The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Ryan, Terry. The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2001. Print

First Sentences:

The ordinary 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 a late October day, in 1953. Most of the rust-red and golden leaves still held fast in the towering maple trees that lined our block on Latty Street. You could feel the moisture in the air seeping up from the muddy, slow-moving Auglaize River a few blocks away.

My mother, Evelyn Ryan, had sent six of her nine children outside to play while she and my sixteen-year-old sister, Lea Ann, made lunch. As usual, all the school-age kids had come home at noontime, and we crammed as much recreation into the hour as we could.

Description:

Wait, hold on. Did she say nine children? All coming home for lunch at one time? This is a person I want to know more about, along with any stories about her huge family. I am hooked immediately! 

In The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Children on 25 Words or Less, daughter Terry Ryan recalls the unusual life of her mother, Evelyn Ryan, mother of ten (yes, they added one more!) and a highly successful contest winner. 

Living a typical life of a woman in a small Ohio town in the 1950's as what we now call a "stay-at home-mother" or "housewife," Evelyn needed to find a way to keep her family financially solvent. Her husband had a low-paying job, and what he did earn he often drank away. An outside job for her was highly irregular for a woman at that time and unthinkable for a mother of ten.

Her solution? Enter contests that offered monetary or product prizes. Write a poem to describe a car, tell why you loved this mattress in 25 words, compose a jingle to advertise a sandwich. Magazines, radio, newspapers, and television in those years all promoted such contests to their public and Evelyn entered them all -- and won many. She won freezers, bicycles, toasters, money, and even a car. All winnings were gladly used in the household or sold for cash to keep her family going.

To increase her chances to win yet overcome the restriction of "One entry per person," Evelyn submitted multiple contest solutions using various spellings of her own name as well as each of her children's names. 

Here are some samples of her work:

[jingle - large hero sandwich]
     My
     Frisk-the-Frigidaire
     Clean-the Cupboards-Bare
     Sandwich

[ad - soup]
     Seasoned right for season-round zest,
     Cents and minutes are all you invest

[ad - Kool-Aid]
     Kool-Aid season's ANYTIME,
     For more "good" reasons than I've rhyme

But more than just a compilation of Evelyn's snappy lines, this memoir details the frustrations of financial insecurity in the 1950s and the challenges of family life and marriage she overcome all by herself. While Evelyn enjoys the mental aspects of contesting, her real motivation is  to win the prizes and provide necessities for her family.

[a personal poem, not written for a contest]

     An old Christmas custom
         to strong to resist:
     You run out of money
         but not out of list.

Evelyn eventually does discover a group of fellow "contesters," women like her who regularly submit entries for prizes to supplement their household income. Discovering others in her situation who also possess interesting brains is a lifeline to the outside world and friendships. Through their correspondence and meetings, Evelyn temporarily escapes her family struggles to be with peers.

I loved this book. It is packed with great samples of her witty writing, the unusual contests, and the variety of prizes she won. But it also shows the difficulty in being a woman in the 1950s. 

This is a wonderful portrait of a fascinating, intellingent and always positive woman. It is a great example of perserverence, fortitude, and an undying sense of humor in the face of many challenges.

[The movie version with Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson is not bad either.]

   

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jackson, Shirley. Llfe Among the Savages / Raising Demons 

Joyous, exasperating, and funny accounts by Shirley Jackson of her domestic life with children in their homes in New York and Vermont. (She is the author of the short story, The Lottery, but these memoirs are quite the opposite in seriousness). This link offer these two books in one binding, a good option since you will want to read them both!