Never in my life did I dream that I would grow up to be giving tours at the Pea?body Printing Museum, but that?s what I did Satur?day of Memorial Day weekend.
The longer I was there, the more I remembered about those early days in my printing career. And the longer I thought about those old pieces of equipment, the more I wondered how in the world we ever got the paper out.
If you haven?t been to the printing museum in Pea?body, I would recommend that you see it sometime. It is open by appointment and on special occasions, such as Memorial Day and, I believe, the Fourth of July.
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It was about this time of the year in 1959 that I was given the opportunity to work for Bud and Marcella Bruce at the Hillsboro Star-Journal.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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For many years now I think about all of the nice people I used to work with at the KU Printing Service beginning in the mid-1960s. Because of my early training in Hillsboro, I was able to pay my way through college with the skills I learned here.
I owed $750 total when I graduated from KU in 1968 and took all of 10 years to pay it off at 8 percent interest with payments of about $20 per quarter.
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As for the nice people I worked with, I spent years trying to think of all of their names. Just a couple of weeks ago I thought of the last name that I couldn?t recall.
Fred Staples was a linotype operator. For lunch he often would place a can of soup or beans on the lead pot on the machine and heat his lunch that way. One day he forgot about his beans sitting on top of the molten lead at about 550 degrees…. They blew all over the building.
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No one has ever asked me why this column is short items about anything, and almost never about one subject.
If someone ever asked, my answer would be that it would be very difficult to write something long that would sound coherent.
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I broke down last week and bought an iPhone 6 Plus because my screen was getting too small to read.
Now the print is so big I have to hold it an arm?s length away to see what?s on it. Actually, it is not that bad, but I was trying to make a point.
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I was putting up some shelves in our basement recently and had the drill slip off the screw. The torx bit ran into my left thumb. So I switched the drill to my left hand and proceeded to run the drill bit into my right thumb.
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Diner: What is this fly doing in my soup?
Waiter: About 10 miles per hour.
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Diner: My plate is all wet.
Waiter: That is your soup, sir.
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If you wish to share your comments or ideas, my e-mail address is joel@
hillsboro?freepress.com.
