Printing museum a great treat

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
I was like a kid in a candy store this past Sunday afternoon when I attended the open house at the Peabody Printing Museum. For old printers like me who used the early printing equipment more than 40 years ago, it was a real treat to see the old presses, linotypes, foundry type and California job cases, etc., housed at the museum.

Even more interesting are the young printers, Beth, Josh and Jacob Marshall, who have brought the museum to life by trading pixels for pica sticks. Josh said he likes the hands-on methods better than the computers of today.

What really got me going was the old Babcock newspaper press in the back room that came from the Almena Plaindealer. They asked me if I wanted to run it for a while. It was fun showing them the proper technique of feeding the large sheets of newsprint, which they had not seen before. The museum is a true treasure.

–The new cell phone numbers for Hillsboro have more than a few of us a little confused about how to dial correctly.

Both 200 and 877 are new prefixes for Hillsboro. The 877 is a toll-free area code but is a Hillsboro prefix. You dial 877 and the number when calling from a land line and the area code 620 plus the 877 when calling from your cell phone. I think I’m right.

–Roger Hofer told me one can read a newspaper out on Industrial Road at night when the football field lights are turned on at the elementary school, which is about a half-mile away.

Skeptic that I am, I noticed the lights on one Thursday night and drove out there to check it out. I don’t have to look for a newspaper as we always have several floating around in every vehicle we drive.

Yes, you can read the paper out there from the lights in town.

–Our Free Press people are very creative. They were able to sneak in an ad last week for Boss’s Week without Don and I knowing about it. How could we be upset? They said they like us.

–Second cousin Dan Klassen and wife Karen from Colorado were in town for the Tabor College homecoming festivities. We figured we hadn’t seen each other since he was a student here in the early ’60s.

He lived in Grand Hall, which has long since been torn down. It was on the corner of Grand and Jefferson. I’ll never forget the way he answered the phone: “This is Grand. Who in the Hall do you want?”

–Our Free Press home delivery for Hillsboro Carrier 2 Route (about 400 papers) begins this week. We anticipate things will go smoothly but if there are any problems, we would appreciate hearing about them.

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