REFLECTIONS
You might say that my older brother and I are blood brothers. No, we are actually "ink brothers.”
What does that mean?
It means that my brother and I have both spent most of our careers in printing, thus the explanation is further needed to clarify the fact that both my brother and I worked for paid circulation newspapers during our careers.
That’s why we often hear the comment, “he’s got ink in his blood,” or, “ don’t fight with the local newspaper because they buy their ink by the barrel.”
My brother worked in a printing job shop in Austin, gaining a position, setting type for brochures, print advertisements, letterhead paper, envelopes, etc.
I picked up my first, full-time job at $1.25 an hour, at The Evening Tribune in Albert Lea as a Farm Page editor.
Yes, agriculture was big in Albert Lea with the Wilson Company and nearby in Austin, with the George A. Hormel and Company.
Newspaper language
Both My brother and I are long retired. We still talk newspaper language.
Dave recently sent me a newspaper clipping from Colorado that details the work of a Colorado newspaper man who does it the old way. I jump into history to remember how it once was. Snipets are courtesy of Bruce Finley, Denver Post.
“As dry leaves scratched the town’s streets, 73-year-old Saguache Crescent publisher Dean Coombs hunched over his keyboard behind a pot of gray molten metal on the 1920 linotype machine, typing news for his readers: trustees were about to jack up water bills.
“He got up periodically to adjust the machine, one of the last in operation, a multi-ton cross between a typewriter and a foundry complete with belts, gears and chutes. His keystrokes triggered a rattling chain reaction that converts the 535-degree mix of antimony, tin, and lead into lines of type for stamping words onto paper.
“On Tuesday mornings, Coombs heads to the back of the canary yellow building on the main street of Saguache (population 550) and fires up a 1915 printing press — work he began at age 12 - which churns out 330 copies of the Crescent.
Doubles as a plumber
“Saguache residents say they couldn’t survive without it. And Coombs who periodically doubles as a plumber for the people he serves, errs no reason to switch to modern digital production and electronic delivery to smart phones.
“It’s harder to change than to keep doing the work,” he said. His phone is a deadline, upgraded a few years ago from rotary dial, and an old TV that plays vintage game shows as he works, often to 9 p.m.
“The Crescent remains the paper of record in a 168 square mile Saguache County, located south central Colorado at the northern end of the St. Louis Valley.
“It is enduring at a time when other newspaper companies in the valley and around the nation are collapsing. Five weekly newspapers that relied on more modern methods merged into one, the San Valley Journal.
“Nationwide, the number of newspapers has decreased by 3,500, leaving 5,419.
Settlers established in 1871 and the newspaper dates to 1881 during the transformation of terrain that Utes called the “Land of blue water.”