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I opened up a lower desk drawer that hasn't been opened in a very long time, in a room we seldom use, and discovered something that my aunt Marion clipped from the Medina (NY) Journal-Register in 1968.
I can still set type by hand if given the chance. It involves being able to read in intaglio, upside down and backwards. There is a certain magic to letterpress, which is the technical term for hand-set lead type. If you see a California Job Case hanging on the wall of an antique store full of knick-knacks, those pockets are different sizes because lead type fonts contain greater quantities of the most used letters: E, T, A, and O got the most room.
The press I graduated to after the toy press was made by the Kelsey Company in Meriden, CT. I visited them in 1967, and they were very gracious to me, showing me all over the place. It's one of my favorite childhood memories. The C&P treadle press in the picture was bought from a high school that was upgrading its shop program, along with some cases and counters. I had quite an operation there for a few years. It was all sold off when I went to college, and the proceeds paid for all four years' tuition.
The newspaper mentioned in the article was the Lyndonville Enterprise, an essentially one-man operation that was printed in linotype and hand-set type on a machine that took up two floors of their little building. The owner died abruptly around 1960, and I bought some type and furniture from his heirs. They considered it all junk, which I suppose it was if you didn't have a use for it. I did.
I printed a lot of business cards, wedding invitations, invoices (which had to have a progressive number on each copy, done by a neat little gadget that clicked over on every stroke), and sales fliers for the local Penny Saver. One of my favorite jobs was printing the flavors on waxed ice cream cartons for the local sweet shop, where the owner, Ari Stelianou, made a different flavor each week.
It's also my excuse for having essentially zero social life. It wasn't cool like being a gearhead or jock, so girls weren't interested in me — this was long before the Rise of Geekdom. That little swipe at the end about not getting into trouble always felt a little gratuitous to me, but this was in the day of Juvenile Delinquency and the horrifying effects of comic books and Elvis. Plus ça change.
Discussion (19)
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How fascinating, Doug! I'm reading Ron Chernow's biography on Mark Twain, and he describes an insane project that Twain funded for years, trying to get a printer machine to work so that he could make millions from the newspapers. Never did come to fruition.
It sounds like you had a lot of fun with your projects and I would have been impressed if I were a young girl your age!
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That would have been a pretty obscure hobby for a high school student. At least my high school band nerddom took place in the company of other high school band nerds.
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Fellow nerd. My geeky high school hobby was editing a wargaming fanzine.
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You, too, can be the next William Morris.
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Setting type and printing took up one term of the mandatory shop classes I and all my male classmates underwent in early 60s high school. The ink got on everything, as I recall.
Boys' other terms were drafting, wood shop and metal shop. What these humbling efforts taught me was not to pursue any occupation working with my hands. The girls had mandatory home economics.
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