(Aired 5/18/24)
For this "Open Book," my first guest is Stephen Eoannou.
When I was a very young lad living in a London suburb, I spent many of my days dreaming of riding a horse, six guns strapped to my waist on the dusty roads of the Old West. The Lone Ranger was my hero and I waited eagerly each week to catch up with his adventures on the 9” screen of the family television.
I wasn’t alone.
The show had an international audience in the millions - one of whom is my guest, Stephen Eoannou.
He was watching the show in Buffalo, New York, the city where the character was created by a writer called Fran Striker in the midst of the Depression in the 1930’s. For reasons Mr. Eoannou will explain, Fran Striker has never really been credited with creating the character and writing the stories that introduced him to an audience hungry for a hero in the dark hopeless days of the Depression.
My other guest on this show is singer and songwriter Pi Jacobs - who, according to her bio, draws inspiration for her sultry, bluesy songs from her unconventional upbringing in “The Land of Weed and Wine” - aka Northern California.