Year 1968, I taught my first Editing and Copy Reading class to would-be journalists. I warned about a fictional bully from the International Typographical Union (ITU).
“Beware Fred-the-Printer in the leather apron who locks up the lead type inside the metal page form.
“Don’t touch, don’t rearrange the type. You may violate union rules and the newspaper’s contract. The ITU shop foreman might even tell his printers and linotype operators to ‘walk out.’ And if the ITU members leave, your publisher may show your rookie posterior to the newsroom exit.”
I knew of what I spoke. In 1945, I was a high school newspaper editor working part-time at the Abilene Reporter-News. The first day I walked into the printer’s ‘back shop,’ I heard the foreman’s warning: “Don’t touch the type!”
Two years later while covering a softball tournament in Fort Worth, the printers went to dinner across the street from the newspaper—and never came back. No morning paper printed that morning. The ITU printers struck over a new technology—paper tape punched by lower-paid stenographers used to operate linotype machines. The ITU was gone.
Two months later I met my college roommate named Fred Barbee. Fred hailed from Brownwood. His Dad was foreman of printers at the Brownwood Bulletin. He had worked as a part-time printer in high school. For four years, Fred worked his way through college as a night-time printer at the Daily Texan— an over-trained apprentice member of the ITU.
For over three years—until Fred married—we shared an apartment and refought the ITU walkout in Abilene. We voted contrary on all elections. And he didn’t like my favorite New York Yankees.
When I first lectured my students about the ITU, I thought of no better fictional tyrant than a printer named Fred.
It’s 2018. Oh how I miss my ‘best man’ who stood by me at the wedding. Can’t forget my partner in the radio station and three weekly newspapers we bought and sold. Treasure his three children who call me “Uncle Dick”.
But know he would ridicule my Yankees because they lost this year to his Red Sox. Fred-the-Printer wasn’t all good.
Photo from Free-Photos at Pixabay
