Brookings, South Dakota

 

 

I was bitten by the letterpress bug in 1947; I got a "toy" 5x3 platen press and a font of 12-pt. type for a gift. Somehow I got wind of the Turnbaugh Service in Mechanicsville, Pa., and assiduously began buying type, cases, reglets, leads and slugs, you name it. In 1949 I got a job at the local weekly, The Mobridge I(S.D.) Tribune, a 16-page, 3,000 circulation weekly, where (lucky for me) I got excellent instruction from craftsmen. The Korean war was a break for me--my boss was worried his printers would be called back into the Army, so I got to learn the Linotype. Before I graduated from high school in 1953, I was cranking out 8 galleys a week (8-pt. solid) in two afternoons after school. One week I was kept out of school because our regular operator was hospitalized--and we got the paper out on time. I immediately soared to $1.20 an hour--cheap insurance for my employers.
 
I took two years of printing and three years of rural journalism at South Dakota State University, putting myself through by setting type on the night shift of the Brookings (S.D.) Register, a 30-pages-a-week semi weekly. Summers I hired out as a relief Linotype operator for dailies in Ashland, Ore.; Canton, Ill., and Cairo, Ill.After graduation, marriage and a stint in the Army, I managed the Volga (S.D.) Tribune, a small tabloid weekly. After four years I became an estimator/production manager at Harold's Printing Co., Brookings, S.D., which my wife, Eunice, and I have owned for the past 38+ years. We still do letterpress there, much of it custom numbering/perforating/die cutting for other printers. I'm about the last hot metal guy in at least Eastern South Dakota, possibly all of the state--I refer to the composition I do for other printers as my "therapy" because it's still fun after all these years.
 
I own a 72/90 "2-in-1" Model 32 with untold magazines of mats, a Ludlow with six cabinets of mats, and a modest assortment of foundry type. I'm afflicted with that non-terminal disease, matrix accumulation. [The difference between me, my mats and a guy with 10 kids is he knows he's got enough!]
 
I get immense enjoyment from participation in the Amalgamated Printers' Association and American Typecasting Fellowship; the friendships I've made are priceless.
 
I'm sometimes asked to talk to design classes at South Dakota State University. My big motivation in studying the history of metal typefaces is the incredible creative output of geniuses like Oz Cooper, Fred Goudy, W.A. Dwiggins, Bob Middleton and dozens of others; when you don't have much creative talent you admire it that much more in folks who are thusly blessed.