When the pandemic put a stop to Marjorie Preston’s life as she knew it, she decided to have a laugh and share it with the world.
The former Bowling Green resident dusted off her notes for a joke book — featuring many zingers about Northwest Ohio — and published “OH! That’s Funny! 101 Hilarious Ohio Jokes.”
“It would be great if it made some people laugh right now. I think we could use it,” said Preston, who now lives in Cleveland.
A few years ago, Preston started planning for a joke book.
“In 2012, I asked people for jokes and they all came to me with jokes,” she said.
But life got in the way and Preston continued working in public relations, teaching swimming lessons and raising her family.
“It was sitting in my computer for eight years,” she said, adding that she wrote the book with a friend she worked with at a public relation agency in New York.
The coronavirus ended up giving her extra time — Preston called it a pandemic pivot.
“I normally teach swimming lessons on Saturdays,” she said. “That’s what I’d be doing on a Saturday morning, literally blowing bubbles and breathing in the little kids’ faces.
“It takes something to push, and I think that’s what the pandemic is doing for everybody,” Preston said. “I’m not teaching swimming lessons, but there’s this raw information here that could be a book.”
The jokes are set in all areas of Ohio, but many are concentrated on where she grew up. She also visited the Facebook group called Grew Up in BG Ohio for inspiration.
“We make fun of BG. We make fun of Toledo,” she said. “We have jokes about Tontogany in here, Pemberville.
“Some of them are just generally set in a cow pasture in Ohio, or rural Ohio. We kind of just wanted to be an equal opportunity offender.”
Preston had some experience with publishing, putting out an eBook entitled “Emmaisms” about her daughter.
“It was more of a vanity project,” she said.
Preston graduated from Bowling Green High School, where she was involved in swim team and theater, in 1989 and from Bowling Green State University in 1993. Her bachelor’s degree was in broadcast journalism.
“Bowling Green, I feel like it’s sort of a very Mayberry, friendly — I was glad for the upbringing, but when I became an adult I was really searching out something more.”
Preston got a taste of New York City during a student exchange program and put down roots there after college.
She and her husband, Eric, moved back to Ohio after a few years. They met while students at BGSU and loved living in the Big Apple. The cost of living, though, was enormous.
“People say the rent is too darn high. It is literally true. Our rent nearly doubled in six years. We were two white collar, working, 20-somethings and we couldn’t make it work in East Harlem,” she said. “It’s a hard city to be able to stay there and pay that kind of rent.”
After a lot of research, they settled in Cleveland and started a family.
“We chose this state, we moved back. It’s like half the cost of living in New York.”
They have a daughter, Emma, 12, and a son, Liam, 7.
Some of the jokes in the book are from family, including her father, Jerry Milnor (see the tracks joke in the accompanying box). Milnor is known around the area for delivering for Pagliai’s Pizza. Preston’s mom, Billie, was a Wood County teacher for 30 years.
“The Milnor sense of humor, you can’t extinguish that. My grandfather, he used to have magic tricks and would tell stories. I think my dad got it from that side of the family,” Preston said. “(Mom) raised readers. It was only a matter of time before someone wrote a book.”
Jerry, an Army veteran, worked for Century for a number of years and did a number of odd jobs when he was laid off. Preston has vivid memories of riding with her dad when he was on pizza delivery runs.
“If I only had a picture of this car. There was a seat for the driver — everything else plywood, and one huge …. metal pizza oven with a flaming can of Sterno in the back. And I’m sitting on the edge of the plywood with a salad in the bag,” she said.
Preston has two siblings, Don and Laura.
“OH! That’s Funny! 101 Hilarious Ohio Jokes” was published by Cleveland-based Outlandish Press and is available at www.marjoriepreston.com.
Preston previously contributed to a book about Generation X by Claire Raines called “Beyond Generation X.” As a 30-year swimming instructor, she has been published as a freelance aquatics writer. She has also written for the Sun Newspapers as both a theater critic for seven years and as the “Hillcrest Happenings” columnist. Preston performs improv with Angry Ladies of Improv and Cleveland Improv Jam via Zoom these days.
January 02, 2021 at 07:00PM
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