The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less. Terry Ryan. Simon & Schuster (2001). 351 pages. Genre: Biography.
First Lines: "The ordinarily sleepy town of Defiance, Ohio, emitted an industrious hum on hot days, a subtle pulse of activity - like the buzzing of distant bees. It was late Indian summer, a little too warm for an October day, in 1953."
Summary: Evelyn Ryan was the mother of 10 children. Money was tight so she began using her love of language to enter jingle contests. At that time almost every brand had a jingle and in order to keep them fresh, they would hold contests requiring entrants to provide a line or two of a jingle. The winners would receive prizes. Sometimes the prizes were small. But other times there were several prizes awarded to one winner.
Evelyn was constantly working on jingles for whatever the current contest was. She kept a notebook nearby as she worked around the house. She loved to iron because that is where she could do her best thinking. She would keep her notebook on the end of the ironing board to jot down her ideas. She won many prizes, from a couple of dollars to cars, appliances and thousands of dollars. She kept the smaller prizes in her closet and would use them as needed to replace items around the house or as gifts.
My thoughts: The book is written by one of the daughters of Evelyn Ryan and so is told from her perspective. Evelyn was a woman who never gave up. She would enter many contests and not win anything, but she never let that dampen her spirit. Mr. Ryan worked in a machine shop where he made, "...$90 a week, barely enough to pay for food and rent." Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic and spent too much on his nightly consumption of liquor. Evelyn didn't let this defeat her either. She just continued to take care of her family and do the best she could to make ends meet.
Most interesting to me was the peek into life in the 1950's in Ohio.
"In the days before credit cards, few people in Defiance had a checking account. Bills were paid in cash and in person."
"She was always trying to replace the dilapidated family Chevy with something a bit more dependable. Just to start the car most mornings required a ten-person push so Dad could pop the clutch and rumble off to work in a cloud of blue smoke."
"Back in Defiance, the rest of the Ryan family, gathered around the TV to watch Bruce on national television, saw nothing of the show. The blizzard ruined the reception, and 'snow' was all we were able to pick up. We sat inches in front of the TV for the entire hour anyway, unable to hear or see a thing."
I felt sad for the family as they lived with alcoholism. Mr. Ryan missed out on so much. But I was encouraged by Evelyn's resilience and ability to keep going even when everything seemed to be against her.
I would recommend this book if you enjoy memoirs, history of America in the 1950's or stories about overcoming obstacles.
I haven't read this book, but we did watch the movie with Woody Harrelson and Julianne Moore. It was pretty good!
ReplyDeleteMy husband asked me if we had seen that movie when he saw me reading the book. I have a vague memory of it, so I think we might have! I remember it as being pretty good also. As is usual, the book goes into much more detail than the movie.
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