THE OTHER DAY, LOOKING AT a free copy of the paper printed in Fort Lauderdale (see https://tinyurl.com/yauel75a) I was complaining about a $4 Sunday newspaper that lacked comics.
Wednesday’s edition had comics — color comics, at that.
But the initial blog entry set me reminiscing about my early days with newspapers.
Pitching papers
When I was a teenager, I pitched the Miami News from a Western Auto three-speed middle weight bicycle. With basket in front and saddle bags hung over the rear fender, I barely managed to get all the Sunday papers aboard. The News was a 6-day PM (afternoon) paper; Sunday was a AM (morning) delivery; in the winter, that often meant delivering papers in the dark.
Later I hawked the News on a corner and learned that the drive-bys wanted “the other” paper (the Miami Herald). Frustrating.
When I turned 17 I joined the Air Force. I was trained as a medic — I could have been in the Air Police but I insisted on a career field with little value in the “civilian” world. (My First Born is a LEO — Law Enforcement Officer, a/k/a “cop.”)
When the Air Force and I parted company in May, 1962 in Orlando FL I hit the main drag — Orange Avenue — and started putting in applications for anything beginning at Colonial Drive (FL 50) and worked my way south.
The Orlando Sentinel-Star, then a independent newspaper, was on the south east corner so I went in, filled out an application form for “anything,” and was told “We’ll call you.”
Sure.
I continued my walk down Orange Avenue, putting in applications here and there. After a few blocks, I said “to heck with this,” got on a city bus and rode out to the new DO hospital. The bus line stopped well before the facility, so I hiked the rest of the way.
I was immediately hired at $1/hour (minimum wage then) as a ward clerk/ER assistant/general gofer (as in “go for this and go for that).
To my surprise, the Sentinel-Star called me and invited me to go to work as a bank boy.
Two weeks later I started at the newspaper, with an improved salary: $55.10/week. (Every six months thereafter I got a $5.10-a- week raise.) No Rothschild, but a far cry from $40/week at the hospital. Remember, this is 1962.
From bank boy to stoneman
My first day turned out to be a “short” day; the noise of the Linotypes and “turtles” bumping across a brick floor was too much. I went home.
The guys who would become my coworkers took bets if I would return. Like Douglas MacArthur, I did return and spent the next four years at the paper.
I “graduated” from “bank boy,” pulling galley proofs to send to the proofreaders to an apprentice “stoneman.”
A “stoneman” takes the type — in my case, lines of lead with raised letters, from the galley (a tray) and puts it into a form (chaise) that sat on a “turtle” (a table on wheels). The first thing to do is deburr the metal “slugs” (individual lines of type). Hopefully the type was not “pied” (dropped and scattered). In order to restore “pied” type the stoneman hunted up the galley proofs and used them to restore order.
This required the stoneman to read characters upside down and right to left. Take any printed matter and turn it upside down; that’s how printers read most type. (Hebrew and Arabic are obviously exceptions to the right-to-left rule.)
My first pages were the Sports Section. A good place to start since the type was 10 point, the size of a newspaper’s regular print.
- Classified type, in my day, was 5.5 points, also known as “agate.”
Stonemen placed type according to a “dummy,” a piece of paper marked up showing where the editors wanted the article to be placed. Unlike the type, the “dummy” — map — was right side up and left to right.
In addition to “building” sports pages, I also set large type headlines using a Ludlow machine. The Ludlow machine literally squirted 450oF molten lead into letter molds where it instantly froze solid . . . unless there was a squirt and the lead ended up on the operator. (It hurts.)
Depending on how many classified pages were needed, I might be called to help the regular classified make-up man (stoneman). Never “pie” a “galley” of agate type. Very time consuming to recover everything in the proper order.
If there was too much story for the allowed space, a make-up editor had to be found to “cut” the story. Most editors, once they felt confident the stoneman knew what he was going, went along with the stoneman’s suggestion. Unused type went into a “hell box” where it would be retrieved and the lead melted down to be used again. The lead was “purified” by dumping raw potatoes into the smelting pot. The lead was formed into long “pigs” which were hung on typesetting machinery.
- One election night I was “building” a page and had type that was too long to fit the allowed space. I yelled for an editor to approve the cut at a point I considered suitable.
I yelled and I yelled, but no editor came by.
Another job I somehow inherited was “pinning color.”
Once a page was “locked up” in a chase and the chase rolled over to the mat machine, a paper mat was laid on the chase and the mat machine applied even pressure on the mat to make an impression of the page.
A lead press plate would be molded from the mat.
Unfortunately, when the mat was being dried, like a pair of non-Sanforized blue jeans, it shrank.
Mats used for color shrank at a different rate. The color plate had to align perfectly with the plate for black ink.
To make everything aligned, there was a set of “shrink sticks,” rulers with “normal” measurements and with “shrunk” measurements. Somehow I managed to accurately “pin” the color plate on the chase so the final product would align with the base (black) page without using the shrink sticks. (I still don’t know how I managed that.)
Mr. Andersen’s second-in-command was, like his boss, a true newspaper man. He also was a man who usually got what he wanted.
The Sentinel made a job for me — setting up display (large) advertisements for the PM edition. (The AM Sentinel was made up at night; the PM Star was made up in the morning.)
I would come to work later than others, help “build” or “compose” pages (hence “composing room”) until the final edition started rolling off the presses. At that point, I was alone in the composing room placing ads for the next day’s Star.
The word came down that all regular display advertisements were to be cold typed; that is, the advertisement was to be photographed and a metal plate made from the photograph. The benefit of this is that you cannot “pie” a metal plate, while a lead advertisement in tens of individual pieces easily could be “pied.” (Think of a jigsaw puzzle.)
I mentioned to Mr. Andersen’s heir apparent, William Conomos, that there were a number of standing advertisements — ads that ran often without change — that had not been converted. Next day, I had metal plates instead of lead pieces.
Progress.
Images in this article from https://mashable.com/ except for image of Martin Anderesen
Next – Moving on to the first Today
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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