When I was young, about your age I guess, I apprenticed in a print shop. That would have been around 1952. Back then we didn’t have no Xerox or Linotype and we printed books on contract with movable-type. Type was old even then, as ancient and blessed as Gutenberg hisself.
You see, back in those days you’d set type, letters and punctuation that was made out of itty-bitty lead blocks. You’d set ‘em in a grid and space ‘em with shivs. You’d buy that type from a foundry in Europe, shipped over the Atlantic until you had a fine collection of Garamond Light, Garamond Bold, Garamond Light Italic or whatever the customer liked. Mostly Garamond for the fliers and books we used to do.
As I’ve said, my daddy died when I was young, so I was apprenticed out to Henry the first day I got into long pants. He was a stern man at times and it was the apprentices’ duty to get boxed around the ears on the regular. But overall, he was a kind man and took care to instruct me in a craft that was sure to shortly become obsolete. He taught me to read the type upside down and in reverse, I can do it to this day. My spelling wasn’t much but he helped me with that too.
The press was a new model, if we was in 1920, and electric. We would set a page of type, set the auto-matic inking roller and stamp out pages. We’d set many pages at a time and cut them later; it was a hard but noble craft
The paper would be fed in by sheets and Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Page 27 to 31 of whatever book or periodical would arrive in the receiving bin to be cut and eventually shipped to the bookbinder a few blocks away.
As you’d expect, by 1952, typesetting was giving way to the rotary print mill and other ‘innovations’ of the craft. Newspapers had moved to it a good 30-years before, but old Henry’s shop was kept alive by his decades-old contract with a publisher of textbooks. The old ways do die hard and there was a fine trade in hardcover textbooks for the university crowd. You see, we held engravings for the illustrations, so if they wanted a reissue or new edition, they’d be knocking on Henry’s door.
I didn’t know it was my last print run with Henry, when it happened. I only had a few months to go in my apprenticeship and could already see that there was no bright and prosperous career ahead. It’s about that time I decided to join the Navy, but that’s another story. Henry’s publisher-friend had landed a fine contract for a run of big posters from some fancy-pants doctor. Williams, I think. They needed another 900 large, colour posters for a new crop of anatomy students, so Henry dusted off the engravings from 30 years before and got ready for our biggest payday in, well, forever.
Trouble was, it was a rush-job that had Henry and me working days and night, Monday to Sunday. Each poster was four sets of coloured plates, assembled from sub-plates that had to be tuned to the finest register or the run would be for naught. It was punishing, thankless work and Henry was not a young man, even then.
It was a Friday night and I’m ashamed to say I let Henry down. You see, I was courting y’ grandmother at that time and was taking her off to the pictures. I begged off at six, scrubbed my inky fists and walked out with a grin on my face. Henry shouted “Get lucy kid!” as the door slammed on the print-shop and I drove off in the old Ford. Ask your father about that Ford, he’s the one who wrecked it.
Henry was found the next morning, dead as timber and flat as China, the press still feeding sheets over his crushed body. Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!
From what we could discover, old Henry must have fallen asleep, had a stroke or passed out from exhaustion before tipping onto the press and being instantly crushed. The first 100 sheets or so where a bloody mess, but the repeated motion of the ten-thousand weight press arranged his bones, veins and organs into the best damn anatomy poster that Dr Williams and his students ever seen.
Old Henry may have been captain of a sinking ship, of a shop that would surely be out of business in a few summers, but in the end, he proved himself to be a damn fine printmaker.
