Dear Reader,
Oops. Last blog Taverna, we chopped off the chorus borrowed from Peggy Lee’s song “Manana.”
Glitch reminded me of my 1940s newspaper days. Back when the linotype operator set in lead–a ‘slug’–my words on metal about eight inches wide and two inches high. Then the printer, who wore a leather apron and usually hung a cigarette off his lower lip, stacked the reversed words into a steel frame the size of a newspaper page. Called a ‘chase.’
If we had written too many words, and the slugs wouldn’t squeeze into the chase, the printer would cackle, “Won’t go.” Then this youthful editor had to read the type ‘backwards’ and tell the printer what lead slugs–part of your story–to throw away.
All above to explain when I edited the high school newspaper and the new journalism teacher just out of college arrived. I took her to the printshop where I had already thrown away the ‘won’t go’ slugs. We had the type fitted and ready for the printing press.
The young journalism schoolmarm was a college English major hired during the last year of World War II. She had never been in a newspaper print shop. She looked at the chase. Cringed. Whispered, “Dickey, oh my, the type is backward.”
That last year of the war, I arranged my senior classes so that I could meet in her office and tell her what she needed to teach high school journalists that day.
And yes, twenty years later, I got a job as a college journalism professor.
Photo at Shutterstock
