Printing the News

My father’s youngest sister, Janet, is about seven years younger than my dad. Such an age difference can be quite, oh, shall we say, influential or lonely. Okay, by the time my aunt was ready to have fun with her brothers and sisters out on the town, they were all married and having kids. So, Aunt Janet was practically an only child. I have an older brother, by five years, so I understand some of what Janet went through.

Anyway, Janet dated a bit and found her true love at an early age. She and Don got engaged when Janet was 16. I don’t know how my grandmother felt about this little event, but my grandfather? Well, let me continue the story.

At that time, Grandpa owned and operated the Linden Leader. As it was for my father when he owned the paper, the Leader consisted of a weekly newspaper and a commercial printing business. Grandpa and Dad used what is called letterpress. In other words, the paper had to make contact with the words to be printed. If you’ve been to Crossroads (?) Village or Greenfield Village and went into the old time printer’s building, that’s what my grandfather worked with, except he used electricity to run the machines.

Heck, the last time I was at Greenfield Village, Uncle Wyman, another brother and another printer, and my father spoke to the printer in the building, who was delighted to talk to someone who understood the lingo. Those two louts got to go behind the velvet rope. The Velvet Rope! They went someplace and kept us women waiting for at least 20 minutes. The jerks.

Anyway, Grandpa ran the paper and Aunt Janet was engaged.

Like all papers, Grandpa ran announcements of weddings, s, etc. So, he did that for Janet, too. On the front page. Above the fold. With a headline anyone could read from across the room. With her picture. The first story on the page. Got all that? Right under the masthead (title of the paper), Grandpa printed “Janet Stimer Gets Her Man!” It went across the entire page. Her picture was centered under the headline. A sensational story of her engagement and dating history were touched on. It was a really cool front page.

Janet was flabbergasted (Great word, huh?). She was mortified (Another great word.) She was embarrassed! But, she was a good sport and tried to laugh it off. She started looking through the pile of papers, figuring that Grandpa had just printed a few for souvenirs and then had switched to the real first page.

Mind you, changing the forms on a printing press is not hard, but it is time consuming. It takes even more time when the press is the paper printer because you had to fix the form, then go into the pit beneath the press to put the form in its place. Finding the correct place isn’t hard, but, again, it’s time consuming.

Janet was touched that Grandpa had gone to all this trouble for her, but really, changing the forms on the paper? She figured he had printed maybe ten copies and then switched to the “right” front page. She started getting worried as she got to paper number 20, then 30, then 40. She was near hysteria when she realized that all the papers in that bundle had that awful headline in it. Then she thought that ALL the papers had that awful headline.

By this time, I would have started crying because I’m a private person and I don’t mind a joke or two at my expense or looking like a fool in front of my students if it means they’ll learn something, but this was Janet’s father, the man I called “Grandpa.” He liked a good joke as much as I do, but really.

Well, about the time Janet was going to lose it, Grandpa told her that the bundle she had looked through was the only bundle that had that headline. He had printed that many papers to "convince" her he really had done what she feared he had done. (If you understood me in that last sentence, you've been reading too much of my crap.)

Fifty years later Janet can tell the story and laugh, but that laugh she gives is not genuine. She and I have a lot in common, and knowing how I would have felt if my father had done that to me, I can imagine she is still put out with her father. We are so abused, the two of us. Good thing I’m a goddess and can rise above it.

So, you see. This sense of humor I have is genetic. I have no control over what I’ve received, but I can control how I use it, which is why I do the goddess thing.