I was 18, and set to go to the University of Washington. My parents were both graduates. The school was the most prominent of the state’s public colleges and Huskies football was arguably the best sports experience in the region at the time. And it was in Seattle, the Emerald City, my Mecca.
As the summer progressed, the more apprehensive I got about my choice. The thought of being on a campus that was larger than the community I was raised in seemed daunting, and my experience with city life was limited. My girlfriend at the time would also be attending UW and was going Greek, a system that did not appeal to me in the least so trouble loomed I wished to evade. So I made the decision to postpone leaving for school, and spend another year living at home and get a job. Spending a year attending the local junior college would give me leeway to kick out the jams without major consequences. So I enrolled in classes (which I often dropped) there for my freshman year.
And I got my first job…A real job that I had to be at with regularity and with a recurring paycheck: In the Circulation Department of the local daily evening newspaper, The Daily World in Aberdeen, aka Kurt Cobain City.
At that time, the paper still occupied a cool early 20th century stone building with creaking floors and ancient desks and equipment. (Now the paper is housed in a nondescript industrial building, all of the old machinery was replaced in the mid 1980s.)
The whole operation was right there, from the editorial department, ad paste-up area, a shop for small commercial job printing, the composing room with old hot-lead Linotype machines. A couple of teletype machines ran in an alcove off the stairs up to the editorial offices. And of course the large printing press, a massive and intricate piece of machinery about 20 feet long and a story high. People could watch it as it ran, through windows facing the sidewalk. I found it all totally intriguing. Most of the equipment was of the finest late 19th Century engineering.
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The paper had a room where 4 or 5 people worked Linotype machines, making lines of hot-lead type that would be assembled line by line to make pages. Then molds would be made of the page, and cylindrical plates would be lead-cast and bolted onto the press. Totally Steam-Punkish!
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This silent video from the 1960’s shows how the printing process worked, albeit in a larger operation. We’d get breaks for late-breaking news, especially on Saturday night so they could change the plates to get the scores from late games in the local edition. We’d chill while waiting for the cylinder to be delivered from Composition to the printing room floor.
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I was part of the crew that would assemble the bundles for delivery. The press on the main floor would take giant rolls of paper and print-cut-fold the paper, and deliver them via a conveyor to the circulation room upstairs, every 50th paper jogged.
- One person would grab and stack them
- Another would count them out according to route size
- A third would wrap the bundles in twine.
- Yet another worker would wrap and label individual papers to be sent out to subscribers in other areas, even overseas, to those who wished to keep up on hometown news
- Once bundled, we would take loads of bundles in the company trucks and drop them off at the delivery kids’ homes across 4 towns
I did all of those tasks at some point.
The paper came out late afternoon each day, with a Sunday morning edition. That meant that we worked six days from 12 to 5 pm, and then back in again on Saturday night from 10 pm to 5 or 6 am. That kept a guy fairly clean and sober on Saturday evenings…and Thanksgiving Eve, Christmas Eve…and even New Year’s Eve! Sundays, my sole day off, were a complete waste.
I worked at the paper for a year. With some money in my pocket, and some experience under my belt, I transferred to a state college and left home for good.
Addendum: My final act as a Daily World employee was to drive to pick up one of the ladies that came in to insert the ads and comics for the Sunday paper. I did what we used to call a “California stop”, and hit a car. There wasn’t any damage to the company’s truck, but there was some to the other car…I had to answer a couple of questions to an insurance company from my new dorm room. Oh well…
Apart from lawn-mowing, babysitting and such...what was your first job?
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marsanges is awarded the highest level of Road Warrior for a meet-up.
Amsterdam to Seoul - 5320 miles
Seoul to St Louis - 6682 miles
St Louis to Sacramento - 1677 miles
Total = 13, 679 air miles !
We’re not worthy…
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