Ohio States

In Ohio States: A Twentieth-Century Midwestern, Jeffrey Hammond asserts the quiet mysteries of an ordinary life. More than simply a glimpse of life in the Midwest in the 1950s, this collection of well-crated, touching narratives finds the author recalling his childhood and youth with a mixture of affection and alarm. "The relative merits of the future and the past became a running theme with my brother and me. By now I had become a reader, something he definitely was not, and had developed an interest in things like ancient history, the Bible, and old-time baseball; all of which, he observed, would get me a cup of coffee provided I also had the requisite fifteen cents. Dave often bragged that he had read only two books cover to cover: Donald Duck Sees South America and The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad. I knew that was a lie, though, because our room contained a third book, a well-thumbed copy of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. Dave was too busy finding things out for himself to read books about made-up stories or "history." I knew he was right. We would all have to live in the future, and if I didn't get with it I'd get left behind." --From "Science Boy"