I don’t know how the stray collie-like dog knew, but he always did. Thursday was printing day, and the day the dog we’d nicknamed Firecracker could make a soft bed in the pressroom from the trimmings the newspaper folder generated.
One of my jobs, during summer vacation from school, was to pick up those trimmings and put them in the trash barrels out back. But I always left enough for Firecracker’s bed–at least as long as I could.
A Dog Hero
One cold snow-covered night, Firecracker found a man drunk and passed out in a snowdrift. His barking alerted neighbors, who summoned help. And the man, who later lost a foot to frostbite, no doubt owed his life to Firecracker.
I’m not sure what happened to that sweet old dog. He seemed to belong to just about everyone–and no one–in Gallatin. But one day, he just didn’t show up. It was a sad day.
Proofreading
I didn’t get paid for clearing out the trimmings from the folder. But I did get paid 25 cents an hour for proofreading galleys (newspaper-length columns of type). This sometimes was a challenge. Dad had a host of what he called “country correspondents” around the county who wrote in longhand for the paper every week. They reported on visitors they and their neighbors had, club meetings, crops that were planted or harvested. They might report as well on who had made a trip to Kansas City, 75 miles away, St. Joseph, 50 miles away, or sometimes farther.
They wrote on tablets of newsprint my Dad made up for them. Sometimes reading that handwriting was tough, for both the typesetter back in the composing room and for me as proofreader.
As I got older, I also learned to put the corrections in the long galleys of type I had proofed.
Other Jobs
On press day bundling the paper for the postal service involved me and everyone else unless I was working the front counter. And occasionally I helped Dad with job printing work. The toughest one of those tasks I recall was when a customer needed receipts to be in numerical order, something his job press couldn’t do. So for many days in a row after school I worked with a hand numbering set. I thought I’d never finish!
Dad also paid me 10 cents a page for cutting what we called “fillers” from The Kansas City Times or Star or St. Joseph News-Press. These were little tidbits that would go at the end of the column to fill holes at the end of the lead type galleys. “Fillers” weren’t news but more like trivia items, ranging in length from three to seven or so lines.
The Teletypesetter
Technology changed things a bit at the Gallatin Publishing Company when Dad purchased a machine that punched a tape that fit into the Linotype machine. His longtime employee, Jean Groom, operated this machine most of the time. But her husband, my high school biology and chemistry teacher, went to the University of Oklahoma for three summers to finish a Master’s Degree in education. So Mother and I filled in.
Going Offset
By the time I was a freshman in college, though, technology changed things again, and the old flatbed press and Linotype machines were replaced by what was called offset printing. It meant that we waxed our type to stick it to a page that then was photographed before being burned into a plate for the press.
Again, Jean was gone for the summer so I learned to set type for headlines and advertising. I spent the first whole day of what should have been my freshman “summer vacation” making one grocery store ad. Thank goodness it was a full-page ad, my family’s bread and butter. I got a little better as the summer wore on. But I never became as proficient as Jean!
Innovative Thinking
By the time the Gallatin newspapers had switched to offset, both practical and financial reasons were at play. First, the newspapers just couldn’t attract and hold Linotype operators for any length of time when they could go to Kansas City or St. Joseph and make more money and second, the machinery in use at Gallatin was getting old and the process was time-consuming.
For example, it took about 16 hours to print the Gallatin newspapers each week on the old flatbed press. The press run on the new press took perhaps 20 minutes.
So my dad and the publishers of two neighboring weeklies partnered in a central printing plant in Gallatin. The new press was more costly than any one of them could have purchased on their own. And they were able to find other newspapers to print in their central plant as well. This benefited the partners financially.