I next recall Dad and a group of men unloading the press from a trailer in our driveway. They maneuvered the heavy cast-iron machine to the garage using boards and fence posts; not an easy task, from what I can remember. They set the press up on a platform Dad had built at the back corner of the garage; the rest of the garage floor was bare earth and crushed concrete. The platform was barely big enough for the press and the cabinet Dad had built to hold eight or ten typecases.
The press was an old model of the Roycroft variety, although I'm not sure that was the brand. Heavy cast-iron construction, with a large cast-spoke wheel that Dad had hooked to an oversize electric motor. (He later attached that motor to his table saw, which could rip through four-inch planks of gumwood.) The press had facing plates, with a frame for the composed type on one side and the printing surface on the other. When the press was running the plates came together like jaws of death. In the open part of the cycle, two soft rubber rollers swiped down to ink the typeface, then swung back up out of the way as the plates came together to transfer the inked imprint to the stock. On the up cycle, the rollers lapped up fresh ink from a round, flat plate at the back of the press. Dad would slather printer's ink, with the viscosity of heavy blackberry jam, onto the plate before he revved up the press. The plate was actually in two parts, an inner round plate, with a halo-type section around it. The machinery rotated the two sections at different rates, clanking as they did so, so the rollers never made the same tracks in their traverse of the plate, making for even dispersion of the ink.
There was no automatic feed process for the print stock. The printing face was covered by a heavy oiled paper, bound down with metal straps. Dad would make a target run with the press, leaving an imprint of the typeface on the oiled paper. Then, with the press stopped, he would insert little spring clips strategically on the oiled paper surface, in a configuration that would accommodate the printing stock (business cards, flyers, etc.). When the press was running, during the open cycle, Dad would slip a blank card or flyer into the tongs of the spring clips, then, as the faces of the plates of the press came together, he would pull a long-handled lever at the left side of the machine, next to the wheel, to allow the type surface to actually contact the stock surface, to print the stock. Then, on the open part of the cycle, he would push the lever back, so that the press could continue to run without surfaces touching. He might let the cycle run several times, without printing, then, in an open interval he would slip another card into the spring clips, pull the lever again, print the card...then repeat the process. When all things were aligned, and he had gotten himself synchronized with motion of the machine, he would leave the level pulled back, and smoothly pulled a printed card out with one hand and inserted new stock with the other hand, each time the plates yawned open. He did not push the lever back, to separate the faces, until he ran out of stock, or the ink needed to be replenished. It was always fascinating, and frightening, to me to know that, whether that lever had been pulled or not, there was never more than a quarter of an inch between those plates when they came together, not nearly enough space to allow you to leave your hand in there while the press was running. Dad's motions became one with the machine, requiring a level of concentration that did not allow for interruption by a small boy; I was always warned ahead of a run. Dad would fold strips of emory cloth over the tips of his middle fingers, held on with rubber bands, to give his hands sure traction for inserting and removing the stock; he seldom dropped or misprinted one...and he never got his hands smashed.
Dad never got a printing business off the ground, though he talked about it for most of his life. For a short time after the press arrived, he printed business cards for several people, and church flyers for annual revival meetings. The press languished there at the back of the garage for all my boyhood and teenage years, surfaces rusting and accumulating dust, the motor long since retasked. The rollers had been secured in their wooden box, but became pocked by time or the appetites of critters that were able to access them; to his latter years, Dad would periodically try to find some supplier who could replace them, but was unsuccessful.
The print shop was my retreat during my youth. I tried my hand at composing and printing, powering the big wheel of the press by hand, inking the type with a stamp pad. I even managed to memorize the standard format of a typecase, after realizing the letters of type were not configured alphabetically, but rather by their utility; there were bigger spaces for higher quantities of vowels, and x, y, and z, upper or lower case, were scarce. My printing never amounted to much more than my own name. When, in later years, it became obvious Dad would never use the press again, I expropriated his composing stick and the letters of my name in 24-point italic Roman type (is that redundant?), which I have to this day.
My Dad probably had printer's ink in his blood, hence his affection for that old press. When he came back from World War II, he apprenticed as a linotype operator at our hometown newspaper, and moonlighted at a printing business across the street. He left that line of work for most of my childhood years, but took it up again while I was in high school, working in the hot-lead composing room of an area newspaper. During that time, I worked at our hometown newspaper pretending to be a reporter, where I saw the last of the linotypes Dad had trained and worked on breathing its last hot-leaded breath...computers had been installed, and the newspaper was being composed on computer screens, then transferred directly to paper. A similar transition, and my Dad's illness, resulted in his retirement from the printers' trade for good several years later.
When he finally relinquished all prospects of starting up his press again, and realized not even antique dealers were interested in buying it, Dad negotiated with the mayor of our town to donate the machine to the city museum. We thought his report of this deal might be spurious, until an inquiry to city hall by my sister when Mom and Dad were finally vacating their home for more secure surroundings, resulted in the prompt appearance of city workers to cart the press away. My sister reported that they attempted to manhandle the machine, rather than roll it out in the manner I recall it was rolled in, and they managed to damage one of the sturdy cast-iron feet. But the press has a new home; I have not been back to see it. I did visit a reconstructed village in North Dallas several years ago, with a print shop, where I saw about five of these old presses lined up and ready for service...if somebody could just locate a supplier of soft rubber rollers.
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