Review: Of Mikes and Men

Of Mikes and Men by Jane Woodfin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Under a pseudonym future children's author Evelyn Sibley Lampman whimsically and cheekily recalls Prohibition-era days in the new field of radio when no one had long experience in it, even the listeners. Interestingly, they often thought of it as a call-in encyclopedia and general information source. Many of the stories (often illustrated by Paul Galdone) are quite hilarious; flushing string down the toilet to run remote communication lines for remotes and, one of my favorites, a sports caster doing an impromptu ability demonstration announcing a game of two boys playing marbles. The weight of these brief stories eventually wore thin to me. Maybe if I could remember some of the announcers, on-air orchestras, musicians, personalities like would-be psychic The Mystic Inner Eye etc. more of the material would resonate with me. I really liked the incidental details of in-home boozing in the Prohibition era by homemade gin, distilled "spirit of nitre", etc.

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