neil grabbed a crowbar and handed it to Dan. Dan soon had the coffin opened. The boys looked in but there was no one inside.” As the school year wore on and I yearned to write more and more, a friend and I approached our teacher about creating a weekly newspaper using the school’s ditto machine down the hall. She agreed and throughout the rest of the year the two of us, with help from a few other students, produced a newspaper we called The Weekly Star, which we sold for five cents to other sixth-graders. My journalism career was launched right there in my sixth-grade classroom. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

By Ronnie Blair TV watching can be educational––even 60 years after the fact. My habit of watching the television show Fury on Saturday mornings in the 1960s led to my discovery six decades later of a minor, though fascinating, chapter in American history. This particular chapter involved polio, wild mustangs, government bureaucracy, greed, dog food, and a woman nicknamed Wild Horse Annie. Without Fury, I might never have known about any of it. You might have known, though, especially if you enjoyed the books of Marguerite Henry as a kid. But, for the moment, let’s get back to Fury. For the uninitiated, Fury was a Western TV series about a boy and a horse living on a ranch in modern-day California. The live-action Saturday morning show began in 1955 and ended its original run in 1960, but continued in reruns through September 1966. At that point, wall-to-wall cartoons began to take over Saturday mornings, replacing not only Fury, but also reruns of other 1950s TV series such as The Roy Rogers Show and Sky King. The Fury cast included Peter Graves, whose hair was not yet white and who was a few years away from landing his more famous role as Jim Phelps on Mission: Impossible. On Fury, Graves played ranch owner Jim Newton, the adoptive father of Joey (played by Bobby Diamond), the boy who was the only person who could tame the wild horse named Fury. Fury, an equine version of Lassie or Rin Tin Tin, was a brilliant animal who aided the human stars in solving, in 30 minutes or less, whatever problem the scriptwriters set before them. For a few years, he was a staple of my early childhood TV-watching habit. Then he disappeared from my tiny screen and, as the years passed, faded more and more from memory. Then one day a year or so ago I was in an antiquarian book store and came across a book by Albert G. Miller titled Fury and the Mustangs. Intrigued, I pulled it from the shelf, examined it, and paid the $4 required to make it mine. This Fury title was the second in a three-book series based on the TV show and published by Grosset and Dunlap. The book’s copyright was 1960, the final year of the TV series. If you thought that 60 years ago children’s literature was all positive thoughts and rainbows, think again. Right away in chapter one the book reveals its grim plot––cruel men are chasing down wild mustangs, killing them, and selling them for pet food. Sometimes the men used an airplane to flush the horses into the open where they shot the animals from the air. At other times the men would lasso a horse from a moving jeep, tie a heavy tire to the end of the rope, and let the terrified animal drag the tire until the mustang exhausted itself and collapsed to the ground. These horrible events are all perfectly legal and the remorseless villain of the story expresses doubt that any lawmaker would dare change that. Heroic rancher Jim Newton disagrees. “Legislators in some states have already awakened to the plight of the mustangs,” he tells the villain. “A number of laws affording partial protection have been passed. There’s a wonderful woman in Nevada––the wife of a ranch owner––who’s been working for several years in the interest of mustang conservation. So far she’s achieved both county and state protection, and now she’s working for legislation on a national basis. In fact, this lady’s congressman has agreed to introduce a protective bill into the House of Representatives in Washington, DC.” That’s quite a bit of bureaucratic detail for this fictional tale aimed at children, but that part of the novel is not fictional at all. There was such a woman doing what Jim said, and at the end of the book the author adds a note bringing good news to the young readers of 1960, who by now had no doubt come to care as much about the mustangs as Jim Newton. Federal protection was passed thanks to that Nevada woman, Velma B. Johnston, whose efforts to save the mustangs earned her the nickname Wild Horse Annie. I had never heard of Wild Horse Annie or her crusade on behalf of the mustangs, but Google searches help with anything these days and it was simple to learn more. Then, sometime later, I discovered in my local library a 2010 book titled Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths, which told Johnston’s life story in detail, including a childhood battle with polio that left her face disfigured for life. It was clear that author Albert Miller had followed the news closely because his descriptions of the mustang slaughter in Fury and the Mustangs matched exactly the way things played out in real life. Cruise and Griffiths even include in their book a series of photos, taken at a 1951 mustang hunt by photographer Gus Bundy, showing men lassoing a mustang using a rope with a tire tied to the end. As in the Fury book, the exhausted horse collapses and is loaded onto a truck. As Velma Johnston lobbied on behalf of the mustangs, their plight became widely known and even schoolchildren became involved in a letter-writing campaign. By the 1960s, Johnston’s success had drawn the attention of children’s book author Marguerite Henry, who specialized in books about horses, including the 1949 Newbery Medal winner King of the Wind. Henry approached Johnston about telling her story and the result was the 1966 book Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West. As it turned out, fighting on behalf of the mustangs was a never-ending battle for Johnston because people were always looking for loopholes in the laws that were passed, or were trying to amend those laws for questionable reasons. Even in the early 1970s she was helping get legislation passed, by then under the signature of President Richard Nixon. Johnston died in 1977 at age 65. Hers was quite the story, but I never would have sought out and read Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs if I hadn’t learned about her in that old children’s book Fury and the Mustangs. And I would not have bought Fury and the Mustangs if not for my memories of Saturday mornings watching that wonderful steed come to the rescue again and again on my black-and-white TV. Fury and Peter Graves were still influencing and educating me 63 years after they filmed their show’s final episode. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.

By Ronnie Blair My family kept chickens in the mid-1960s. They laid eggs in a chicken coop in the barn behind our rental house in Kentucky, but spent much of the day clucking and strutting around our yard, easily avoiding me whenever I approached. One day when I was 6 or 7, I decided for unclear reasons that I simply must capture one of them, using a method I likely copied from a Hanna-Barbera or Warner Brothers cartoon. I found a cardboard box in the house and I propped up one end of the box with a stick. I tied a piece of kite string to the stick and stretched it out so that I could situate myself far enough away to avoid alarming any unsuspecting chicken that approached. I took slices of Sunbeam bread and broke them into tiny pieces, creating a trail of crumbs that would lead my unwary prey inside the box. At that point I would jerk the string, the box would fall, the chicken would squawk, and I could boast triumphantly that I had captured a furious and flapping hen or rooster. I did not have a plan beyond that. Once I laid my trap my excitement grew as, sure enough, one hen became intrigued by the bread and pecked at it, perhaps not believing her good fortune in discovering this delicious and easily accessible snack that had manifested itself long past breakfast time. She gulped down bits of bread one by one, and with each succeeding gulp drew closer to my ingeniously constructed contraption. She arrived next to the stick and her head bobbed in and out beneath the box. I waited. Another step or two and she would stand completely underneath the box and I would execute my plan, exulting in my triumph over my less-than-wily opponent. Suspicion grew in the hen’s lima-bean-sized brain, though, and she refused to cooperate further. She hovered tantalizingly close to where I calculated she needed to be for my mission to succeed, but some force stopped her from taking that final step beneath the box to finish off the last bread crumbs. Had she, despite my cunning, figured out the trap? Did my strange apparatus send some alert through the hen’s version of a cerebral cortex? Did her brain house more sagacity than I had anticipated? What a shrewd creature. By this point my little-boy patience, limited even under the most agreeable circumstances, dissipated and I made a fatal error. The hen poked her head beneath the box one last time. Crucially, most of her body remained outside the box’s shadow. Still, judging that this might be the best chance I would get, I yanked the string, setting the physics of my trap into motion. The stick was dislodged, the box dropped, and the startled hen frantically pulled back her head with a panicky squawk, escaping my clutches. The agitated creature raced away, putting distance between herself and my trap, which seemed less elaborate with each passing moment. Perhaps as I watched her retreat, I recalled that Wile E. Coyote always failed as well. At least, in my miscalculation, I had not plunged in panic from a cliff after momentarily defying gravity. Dejected but not defeated, I propped up the box, scattered another trail of Sunbeam bread, and waited, determined to do it right this time and not get trigger-happy––or kite-string happy, as it were. Lesson learned, I no doubt thought. The hen, wise to my treachery, ignored the bread this time. The other chickens also steered clear of the trap, either because they had witnessed and learned from her flirtation with captivity, or because they were innately more prudent than she. No amount of waiting mattered. The box, the stick, the kite string, the Sunbeam bread, and I were soundly defeated, outwitted by a cautious hen who now understood the risks inherent when scheming boys appear bearing cardboard boxes. Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up on Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.