nostalgia – Page 2 – Edward Trimnell Books

Jennifer Big Eyes: generational name patterns

I was born in 1968. I did not go to school with a single boy named Ryan.

Thirty-odd years later, I was in the workforce. I met a lot of younger men (born in the mid- to late-1970s) named Ryan.

This was odd. Where had all these Ryans come from? And where had they been before, during my childhood, teens, and twenties?

The mid-1970s surge of boys named Ryan is an example of how generational naming patterns can turn on a dime. From the 1950s through the end of the 1960s, the following male given names were much more popular for newborns in the United States:

Mike/Michael
David
John
Mark
Scott
Steve/Steven
Kevin
Jeff/Jeffrey

The sudden (and relatively short-lived) increase in American babies named Ryan can be partly attributed to two factors: the popularity of the actor Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023), and the debut of the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1975. So if you’re an Xennial man named Ryan, it’s likely that you owe your name to a soap opera. The popularity of the name Ryan tapered off in the mid-1980s, right around the time that the soap opera’s ratings started to decline.

My name, Edward, was uncommon among boys my age. I was named after my father. Over the years, I have heard various explanations for the reason my father was given this name. None of them are entirely satisfactory. Edward is certainly not a family name for our clan, in any meaningful sense.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes meet adults who delighted in telling me about Mister Ed, the 1960s sitcom that featured a talking horse of the same name. They would then imply that I might have been named after the sitcom’s eponymous equine.

Despite my youth, I was quick to disabuse them of such notions. (Oh, the traumas that children had to endure at the hands of adults, before the advent of the “self-esteem” craze.)

My mother was born in 1946. She was named Linda—like more than a million other women born in that era. Linda was a much overused name during the Baby Boomer birth years. Linda was, in fact, the second most popular name for newborn girls during the 1940s, according to the Social Security Administration’s online database.

Throughout my life, I have met many Boomer women named Linda. I have never, so far as I can remember, met a woman my age or younger named Linda; but I don’t doubt that they exist.

When I try to think of any Linda who doesn’t have Baby Boomer associations, the only one who comes to mind is Linda Barrett, the fictional sexpot of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).

But once again, there are Baby Boomer connections. Even though Fast Times at Ridgemont High is regarded as an early Gen X movie, the movie’s director, Amy Heckerling, born in 1954, is solidly in boomer territory. (Heckerling is closer in age to my parents than to me.) I think it’s safe to say that the name “Linda” belongs entirely to the Baby Boom generation.

The most popular girls’ name in the 1940s was Mary. Mary was my maternal grandmother’s name. She was born in 1922. I have never met a woman my age or younger named Mary, either. I have met some Mary Jo’s who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, but never a plain old Mary. Once again, I am sure that they exist; but they are comparatively rare.

Kayla is a girl’s name that came out of nowhere in the 1990s. One never encountered the name when I was a kid. I began meeting Kaylas around 2010, just as the first girls given that name were reaching early adulthood. I have nothing against the name Kayla, but what’s wrong with its more traditional analog, Katie?

Among Gen X girls, Jennifer is the most popular name, hands down. Jennifer was already becoming popular when I was born, in the late 1960s. But Jennifer really surged in popularity in the early 1970s. It is the most common name for American girls born in that decade.

This is why there are so many 50-something women nowadays named Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston (born in 1969) is just one drop in that vast ocean of Jennifers.

I went to school with more Jennifers than I can count. Later in life, I met many more who were just a few years younger than me (born in the first half of the 1970s).

I seem to have been surrounded by Jennifers from the very beginning. My mother informed me that when I was a newborn, the couple living in the apartment unit next to my parents had a two-year-old girl named—lo and behold—Jennifer.

The girl had especially wide, blue eyes. She was also fond of staring at adults, according to my mother’s telling. My mother therefore nicknamed her Jennifer Big Eyes. Over the years, Jennifer Big Eyes has come up in conversation from time to time.

Jennifer Big Eyes would now be, I would guess, in her early 60s. I don’t believe my mother ever knew her full name. I have no idea where she would be nowadays, or if she is even still alive. After that many years, anything is possible. But I do hope that Jennifer Big Eyes is still out there somewhere, and that she is doing well. One more Gen X Jennifer among so many.

-ET

1980s coming-of-age college drama

Read NO SURE THING in Kobo Plus. Also available for purchase at Amazon, Google Play, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble

No Sure Thing: a Gen X coming-of-age novel set in 1988 is now available in Kobo Plus.

Kobo Plus is Kobo’s version of Kindle Unlimited. I’ve been moving some titles in there on an experimental basis.

Kobo Plus, like Kindle Unlimited, will inevitably be swamped with trashy, sexually explicit romance novels. (Unfortunately, that’s probably already the case). But at least Kobo Plus does not require exclusivity. So I’m willing to give it a try for now.

No Sure Thing, like the title suggests, is a coming-of-age novel in a distinctly Gen X setting. While the novel is not autobiographical in any significant way, many of the characters and conflicts presented therein are based on people and situations that I observed myself during the 1980s. So it is authentic, if nothing else.

While there are several “love plots” in the book, this is not a romance novel in any traditional sense. If that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere.

But not all of the teen movies of the 1980s followed the traditional romance script. Consider the endings of Risky Business and The Last American Virgin. These were much more disillusionment plots than by-the-numbers romance plots (even though the romance element was heavily used in marketing both films).

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, despite the sex and comedy, also had several unmistakable disillusionment plots: Stacy learned the consequences of reckless sexual experimentation; Brad learned the pitfalls of hubris.

As noted above, No Sure Thing is available at all the major online bookstores.

-ET

Social interactions in the 1980s were a different game completely

In the 1980s, there was no social media and no dating apps. We didn’t even have email.

If you wanted to meet someone new, there was usually only one way to go about it.

You had to approach them in person, and strike up a conversation.

Below is a scene from NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988. In the scene below, the main character must jump through numerous hoops to meet an attractive young woman:

NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988

CHAPTER 43

Since my hand had previously been stamped, I had little trouble gaining reentry to the Casablanca Club. I walked by the doorman as if I owned the place, flashing him a glimpse of my left hand. He gave me no trouble this time.

Once inside, I got another break: there was no sign of Lance Corporal Evans or his fellow marines.

But where was Sergeant George Tuttle, fearless defender of the law in Cincinnati “for more than thirty years?”

Maybe I would get lucky there. Maybe the cop had called it a night, or (more likely) been drawn away from the Casablanca Club by other police business.

I only had to walk around for a few minutes before I spotted her: the young woman from the Tangeman University Center. The pretty blonde who had caught my attention that day.

She was standing by herself at the edge of the nearest dance floor. Where were the other young women she had entered with, the ones I had assumed to be her friends? Was she meeting a guy here?

I didn’t know. And in that moment, I didn’t care. It was full speed ahead.

“Hi,” I said, when I got within speaking distance.

She turned toward me. I thought I detected a flash of recognition.

“You go to the University of Cincinnati, don’t you?” I asked.

Strictly speaking, this was a lame question with an obvious answer. The Casablanca Club was located a few blocks from the university, and we were both of university age. Probably half of the patrons here tonight were university students.

But few lines uttered by young men to young women in bars and nightclubs are brilliant. This wasn’t Toastmasters. Nor was I making an argument before Dr. Blevins. I was willing to improvise.

She smiled, but seemed at a loss for words.

“I think we may have spoken briefly in the Tangeman Center. That day you were looking at all the Armed Forces displays.

“More like I spoke briefly,” she said. “The proverbial cat seemed to have gotten your tongue.”

“There are no cats on my tongue now.”

This had to have been the most awkward line a man ever uttered to a woman in a bar. But it did the trick. She laughed.

“I’m Kim,” she said.

“I’m Paul.”

We talked for a few minutes more. I learned that she was a marketing major…common enough at the University of Cincinnati.

This was actually working, I suddenly realized. There was none of the awkwardness and fumbling that I’d felt when trying to talk to Tara and Courtney.

The difference, of course, was that the attraction with Kim was mutual, rather than one-sided. I therefore didn’t have to talk her into anything. All I had to do was go with the flow, be moderately assertive, and not say anything stupid.

But I was also conscious of Scott, who would right now be waiting for me in my car. I was also aware that in my very presence here, I was defying police orders, and breaking a promise I had made to a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department.

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Kim, but—”

“But now you have to go.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Call it intuition. Or maybe that you seem an awful lot like someone in a hurry.”

“I am in a hurry,” I confessed. “My friend is waiting for me at my car. Before I go, though: would you give me your phone number? I’d like to call you sometime.”

She smiled. “That’s usually what people have in mind when they ask for someone’s phone number. They want to call them sometime.”

A few minutes later, I was walking toward the main entrance/exit of The Casablanca Club with Kim’s phone number in my pocket.

She had written it on one of the club’s cocktail napkins, along with her last name. She was Kim Jones.

I was feeling on top of the world, more or less. Wait until Scott heard about this, I thought triumphantly.

I was outside in the parking lot of the Casablanca Club, almost home free, when everything unraveled.

“I thought you’d learned your lesson,” an older male voice declared. “But I guess I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988 is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play and Apple Books.

1932: supernatural zombie horror in rural Ohio

My maternal grandfather, born in 1921, grew up in rural Adams County, Ohio. He told me so much about that time and place, that I sometimes feel as if I lived it all myself.

“Hay Moon” is a short story set in rural Ohio in the summer of 1932. My grandfather never told me a story like this, filled with supernatural forces and the undead. But his real-life accounts of his childhood years helped me add a realistic flavor to the tale, if I say so myself.

You can listen to the story here, or on my YouTube channel (where you’ll find lots of additional audio content).

You can purchase this story as part of my Hay Moon and Other Stories collection. If you like my approach to historical horror, consider The Rockland Horror historical horror series, which is also available in a five-volume boxset on Kindle.

-ET

1980s college fiction: new cover reveal

NO SURE THING has a new cover. The setting is a modified image of the University of Cincinnati campus, which I attended in the late 1980s.

Who should read NO SURE THING? You’ll enjoy this book if you fondly remember teen and young adult movies of the 80s. The book is based on a number of ideas I’ve been kicking around for years, but it really crystalized when I rewatched Risky Business, the 1983 film that made Tom Cruise a household name.

NO SURE THING is available at Amazon, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

-ET

I met a famous poet, I asked a stupid question

People occasionally ask me what I like in the way of poetry. When this happens, I hem and haw around, and try to change the subject. I might suggest the lyrics of Neil Peart, the drummer and chief songwriter for the Canadian rock band Rush.

But that’s a non-answer. Neil Peart mostly wrote song lyrics, which are distinct from—though closely related to—poetry that is meant to be read from a page, rather than performed as music.

The sad fact is: a lot of contemporary American poetry is not very good. Regular readers will know that I’m fond of trashing the twenty-first century. But the decline of English-language verse began far back in the last century. By the time I was born (1968), English-language poetry was already in decline.

Most of it seems to fall into one of two camps. At one extreme, there is sappy love poetry that imitates the late Rod McKuen. At the other extreme, there is slam poetry, which devolved from the rantings of Allen Ginsberg.

But not all is doom and gloom. Richard Wilbur (1921-1997) was a twentieth century poet who wrote verse as the English language gods intended it to be written. That is: with discipline and structure, and focused on concretes rather than abstractions.

Here’s a sample of Wilbur’s classic poem, “Advice to a Prophet”:

“When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,

Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,

A stone look on the stone’s face?…”

That is great stuff. I loved these lines when I first read them, back in the mid-1980s. And I love them still.

I briefly met Richard Wilbur in 1987, when he was a guest speaker at Northern Kentucky University, where I was a student. I was already a moderately enthusiastic fan by this point. I asked him a question or two during the Q&A session— probably dumb questions. But hey, I was nineteen years old at the time.

If you are interested in poetry at all, then you should read Richard Wilbur’s poems. The best way to do this is by purchasing his omnibus collection, Collected Poems 1943-2004: Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner―Sixty Years of American Verse. I purchased this volume a few years ago. It is well worth whatever Amazon is charging for it nowadays.

-ET

Vintage Mellencamp with vintage footage

I really miss the music culture of the 1980s, especially MTV.

And John Mellencamp was one of my favorite solo artists. His commercial breakout album, American Fool, came out in 1982, just as I was entering high school.

Mellencamp was atypical in an era of polished arena rock and heavy synthesizers. Both his songs and his persona had a distinctly midwestern American vibe.

The singer hailed from Seymour, Indiana, less than two hours from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio. My dad grew up in the same general area of the Hoosier State. Perhaps for this reason, I found Mellencamp’s music relatable. (On the other hand, I could never relate to the worlds of David Bowie or Ratt.)

The attached video is for the single “Cherry Bomb”. It was released in 1987, and included on the album The Lonesome Jubilee. The music video features plenty of vintage footage from the 1960s and early 1970s. I don’t know if these video clips are from Indiana, but they sure look like Indiana, back in those days.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the interracial couple featured in the video. John Mellencamp has never been shy about his (progressive) politics; and we can be sure that this was a deliberate choice.

I remember 1987 like it was yesterday. (I was nineteen.) In 1987, a young interracial couple in a music video was not as shocking as it would have been twenty years earlier, and not as ho-hum as it would have been twenty years later. And certainly not the cliché that it would be now, almost 40 years after the music video for “Cherry Bomb” was made.

In 1987, this was something that people would notice, without being either outraged or inspired by it. Mellencamp was not being “brave” or ground-breaking by presenting this in 1987. But he was making a statement.

-ET

New release: ‘No Sure Thing’ for Gen X fans of the 1980s

The year is 1988. Anything can happen, but nothing is guaranteed!

Get ready for a coming-of-age story that will remind you of your favorite teen/young adult movies from the 1980s.

As the year 1988 begins, Paul Nelson is nineteen going on twenty. Paul is an economics major at the University of Cincinnati. He has big plans to go to work at a major bank after graduation.

But Paul’s life is not without problems. His first serious girlfriend has dumped him, and his best friend Scott gets all the female attention, seemingly without trying.

Paul meets a witty young woman who seems to be his perfect match. But then he unexpectedly falls for an older woman who has secrets and an unknown agenda.

Paul’s life spins out of control. He’s also incurred the unwanted attention of the Cincinnati Police Department, criminal elements, and a military man who detests him on sight.

Filled with a wide range of memorable characters and a generous dollop of 80s nostalgia, ‘No Sure Thing’ is a fun and fast-paced tale from a bygone but fondly remembered era.

**View NO SURE THING on Amazon!**

1970s blizzard years

Those awful, wonderful winters from 1976 to 1978

As I write these words, meteorologists throughout the country are predicting a nationwide, historic snowstorm. I hope they’re wrong!

Of course, for American adults around my age—especially if they grew up east of the Mississippi—there are two childhood winters that stand out in memory: those are the back-to-back “blizzard winters” in the mid-1970s: the winter of 1976 to 1977, and the winter of 1977 to 1978.

The winter of 1976 to 1977

The winter of 1976 to 1977 was the winter of record-breaking, pipe-bursting, river-freezing cold. Here in Cincinnati, there were three straight days of record cold in January 1977, in which the temperature stayed below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit the whole time.

The Ohio River froze solid—for the first time since 1958, and only the thirteenth time on record. In the Cincinnati media archives, there are photos of people walking across the Ohio River, and even driving across the ice that month. The freezing of the Ohio was quite a novelty, much talked about on the local news. One of my older friends has told me about driving his car across the Ohio River that winter on a dare. He was then nineteen years old, and he’s now in his sixties. So he obviously made it across.

January of 1977 was also a snowy one. Cincinnati had 30.3 inches of snow that year. (The usual figure for Cincinnati in January is six inches.)

Beechmont Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio (personal photo)

The winter of 1977 to 1978

The following winter of 1977 to 1978 was just as bad, with almost as much cold, and even more snow. On January 25, 1978, one of the worst blizzards in U.S. history pummeled Cincinnati with almost seven inches of snow. There were already fourteen on the ground.

I remember the night of January 25, 1978 well. I played forward on our fourth-grade basketball team. That night we had a game at a rival Catholic school in the area, Guardian Angels. I remember walking outside at halftime with other members of my team. The air was not exceptionally cold yet by January standards. (It would soon plummet below zero degrees.) But there was a strange fog in the air. I think we all had the feeling that something momentous was imminent. On the way home from the game, the snow began. By morning, it was a whiteout.

Winter landscapes of the memory

At the age of eight or nine, one doesn’t have much life experience to draw upon. I could sense, though, that those two winters were worse than the handful of winters I could recall before. During those two winters, the outside air always seemed to be bitterly cold. Furnaces ran constantly. Fireplaces crackled nonstop. The ground was always snow-covered.

Many people are depressed by snow and cold weather, and winter in general. Not me. I will confess that some of my happiest childhood memories are winter ones, in fact.

I was particularly close to my maternal grandparents. During those blizzard years of the 1970s, they lived just down the street from us. When school was canceled due to inclement weather, I got to pass the day with my grandfather, who had recently retired. We spent a lot of time together in those years. I’m grateful for all the snow.

The cyclical nature of winter weather

It has been my observation that bad and mild winters tend to alternate in cycles. From the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, the winters were harsh, with record cold and snow.

The winter of 1981 to 1982 was cold. The Cincinnati Bengals went to the Super Bowl that year. On January 10, 1982, the Bengals won a key home game against the San Diego Chargers. The air temperature at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium on game day was minus nine degrees, with wind chills down to 35 below. That game has gone down in NFL history as the “Freezer Bowl”.

I was in the eighth grade in 1981-1982, and going through a (brief, in retrospect) rebellious adolescent phase. This included hanging out with an edgier crowd, and embracing a short-lived fascination with smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.

Even in 1982, smoking and drinking weren’t acceptable pursuits for eighth graders. But hiding these illicit activities from adult authority figures was half the fun. I have many memories of shivering outside that bitter January, as I sipped a furtive drink of whiskey, or smoked a Marlboro. Even today, when I happen to smell someone else’s newly opened pack of cigarettes, or taste an alcoholic beverage, I’m transported back to that brutally cold winter of 1981 to 1982.

The last bad winter I remember from that larger cycle was the winter of 1983 to 1984. That winter brought record cold and snow to the entire United States, including Florida and Texas. As I recall, there was a lot of anxiety about the citrus crop that year, and skyrocketing prices of orange juice.

Over Christmas break in December 1983, my parents decided to embark on a rare family trip to Florida. When we reached Macon, Georgia, it was 4 degrees, with 23 degrees forecast for our destination in the Sunshine State. After spending a night shivering in a Macon hotel room with an inadequate heater, my parents decided to cut our losses. We headed home the next morning. We could freeze in Ohio for free, after all.

But the weather is no more constant than anything else in this world. That cycle of severe winters, from 1976 to 1984, transitioned into a milder pattern over subsequent years. The winters of 1984-1985 and 1985-1986 weren’t exactly balmy; but they weren’t severe, either. Throughout my last two years of high school, classes were rarely canceled due to weather. This was fine with me, because I generally enjoyed high school more than grade school.

And during my college years, spanning the winters of 1986 to 1987 through 1990 to 1991, the winters in Cincinnati were notably mild. I did not go away for college; I lived with my parents and commuted to two local schools. I did not miss a single class due to bad winter weather throughout my entire college career.

That mild cycle continued through the early 1990s, only to go the other way again in the middle of the decade. The winter of 1995 to 1996 was an especially bad one for the entire Midwest, resulting in a rare shutdown of the University of Cincinnati in January of ’96. By this time, I was a working adult in my mid-twenties.

The winter of 1995 to 1996 drew comparisons in the media to the blizzard winters of the mid-1970s. I remember scoffing when I heard this. Having been a kid during those fabled winters of the 1970s, I never took the comparison seriously.

But then, everything seems to happen on a larger scale when you’re a kid…even the weather.

-ET

The end of MTV (1981 – 2025)

December 31st marked not only the end of 2025, but also the end of MTV (1981 – 2025).

As I explain in the video below, I was one of MTV’s young fans back in the early 1980s.

MTV was a brilliant mechanism for content marketing. Suburban teens like me would discover new bands on MTV. Then we would go to the local mall and purchase the albums.

I discovered many of my favorite bands on MTV, including Def Leppard.

-ET

**View NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988 on Amazon**

Gen X memories: childhood before geo-tracking

Using various phone apps, many parents now track the movements of their progeny from minute-to-minute. Some parents even track the movements of their adult children. One of my friends can tell you, at any minute of the day, where his two children are. My friend’s children are 26 and 30 years old.

I won’t mince words here. I find all of this geo-tracking to be a little neurotic, not to mention claustrophobic for those who must endure it.

It was different for those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, of course. At most hours of the day, our parents didn’t know exactly where we were. Oh, sure, they might have had some ideas, in the same way that I know Russia is to the east of me, and Argentina is to the far south. But don’t ask me to give you air travel coordinates. Suburban parents in the 1970s and 1980s relied on similar guesstimates regarding their children’s whereabouts.

During the summer months especially, we took full advantage of this location anonymity. The one thing most every Gen X kid had was a bike. And a bike was a license to travel distances your parents never would have approved of. Some of us planned long quests that would have been worthy of a JRR Tolkien novel like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

The motivation for these unauthorized trips was often some kind of contraband: alcohol, cigarettes, or firecrackers. Sometimes it was just the thrill of seeing how far your ten speed would carry you in a single June or July morning.

Among adolescent boys, the motivations were often of an amorous inclination. I turned 13 in the summer of 1981. One of my neighborhood friends—I’ll call him Glen—had somehow initiated a running phone conversation with three girls who lived in a neighborhood far from where we lived. Somehow three of us—Glen, me, and one other boy—started talking to the girls, always via landline (the only communication option in those days) and always from Glen’s house.

The girls sounded both pretty and friendly. The girls said they wanted to meet us, but we would have to go to them. And so we planned a bicycle trip to their neighborhood.

Did we ask our parents’ permission? Of course not.

We set off on our bikes one morning around nine a.m. Being randy young males, we eagerly speculated about what might happen at our destination.

When we arrived nearly two hours later, however, the girls were nowhere to be found. Forty-five years after the fact, I’m not sure exactly what happened. We either had the wrong address, or we were duped. Disappointed, we rode back as a particularly hot afternoon settled in.

The lesson I learned from this was: if it seems too good to be true, a little too convenient, then it probably is too good to be true.

But that is the kind of life lesson that you can’t learn on a computer, and certainly not on social media. I’m grateful that I came of age when free-range childhood was still a thing. To grow up without geo-tracking was both a privilege and a blessing.

-ET

Reads I remember: ‘The Great Brain’

I was ten or eleven years old when I discovered John Dennis Fitzgerald’s (1906–1988) semi-autobiographical series of children’s books, The Great Brain. The books are set at the end of the 1800s in Utah. The eponymous “Great Brain” is a fictionalized version of the author’s older brother.

I’m not sure why I started reading these books back in…1979, it must have been. Probably my mom was familiar with them (?)

Anyway, I recall getting my hands on the first one, and reading the rest in quick succession. Seven books were then available. (The original series was published between 1967 and 1976. A final book, based on Fitzgerald’s notes, was published in 1995, seven years after the author’s death.)

I skimmed through the first few pages of The Great Brain using Amazon’s preview function. I found myself being drawn into the story once again—more than 45 years after my initial reading.

My TBR list is already too long, and children’s fiction has never been my thing as an adult. I must say, though, I would not mind reading The Great Brain books again, or at least one or two of them. This really was—and is—youth fiction at its best. Far better than the much overrated Harry Potter novels, I dare say.

-ET

**View THE GREAT BRAIN on Amazon**

“It: Welcome to Derry” and franchise overload

I’m late to this party. I didn’t realize that yet another television adaptation of Stephen King’s It was in the works. So now I know.

Forgive me if I skip this one. I love Stephen King’s books. (Or well, I love many of them, anyway.) But I read It for the first time as an 18-year-old in 1986. (I purchased one of the original hardcovers at the Waldenbooks in my local mall.)

I reread the book once in the 1990s. I’ve seen two screen adaptations already.

I always preferred King’s shorter, tighter books, anyway. For me, It marked the point where every Stephen King book was no longer a guaranteed page-turner.

But that really isn’t the point. This story has been in my brain for almost 40 years now. I understand that Hollywood prefers stories with prequalified demand (i.e., decades-old franchises). But there comes a time when I want something new.

No disrespect intended toward Mr. King. It was entertaining, the first—even the second—time around. But do I need yet another tour through the mythical town of Derry? Of all the teenage experiences I’d like to relive at the ripe old age of 57, this book doesn’t rank very high on the list.

-ET

1980s flashback: Halloween horror in the Shipley House (a scene from 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN)

Halloween 1980

You’re twelve years old, and trick-or-treating with your two best friends.

You know what they say about the Shipley House. Something very bad happened there in 1959.

For more than twenty years, the Shipley house has stood vacant. No one can live there for long.

You’ve been warned not to enter.

But it’s Halloween, after all. How can you resist?

You try the front door. You’re surprised to find that the Shipley house is unlocked. Almost as if the house has been waiting for you.

You go inside, and walk down the hallway toward the bedroom at the end of the corridor.

Be careful: what you find in that room may drive you mad. And you may discover things about yourself that you don’t want to know.

***

The Shipley house is featured in one of the chapters of 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN, a Gen X coming-of-age supernatural horror tale set on Halloween night, 1980.

Three young friends decide to go out for “one last Halloween before they enter their teenage years. But this will be a Halloween like no other.

12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is available on Amazon, and you can read it for free in Kindle Unlimited.

**View it on Amazon**

1980s tech was expensive, and it didn’t do much

I vaguely remember the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Introduced in 1980, this little device was manufactured and marketed by the Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack. (Every shopping mall in the 1980s had a Radio Shack.) Science fiction author Isaac Asimov appeared in a series of marketing spots for the gadget.

1980 Radio Shack ad featuring the TRS-80 Pocket Computer and Isaac Asimov

I didn’t own a TRS-80 Pocket Computer, however. The MSRP was $169.95. In present-day money, that’s about $670—the cost of a base-model iPhone.

And of course, the TRS-80 Pocket Computer had a minimal functionality when compared to an iPhone. It couldn’t make phone calls, play music, or take photos. It couldn’t surf the Internet—which didn’t yet exist, anyway.

The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was programmable in BASIC (which couldn’t do much for the average consumer). Other than that, it was basically a glorified pocket calculator.

Herein lies an important realization about 1980s tech: it was very expensive, and it didn’t do much. Even if you could afford it, you usually concluded that you could do without it.

-ET