Walter Winchell--newscaster

Some things just seem to stick in your mind, and listening to my dad tune the radio to Walter Winchell, the 1940s and 50s newscaster is one I vividly remember. I can still hear his teletype clacking away as he gave the newscast. "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American and all the ships at sea...let's go to press." I used Walter Winchell in The Red Scarf to give the reader a sense of the 1940s War years. Yes, it's a pretty corny line, but it carried a lot of weight around our house. My Dad would hold up both hands like a football referee signaling a touchdown, and that meant silence. In fact, even scooting your chair or walking around was forbidden. When old Walter rattled out the new from the War it was as if you were there. We sat glued to the old Philco radio, occasionally having to tune it when the signal drifted. Outside of the morning newspaper, the radio was our lifeline to the outside world. And with two of my uncles fighting in Europe, we were more than interested. That was the mid-1940s, and the pre-TV--sans electronic life at home was a lot simpler. Inside entertainment meant playing a board game or listening to the radio.

Wow, have things changed! It's almost hard to believe that today you can download a book on your IPhone. I think you'd have to be a little hard pressed to actually want to read a book on an IPhone, but it can be done. However, the new Kindle reader from Amazon.com puts a new wrinkle in books. I've watched my novel, The Red Scarf jump to #1 in its category on the Kindle edition after my blogs started.

Are we seeing the end of the printed word? No, I don't think so, but we are seeing entertainment and news disseminated in a manner that was unheard of just a few years ago. The Red Scarf is easy to read on Kindle and actually, based on the last sales figure, it looks like I'm selling more electronic books than hard copies.

That a long, long, way from old Walter Winchell's---"Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea....."