Reviews and Comments

The Ford-Wyoming Drive-In is one of my favorite places in the world, and this book up in my non-fiction books you already own queue, but for the life of me I can't find where I put it.

I Feel like I've already listened to this audiobook, but I can find no record of it on Bookwyrm nor LibraryThing. Maybe I only listened to his first book Slobberknocker: My Life in Wrestling? I also can't currently find the CDs, so maybe I already donated it to the little library at the beach?

I really like The Rambling Kid even if it wasn't what I was expecting. When I heard "A novel about the IWW" I was hoping for a story where we won. Where wobbles successfully seized the means of production whilst bringing about a new world inside the shell of the old, even if in only a small part of the world. Alas what I got was a story that very well could have been a true story. Ashleigh even made frequent references to the Wobblies sometimes being too high on expectations and theory perhaps too pragmatic, for what the working class needed, all while being the best thing they had.

But the book wasn't all gloom and doom. We follow the life of Joe who goes from a boy in London, England, to a farmer in the Dakotas. Straight thru Ellis island to the prairies of the Scandinavian immigrants. The farm goes bankrupt and off to the Twin Cities they go. Joe joins the Wobblies for a good time and a good job, and then hops the trains like a hobo. He falls in love, possibly more than once. Charged with a crime he didn't commit, and becomes a spokesman for the movement.

So all-in-all still good fun while also have quite a bit of true working class grit. Recommended to any Fellow Worker, whether or not they've joined the One Big Union.

I certainly didn't like it as much this time as when I listened to the abridged version a decade ago. I suspect that has more to do with where I am than anything else. According to Kiyosaki it would be because I'm more stuck in the Rat Race now than I was then, even though I'm making 50% more active income now than i was then. I still have 0 passive income. He says I need to invest in real estate, but I now feel like landlords are the devil. He also says I can't say anything bad about his recommendations if I haven't tried them, so there's that.

Regardless I recommend Dave Ramsey over Kyosaki, even though I've never got passed baby step 3 because of the American Health Care system. You need to be to at least baby step 4 before you even consider Rich Dad, Poor Dad's advice.

Oh, there was the whole nightmares I had about mutual funds when reading this before bed thing too.

St. Gregory of Nyssia writes a short biographical letter to his friend of the life of his sister St. Macrina. Most of what Mr. Corrigan wrote in the introduction is repeated in the tale. Her own tumor was healed by her mother when she did as was requested and the eye infection of an infant was healed after spending dinner with St. Macrina. It was somewhat unusual that after her husband died at a young age, she spent the rest of her mother's days never ought of her site. Nearly as much is written of her funeral as of her life.

Nebraska I didn't think was quite as good as Independence but good enough to read the next one.

We are introduced to a number of new characters, my favorite of which is Hosea, an escaped slave who maintains much of his African heritage including running rather than horseback riding, shooting poisoned darts, utilizing a strong leather shield, and killing with tiny clubs.

As unbelievable as that sounds much of the rest is at least plausible. The wagon train spends the winter in a understaffed Army fort. They battle natives, each tribe more vicious the further west they travel. Folks get sick and tired of buffalo meat.

I had @Voice for android read me the eBook. I still think this is my preferred way to consume such medium, but I somehow lost my place near the end, and didn't quite get it right, all of a sudden there was a wedding of someone I thought were still at odds with each other. When I get to Wyoming! it's gonna be a dead tree for me.

I found particularly heart breaking the story of the southern belle who was kidnapped during an Indian raid at the behest of the British St. Clair, Her Majesty's spy.

I have trouble putting into words just how much I enjoyed this book. One of the few I had been looking forward to reading for years that lived up to my own hype.

Written in 1937, 11 years before the founding of the National Wrestling Alliance, Marcus Griffin set out to inform the public about the secret goings on in the world of professional wrestling, during a time that in many parts of the U.S. wrestling was more popular than baseball, and certainly other new forms of entertainment like pro football, and ice hockey. I wasn't, however, a "Hey, look these guys are fooling you!" it was more of a sneak behind the curtain, "Hey, look how neat this is."

I find it fascinating that so many people attended so many matches, most of which sound absolutely boring by today's standards, with hour+ of rolling around on the mat. I found particularly interesting the tales of how they kept it above board, yet underground at the same time. They forbid spectators betting on wrestling matches, something very strange for the time, particularly as this was how boxing was run. This let them avoid a riot when someone learned it was "fixed" as had happened in boxing. Griffin only reveals one story where they got ran out of town on a rail, and that was more because the bout was so short people felt they didn't get their money's worth.

I really liked the story of the Boston promoter who specifically did start a riot. After running a few shows with less than 100 fans, he went and paid to print 100,000 free passes to a show with 10,00 seats available, and when the papers ran the story about thousands just trying to get in the papers knew they had better start covering these shows because clearly everyone in town wanted to see the results, yet no one was printing them.

I was also surprised by how many times the athletes and promoters agreed ahead of time that particular matches would be "shooting matches" where the winning was not predetermined and actual grappling determined a winner, often for a championship, that would go one and be defended "kayfabe" for years thereafter. Along with that I still don't see how a government organization, a state's athletic commission, actually determined who the worlds heavyweight champion was, but it did shed light on all these Wikipedia articles I've read about how someone was recognized in one state as the champion and not another. Griffin doesn't really make clear how much the athletic commissions where in on it, but I think that was kind of his point.

Above all what I liked was Griffin's writing style. I don't have an estimate for how many different words and phrases he used "professional wrestler", like neckbender, mat hurdler, bonecrusher, etc., without ever actually saying pro wrestler or sports entertainer. The authentic old-timey-ness left a smile on my heart.

This was certainly written for its time, aimed at early 20th century wrestling fans, evident by limited descriptions of various characters in the wrestling world at the time. Certainly, any fan in a big city would know who these people where, but alas, very few did I have any clear understanding.

Personally, I'm going to buy a copy of the updated "annotated version" printed in the 2000s to my "Wishlist" to keep on my shelf and reference in any number of online wrestling flame wars that even my opponent will never read. I recommend anyone with even a cursory interest in pro wrestling to find a copy and read this.