James Carlton Patterson interview with Charles Robertson and C. W. Kendrick

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. In this recording Charles Robertson and C. W. Kendrick reminisce about working at a newspaper printer. Robertson starts by describing how unscientific and ineffective the techniques were; for example, they used a potato to purify metal. Then at 6:16, he discusses how the quality of work has improved since then. He also explains that printers used child labor to line up and dress the type. Next, at 13:16, Robertson recalls his first printing job in his grandfathers shop. He also elaborates on the crude and unsafe working conditions and that it was considered un-American to question poor working conditions. Then at 24:09, he reveals that workers didnt wash their hands before eating. At 29:00 Robertson further reflects on printing practices that were not based in research or science. Next at 31:07, Robertson remembers that he regretfully missed a Ku Klux Klan rally at a nearby ballpark because he couldnt leave the shop until midnight. At 38:18, Robertson reveals the origin and meaning behind the printing expressions called flowers, coffin corners, and dingbats. Then he ends his interview by emphasizing that even though many printers are unwilling to evolve, he is confident that modern printing methods will replace out-dated customs and traditions. At 46:48, C. W. Kendrick starts his interview by discussing the meaning of old words and phrases used to describe materials and equipment in print shops, such as being out of sorts. Then at 51:57, he tells several versions of the history behind pied type. At 57:23, he reflects on customs and rules the workers followed to maintain focus, including not whistling or sitting down while working. He also explains that apprentices, called the printers devil, were required to do distasteful jobs for little pay. Then at 1:05:39, Kendrick recalls that experienced workers often tricked new employees into thinking the grease that collected at the bottom of the type was lice. At 1:10:23, he concludes his interview by stating that early printers had to be careful about wasting candles and burning oil because shops were dim and dusty, and they worked long hours. No biographical information about Charles Robertson or C. W. Kendrick has been determined. FIELD STUDY OF FOLK TRADITIONS OF PRINTING J, Carlton Patterson November 26, 1973 Introduction My contact with an 1890 vintage print shop, gave me the idea to look for folklore in the old art of printing. I knew some of the words and methods used in the old print shop were traditional, I believe them to have been transmitted orally at one time. lllr. c.w. Kendrick, the owner of the Phoenix Publishing Company, and one of his friends and associates, Mr. C.F'. Robertson, were my informants. They are both students of printing as it has been done from its beginning, up to the obsolescence of letterpress in the. early 1900 1s. Printing, like many other crafts and ind us tries, took a great leap forward in the early 20th century. Before that, many of the methods had remained unchanged for hundreds of years, Young boys would enter the shop to learn printing and earn a living. They learned the trade from more experienced men to some degree, perhaps completely, by oral tra.ining. Certain methods and names were probably common to one shop or locality, and not another, Early printing was largely a hand craft. Instruments and materials were made by hand, My informants led me to two major sources of information on the traditions of printing. These were: Mechanick Exercises On The Whole Art of Printing -Joseph Moxen Printing Type- Updike The traditions of printing, I am sure, go beyond Moxen and Updike and would provide a great deal of study. The method of aerating a lead pot as described by Mr. Robertson, is a good piece of original material that I consider to be folklore R. P, R. P, R, P R, RECORDING OF Mr. C,F. Robertson November 7, 1973 Abbreviations-Mr, Robertson-R Patterson -P Because make ready, you did use spit to make ready. Oh, to, to ... You know, to stick pieces of paper on the back of the form. Stick pieces of paper on the tympan. Usually behind the form. Oh yeah! An that used to tickle the heck outta 1 me, you know, to watch these guys. I don't know maybe I was a little' too fastidious or sumpum', but I was never the type you know, could uh clear his throat you know, and spluck on the floor. P, Laugh- R, But pleanty of these guys could and they did it, you know, an' they were also- if they were makin 1 ready behind the form, cut out a piece of paper and ya' know jus' splaah, splat it back there. P, Laugh- R. Spit make ready, R. Cuz 1 see back in France they struck a lot because the master printers supplied in sufficient food, P, Umh, R, The masters applied to a certain class of journey men who never were contented with their food and never would be, 1 P. Laugh- R. And they just faught all the time. P, Moxen wrote in what, 16, ... R, The mid and late 1600 1s, P. 1650 around in there somewhere, so it seems like they picked up a lot of the words and things very early on. R, Back ebem' when I started, which wudn 1t that long ago, it was forty-five I guess, them 01 1 rural shops in small towns we.re just completely unchanged,from the way taey.were, Oh ya know, maybe a hundred years earlier, P, R. P. R. P, R. P, R. Yeah, They usin1 the same churn stuff the most all of 'em had a, a, a meltin' pot ya'know to melt metal, They their own type, An ours was coal fired, You went in on Saturday mornin' an started a fire under it, and uh, used coal. It took all mornin' to get the stuff hot . Yeah, Laugh-uh, the way it was done, you think about the highly scientific methods that they use now. Used a Potata i. to, they called it to purify the. metal, but it didn't purify anything, It, all it did was you know it's puttin 1 moisture down into the.vat of molten lead.and it's just boilin1 like heck as the moisture turns to steam, Yeah. And, uh but I'd go in and I'd start the fire, get it goinl good and.go up to the supermarket with petty cash you know, a dtme 0r sompum' and buy a nice, big, sweet uh, Irish potato. Come back an wire it on to the ladle, which is a big long ladle ya' know an slowly stick it down into the metal and the metal would start bubblin' and he would jus moved it around and it would make the dross rise faster to the top, Come up to the top . 2 R. But I was thinkin', ya know, I was in my teens then, I think well you know here are all these old guys around who really, really know what it was all about, they were ignorant. They probably had started in some little shop, they talked about purifyin' the metal and I know you weren't doin 1 much purification by stickin1 an Irish potato in there. A roach would do the same thing. - P. Laugh- R, You know one that would get down in da' ladle: It was a little uh, thing that uh when you dip the metal, a little vent hold that, oh heck I really don't know what the vent hole was for, but it was cast into the, into the ladle and sometimes you'd pick up the ladle and they'd be a great big roach in that vent hold and you'd stick the ladle down into the uh metal and that roach would do the same thing as that Irish potato. Purify the metal, Laugh--Oh boy! That was those guys, P. They thought with it bubbling that it was probably purified. R. Yeah! Spparently it never occured to 'em it was jus' the moisture in the potato bubblin!, An' they had all kind a wierd things uh, that would tell yu' about like the, like the type lice thing and they wouldn't let me set type for a year. P, Wow! R. An' this is 1945! uh P., It was just somethin' you didn't do when you, .. R. Right! Don't get smart, ya 1 know. Don't get uppity uh, and lookin' back, it was I guess good because they had, they had pride in what they did, they really did, It was crummey, it was terrible! P, Laugh- R, But they had pride in it, P. , That I s sumpun 1 R. Now, I enjoyed that, P. I wonder how much the quality of the work has changed up till recently, 'cause you see a lot 'a old publications say outta England or somewhere that uh the title pages of books and things and the lines are uh, crooked or 3 letters are uh, just a little bit off, uh, not straight sometimes. I don't know what that's from? Maybe jus 1 something in the printing. R. Imperfection of the type probably. P. Yeah, R. But still, a lot of those things uh, like you could take bad type or crooked type an' somebody could design a better page, then somebody who didn1t know could do with, you know, fresh brand new. P. Yeah. R. You know you can give good materials to somebody who' doesn't know how to use em an he 111 come up with somthin1 bad, and your second-rate materials to somebody who does know how P. Come out with somethin 1 R. They 111 come up with somethin1 good, and you can look at that in a lot of the 01 1 title pages. It must a been terrible workin 1 with that stuff. The type not only was uh, wudn 1t of the same thickness maybe, but the height of the face you know all kin 1a things goin 1 wrong. P. I wonder if they would try to uh plain off the bottom of a form or somethin1 like that to make it even, or would they justify it in the, the make ready? R, Naw, I think the lookin 1 at Moxen, he talks about that was the big child labor thing was dressin1 type. P. Makin1 it all the same, R. Yeah! It would come out 'a the mold with 'a sprew on the end of it, you know the little tunnel where it was poured in. An 1 he talks about boys breakin 1 off the sprews, an other boy's linin1 the type up in a thing and then another one a dressin' tool accross the uh bottom which, I guess, made uh should 1a made it all the same height, P, Yeah, but that hasn't, that hasn't been a very universal thing to have a certain height of type very long has it, I mean R. No. P. Certainly not back in the 1600's I don't guess, 4 R. Naw. It was completely hay wire, in fact he, uh Upkike goes into that if you read about that's facinatin', uh. The Frenchman, Fornier, I guess was his name, uh set out his new idea and uh his is pretty close to well, I think that was the first and the great thing about it is uh well what's so funny is uh sumpin' like a hundred and fifty years before the English some 20 odd miles across the channel would adopt this audacious Frenchman's ideas. P. Yeah, R. And uh apply some kind of system to type measurement and when they did, I think they pretty well took what he had worked out, And then we come along and uh were trying to make, make ours conform some way to theirs uh, and make uh get the metric thing to work with uh picas and points. And they did somethin1 like they will get together at convertion and momentous decision that uh, I think it's 83 center meters equals so many picas, 52 picas or sumpin1 like that and not then they hang, hang the, have on that the American point system, makin1 everybody think that a that uh Americans invented the whole thing. That uh P, The French started it . R. Yeah! Fornier, here we go an he really worked it out. He had a beautiful system uh, and he had in mind the thing like two 6-point things would make a 12-point and so on, Where is it about the good 01 1 American point system-oh the oh they jus' sorta stumbled around and found that pica body uh could almost be made to accord with the metric system SJ picas being SJ picas equal 35 centimeters I mean, unless they stacked 'em up and found out that 83 picas almost was exactly 35 centimeters, so they decided to do just that to make it, make out pica equal, make 83 of our picas equal 35 centimeters, P, Yeah, R. And then to also take uh, 15 type heights to make 35 centimeters now we're cooperatin 1 with the French and we've now got a standard of measurement, and it's still that way, That's the 83 picas is exactly 35 cemtimeters that's a heck of a, where is it about the sorta knockin' the English that they were so late to.,. P. Improve on it. Laugh- R. Had nothin' to do with the 5 P. That 1s pretty good. R. You oughta 1 borrow Kens uh, Updike and sit dlown andl readthrough it. The,re,1:s a whole life sit:udiy irh&J?'<& of weird stuff. P. Ye,ah., R. We 11e not gettin anywhere on the projee,t though, the, mete,r s runnin 1 P., We 1ve: we 1ve got some good)_.,stuff on here: .. I,I didnt knowr you worked in a shop in your younger years. R. Yeah, yeah. P. 11/e thought it was R. At the, newspaper all the goodl stuff, P. Wow. Cause I know Ken has justt uh, aqquiredl it as a hobby lately, I would say 'eause he 1s only been uh,five years, R. Yeah, he uh, P. Five: or six: year-s he been into it .. R. I 1hank he got into it about 166, is when he really got goin on it. P. An he had stuff at home, R. I went into it 1eause uh, grandady had always uh, in fae-t I went to work at a paper that uh, he hadl uh, when, At one time, we 11 when I was born, he hacl that paper. P, Yeah. R, And uh, he had_ since gone on to other things, so the, you want a job? Go, you went to the, we, all marehed into the, up to the weekly newspaper to ge,t spare time jobs. Andi uh, eome home andi sit around aupper table and listen to mother andl_ daddy talk about the heli, and, and- Printers were the same then I guess, as theyve ever been, Completely utterly undependable. P. Laugh. R. l!IJut the ol' press that uh, was there when I was there, when I was, there, was also there when grandiaddy was there, and it was old then. Uh, but you know they never wore out. and it took two guys to get it li'unnin 1 6 R. It hacll a belt and a motor. I, one guy had to stand there, an spin the fly wheel, while the othe~ guy moved the lever to move the belt over onto the drivem' pully. And you 1d think that thing was gonna' tear up, when it was tryin' tc, the motor 1s tryin' to get hold of the press an get it runnin 1 R. You know, try in I to get all that junk movin 1 And uh, then the sec-ond guy would run around and catch the papers as they came off the fly, jus 1 like youve got down there, P, Yeah. R. Only it went alot faster than uh, Ken 1s got that one, runnin. P, If it was- runnin 1 full speed it was layin 1 down I think from air pressure. R. But you had to catch em. You had a table that had uh, h holes in two corners in one end. So the second man sat at the c-orner of the table and it would flop it down on the table an' you would jog it to the nails acourse. It would put you to sleep in no time flat, particularly in the summertime when it'would be hot you know, an 1 here 1s this thing fannin 1 you nicely. P, Yeah. R. About every three seconds. P. With the paper comin 1 down. R. And the paper, An 1 your sittin up there, You know a reem of paper uh'd be about that tall, and he might have half of it up on the feed board , and you 1d look up there an see ya 1 know he's still got a long way to go and your goin 1 to sleep, P. Laugh. Thats sompum 1 , Do you remember any other things like type lice, that they used uh, to indoctrinate you, more or less, when you startecll workin1,i R, Therse was a, a left hand type stick, which of eourse there's no such thing, P. Doesn't exlit R. IN fact, a left hand type stick is held in your left 7 R, hand. A reglar type stick, but airs that, some 01 1 left handed! momkie wrench and that's probably not ebum, nothin 1 authenic about 1dat. P, Did they, did they teach you about type lice when you came in, R. Oh yeah! But by then I I d already I I d1 run into that as a kid around P, Yeah, R~ some of the others. P. You were wise to that? R, Yeah! I know there was no such thing as type lice, Everything looked like itd been eatun 1 by somethin 1 though, P. Laugh. R, But it, it hadnt really changed up until then. They had electricity an everybody, newspapers had to have uh, way to east mats an that was facinatin 1 you know, A pot, and itd had to be up high. Have you ever watched anybody cast mats? P, Neverseenit. R. Youve seen a mat, I don't know may0e you hadn' seen a mat, P, I ve seen a srlle:reotype, but I hadn 1 seen uh, R. Well, P, I 1ve seen a paper mat, R, Right, P. for a cylinder. R, Thats what Im talkin a, thats what the advertisers would send to uh, and if you had a boy off in the Army, the Army would uh, wou.:t:d take a picture and have a zinc made and they would make a mat from that zinc and mail it to the old hometown paper. P, Yeah, R, Along with a few paragraphs of, you had just gratuated from the iiinfantry school and were now assigned to the blap,blap, makin' you sound like a real hero, But you 8 R. had to uh, take a little piece of cardboard and put in the low spots on the back of the mat to keep the pressure of the metal from squashin 1 it. P. Yeah, R. An fix that all up an put a long paper tale on it, outa wrappin paper an put it in th!lis thing that was 2 pieces of metal with 2 iron bars and you'd clamp that between em, and then turn the thing up right an hit the leveP up here to pour metal down into the castin 1 box, P. Umph. R. And the castin 1 box as I saw, uh, I think they were heated by gas originally, Anduh, when electricity came along they haeJ electric pots, an we had an olel. electric pot, an 1 sompum 1 was wrong with it because the saw, after you cast your mats, you had to saw the, the end of it off aiquare it up you know,an get it ready to go be made up in the page, Course airs sawdust, metal saw chips all over the floor. I'd be back air castin 1 mats You know, and movin 1 my feet around. I 1d see sparks hoppin all over that P. Unh, R. And I thought about it, you know, figured well heck, if there's somethin 1 wrong, he must know about it. Its a long time before I ever said anything about the, What, you had the pot on then, all the, those chips back there which were metal, P. Yeah. R. 1ey were alive. P. With electricity. R. With electricity, Bu:b they were crude even back then, No light in the men 1s room. The conditions that, that have changed so, I wouldn 1t think that that was a particular backward time, but it was. In the forties P. it was still backward, an air was no regard for uh, worker welfare,. You were just like these people, You didnt dare question it, it would be somehow un-American, ta, to question why the employees should have to put up with such conditions and the old man is drivin 1 around in a new car. I was a kid , I didnt give a damn. And I didnt really think about it at the time. Yeah. I guess that was true of alot of people th!lt worked there. They didn I t, they just didn I t thinlt 9 P. about things, R, They accepted it apparently. p. As part of there life,1Specially if somebody, their father had done that before them, It was passed down I guess most of it, passed down, was the head printer, that type thing,instead of just th~ the jou~neymen. R. They came and went, P, Yeah. R, Airs one guy, 1ell that happened twro time:.. I worked in that little shop for five years, and uh, there were two guys that came, an one of 1em was a, a unfrocked ex-union member and he'd been simply blackballed by the union. He rnuldn 1t work in a union shop. He 1d been up here and hed been in other big cities. He was kina the biggie around there ya 1 know, and uh, he walked away one day and never came back, Uh, always wore a vest ya 1 know, a little ow bow tie, greasy, He,he always hadda 1 had the vest and the little ow bow tie on. And uh, he 1d hang his coat around in back and uh, always had a little half-pint of orange gin . P. Whew! R. An he 1d go back ya know and he's a short little guy anyway, he'd stoop down behind there, P. Drink his little nip and go back ta printin. R. But he 1d, he would go to the same stor~ that I bought the Irish potato from to take the p.coof, of the uh, That store was one of the two stores that had a full page every wee~ And he, he considered makin 1 up that full page grocery ad was big, a prestige thing, And he wouldn 1t let anybody have anything to do with it. That was his job. And uh, when he got through, he 1d pulla a proof, stone proof an go strutin 1 off up the street to the grocery store to have 1em okay it. Big, big deal. P. Yeah, R. And he walll:ed away uh, went up to the grocery store with a proof and never came back. P. Didnt come back, R. And uh, one of the operators went off and left his machine runnin 1 He used to go somewhere an get a coke 10 R. or s omepumif. But he Id walk out same time every mornin 1 R, Toget a coke ,,or coffee or somepum and he never came back. Laugh, He didn't ever hear from him again. P. Do remember livin' with, with ink in your fingernails? R. Oh Lord yesJ P. On the fingers all the time. R. On the knuckles, very conscious of it. P. ~nd would, would people wash up to eat durin' the day? R. Not all of em. P. Durin 1 the middle of the day? R. Not all of em, P, They'd jus go ahead an eat with the ink on 1em. R. Yeah! It was uh, I thought about that. It worried me P. R. R, 1 cause I had ink in my Y:nuc kles. It Is like, I get dirty down here but this is friendly dirt. Have ya ever thought of that? Laugh, Did ya, after a while you begin to considerGet to know your dirti Uh, you, JOU, your makin distinctions between kinds of dirt, If I get dirty in the yard its different from gettin 1 dirty- And the sad thing is, is, uh, dirt from handling type is probably buildin up uh, little lead content in the 01 1 bloodstream. P. UH, people talkin about gettin 1 , gettin, uh, printin in your blood, an I wonder how much,really gets in your blood? R. Yeah, P. The ink and the lead, R. Like kills you off early. Uh, not, you know your gettin lead on ~our fingers, I always washed, 11 P. I remember the first time I went to lunch with uh, after I 1d been printing,I'had ink on me and I wanted to wash it all off. I went to lunch with Ben Say, Ithink it was, went out to get a sandwich, you know, He said, rt. What are you worried about,says, "it won 1t hurt you, you'd better get used to it. it And I guess I did get used to it, R. My knuckles never would get clean, You know, they dp. Yeah, I can I t get it out from under my fingers sometimes no matter how hard you scrub or whatever. R, People that. handle type and dont wash up before they eat, gotta be crazy. P, I imagine thats pretty dirty. the story of how they cured the balls. That's a good story. You were tellin me leather, for the ink R, Oh, uh, I dont know whether that 1s from Moxen or Updike, Or somewhere else. But they, they all peed in the bucket, an the urine apparently had a, it, it, would tan the leather and make it soft, and flex,ib le and keep it that way. Ya; oughtal try it sometime, Laugh, And then it uh, oh he, Ithink it, tts Moxen P, Stick his baseball glove in it or somepum. R. Yeah, Ithink he describes in detail how to make an ink ball. P. Um huh! R. You know, what you put inside it, an how you distribute the ink.The Movement of the, of the, hands to get the ink over the balls. And then- P. Yeah. R, Uh, how to beat a form to get an even, uniform, c:onsistant, distribution of ink. I imagine- P, Today, today uh, somebody 'ul complain about a :t'oller not inkin evenly, but you had to do it with a leather ball, at would be incredably hard, R, Yeah, P, To get it even. R, And uh, think how black the form must have been from bein inked and washed and inked and washed, P, Yeah, 12 R. And yet your sunnosed to be judgin' the thickness of ink that 1H goin1 on the form. P. Yeah R. An you wouldn't know, I dont guess until you saw the proof. P. You eouldnt, couldn't listen to it the same way yo can with a roller. You can listen to it goin' on, an you can kina wata:h it settlin 1 out after you roll over it, R. I bet theiil' ink was slime compared to the inks that we 1ve got. An Moxen tells you how to make ink too. P. Wow! R. Ats a great book, he tells everything, every detail. P. R. P R And he wudn 1t even a printer. He was a hydrographer-. He made maps and globes. Wowr! Just decided to write about it. Dr!, Talkin 1 about makin' paper and thiags like that. Yeah, He just went into s om'!')thin 1 , he went into it whole hog, found out everything about it and then he would practice it. P. Yeah. I had somethin' else on mind and I forgot. R, The print shop in the forties wudn't any great excitement. It was still dirty, an awfully bard work. But nothin 1 comp11,red to what these. guys did, P. Yeah. Did, somethin 1 I was curious abou is how much ofl the traditional things you, JOU got from say Moxen or Updike or how much you would pick up from workin' with it, would jus 1 pick up verbally from peo,le you worked with? R, You mean- P. Would you say you know more things from the book, uh I guess definitly you know more from thfus book an you would have things while you were printing. R, Yeah, the stuff I was learnin, I was learnin' from people like them P. Yeah. 13 R. An that was sort of a shock because uh, I thought when I first started that these people must know what they're doin', Ya',: know your a kid an your lookin' at grown-ups, an this is what they' ve done all their lives, so whatever they say must be true. Turned out they didn't know anything, they really didn't, uh, What they thought was, was say a goorl impression for instance,what constituted a good letterpress impression. An everybody had his own idea, an none of it baaed on any, any scholarly study of, you know, what has gone on before, you know. P. Yeah. R, Just what, what is a good impression, It was just their own small town opinion. Uh, an some of 1em were so dumb, 80 unbelievably dumb. An I thought I was so dumb because I didn 1t know what was going on, -But I was readin' on the subject, an you know pryin' into it, And beck, I found out it was a, it was an awfully interestin' craft, An full of all kinda' scholarly goodies. But I'm glad I, I never, I never questioned the authority of the, uh. of those @lder heads. P. That's not smart, R, And they would tear up machines. P. Ump, R. You know, they would do dumb things, Uh, had one guy that- I should have been mad that night, but workin' on Wedne,sd_aynight was, was a reglar thing. And uh, everybody's sittin' around waitln' on the old man to come hack and make up the last four pages. And we printed sixteen pages genera.lly, uh, four pages at a time. And the last four pages had the society page, which his wife was responsible for, and the front oage, which is all he had to do with the paper. He 1d come back and make up the front page and uh, society page and throw the rest of it together. He's always ]ate, So uh, what was it, that particular night I wanted to get outa there, I know what it was. Laugh, The Klu Elux Klan was havin' a big rally in the ballpark between these two little towns. I lived in one and worked in the other, And uh, had me a 1931 Ford Sport Roadster. And I loved to go home and back, P. Yeah. R. You know, used to drive in my little raadster and I lolled it, And I wanted to go back that night and see R. if I could get in to the rally somehow and see what was goin' on. Ihad the kind of curiosity back then you know, 1al get your head knocked off. And it turned out it was a closed rally and they wouldn,1t let me in, Anyway, I wanted out a there that night. And uh,the guy got back there and I had help make up the last four pages, and my part of it's over, ya' know, I 1m washin 1 up and standin' around feelin' very proud of myself and now the other guy 1s gonna run the press and uh, We had gotten rd:d of the older one and had a two revolution job, with a throtle, like this one's got. And uh, when I used it I 1d always you know, let it crBl and I 1d listen you know, and watch- R, As that thig went back and forth. Impressed the heck outs me particularly compared to uh, it was a big press. And uh, I 1d let it inch along and I'd slowly pick np my speed liseenin 1 all the time for anything that sounded unusual, before I ever begin to put the first sheet in it, I'd wanted to hear it you know, be sure everything was gonna stay put. Well this gy got up there. He put his four pages on, and he out his paper up. Trick to gettin uh, they were 36 x 46 sheets of newsprint. And you'd fmld one:si:de over'and fold over the other and pick it up and hold it in your arms and climb up on this platform and fl:op it down on the feedboard ya I know, and fan it out. An he was goin 1 very efficient. Got his four forms on, and flopped his papen up air, turned it on and started it up. And it went down tonne end and it came back, and went down to the other end and left the forms on the floor because he hadn't locked em in. P. Whewl R, All four of 'em out on the floor, ya' know. P. Umphl R. And it 1s now about 9:30,and I thought,if I 1m lucky I'll, I can stop back by the ballpark by 10:JO and see what's goin 1 on there. P. Right. R. Well, the rally lasted much longer than 10:JO. Uh, it was about midnight before we got outa there, before I got outa 1 there, P. Was that loose type? Was it- R. Naw, he hadn't even locked the forms in, 15 P, It wasn't linotype? R, Yeah, it was linotype. P, It was linotype, R, And alot a boiler plates you know, uh, flat cast on metal base, You ever seen that stuff? It had uh, the base had uh, sorta 1 of a hook thing il!i it, and the cast had a matchin' groove, So you put your pieces a base down and then slide :rour plate on and then tack it with nails. P. I don't think I 1ve seen that. R. Uh, and it'd stay there forever. So aside from the front page and the, the part of the society page, it was no big deal, but they had to put it back together, And they were still runnin 1 when I left. P. Did it jus jumble up when it hit? R. It jus 1 sorta, it, they went out and uh, coarse all the big pieces, they, they had to tack the, that shell cas tin' back on the base, it' had all loos,ened. And we took the type and jus put it .in a proof press And uh, moved lines around to get most of the stories back together, I think he reset a couole of em. But they, you know, that guy, big man and he climbed up there and took off and just, just dropped the fomforms right out on the floor. They were dumb! P. I ve heard about people droppin I a :rho le page of type that was monotype. R. Never seen that, P, And I can imagine, R. The linotype was bad enough. But about six of us standin' around and they got it back together again. P, Ken said' uh, Bill Haynes works euta' barrels of loose type. Sometimes he doesn't have it in a, in a case, jus have it in a barrel or whatever. Pick it out, cause when he gets through with his type he jus I drops it back in there. Dudn 1t mess with distributing his type. R. Haynes is the greatest, he is the greatest, He's got the spookiest ol' house and his shop is just so full a good stuff'. P. Ken said it 1s not very big, R. It I s not. P. It 1s about the size of your room, R. Yeah. Ats about all he 1s got. And you dont have an, you have to go down little corridors, you know, one person at a time to get around in. But he is a great guy, gee he's great. You oughta get him to talll: about the uh, he worked in some early New York shops, I think. And that must of been a whole, an the rural south Georgia newspaper, which us all I ever knew, P, Workin 1 in a big shop at that time- I suppose at most of these words I have are uh, could be found in Moxen, R, They probably could. P. -list of 'em. R, What were some of the expressions that he had? At Ken had, Like i::ih, Pi Ching. i don't buy, I gotta I see that somewhere. P, R, P. R, P, R, P. R. P. .1.i P. Pied type, Uh. How I bout dingbats or flowers? Dingbats is an originais interesting. That rs gotta be an Americanism, Yeah, Uh, flowers would, Jus 1 because they looked ornamental, Well the French called em flowers, I mean they used the word flowers, f-1-e-u-r, you pronounce it, That was uh, that was the word for an orniment, Coffin corner . I never heard a that. What is that? I thought that was a football expression or a- He said it came from, from the tyoe cases. Uh, one corner of the case. I don't know wa' whether uh, bad pieces of type were put there or what, I really don't know what it was called that for. R. Airs a part of a hand press called the routs an coffin, but they had all kinda' weird names for those pieces. I think they must have just invented names 17 R. and hung on 1em, Because they wudnt anything, Coffin corner, I thought was sompUJ.lill' else. P. Yeah. R. I told you, you wouldn 1t get much outa me. P. Oh, I ve got some thine;s, I wudnt, some real goodies, 'specially the potata, that 1s intrestin', cause that rtd somethin' you couldn't look up, probably. That would vary from one shop to the next I Im sure. R. I 1ll try an think of what- P. Somebody else would probably use somethin 1 else for that type a thing, R. I Im sure there was some kind of c ommerc la 1, you know they didn I t do that in big shops. But I, I wonder what did they have. The metal had to be agitated or the dross wouldn 1t come to the top, You know, the, the, metal was just to, to thick, P. It was jus' suspend in the middle. R. An you couldn't let the dross remain in the metal 'cause it would jam up the machine. We had two machines and jus one runnin 1 at any one time. The other one's broke down. P, Laugh. How about p's an q 1s? R. Now that makes sense, You know you canP. Like knowin' your p 1s an q 1s. R. You can like go mix up the p 1s and q 1s in the case and so many people jwst can~ ~ook at it in the case and tell whether that 1s a p'1or a 1q P. Yeah, thats true. Or a 11 u'' ,E;ll, they 1re several pieces that you can confuse easily, u 1s and n's. R, Yeah, and d's and P 1s and qs. P, D1s and b's and qs. R. And some people apparently can't even, cant read type at all, backwards and upside down. P. Sometimes they have difficulty with it, R, And I never found that hard to do. 18 P. I didn't really, R. And as far as the, the II p'' and the "q" may have been different, it may have been the same form flopped back then but the q's nowadays you know, have different and they're different, P. If they, they have serifs on it theyre- R, An maybe a sans-serif 11p" and "q" woulfl. be hard to uh, But that 1s why you ve got the nick and if the nick's UP, there's no question about what it is. P. Cant think of any other letters that are much like that I. thoughtitwas interesting why they split up the capital letters and put the Us and the, the J 1s down R. P, R, P. R. P. R. at the bottom of the case. Instead of puttin' it in the- I like to know an answer to that one, in with the alphabet. And that must go back uh, Pretty far in the arrangement of the type case . Uh, way, way back. How bout lower and unper case, that's another thing. Wellthat makes sense, you know, like in that stand right there the upper case would be the upper most case and the lower case would be underneath it. So that, that makes sense. P. They would store their, their uh caps above their small letters. Makes sense. R. It 1s sorta funny to r'efer to capital letters now as upper case, but you still do. P. Yeah. R. In fact the 1re alot of things still around uh, the 1re stl.11 people in you know, where I work and that 1 s a big printin' house, who use expressions that, you lmow, like they dont say cap an lower case, they say upper an' lower case. UH, the 1re people who refer to picas as M's, and that must e;o way back. P. M quads and R. Yeah. 19 P. N quads- R You know like they, they use 11 M11 as a unit of measurement. But they mean M1s of pica, But they, they use the word lvl's instead of picas. Like they say set that 30 Ms, whi.ch i.s no instruction at all, Thirty M1s of what? But they it's, it means, they mean picas, M1s of 12 point, P, Ump, R, They're still alot a ol' birds that spook aro1,1n 1 and I guess they're, they hadnt changed at all. They don 1t want anything to do with any of the newer processes, And they ung, what they :mow is just goin' flat out of a , theres just no demand for it. They They won t get in to anything knew, and and they won t depart from the ol uh- P, Thats why I thin}/: theres alot a beauty around uh, the old shop, the old traditions and old ways of doin' it. They're gonna die too, I know you said some a the words hangon, but words and customs and traditions, they're gonna go away with modern printing, R. Yeah, the people uh, like the people that work that we 1ve got, I guess the most sophisticated type settin' equipment uh, and the best people you can get are people who dont know anything about printin 1 That 1s strange And you teach em, such style as they need to know cause it hadn 1t changed that much, but you take an ol I hand from a hot metal c omposin I room, an1 you can I t make him do anything right, because he 1s still thinkin' in terms of meta~, uh, like this machinery, you can lead it a quarter point with no difficulty. Well, thats unheard of in the composin 1 room, They might use h, they, they will feather a form sometimes, which which is put strips of thin cardboard, uh, you know and strips- Thats about as far as they can go with that, And they dont think of it in terms of metal instead of you know, a an electronic machine, P. Quarter point would be aEND P. RECORDING OF Mr, c. w. Kendrick-November 1973 Abbreviations: Mr. Kendrick-K. Patterson-P, I wanna talk about some words related to printing, uh old words picked up+~~are related to different materials around the shop or equipment like P's and Q's or uh Coffin Corner. K. P's and Q's are uh, I'll relate to the old-time term "You've got to mind your P's and Q's", which means you've got to be on your toes, you've got to be sharp, you've got to be on the alert because in handling metal types, the P and the Q, which are very similar, P, K. P. it is easy to mistake them whether you are dis\r,ibuting them back into the printers box or case, or AP't'ci?fhgf 0"'"' them up. I don't know why they selected P's and Q's, because the same confusion exists between B's and D's. But um in handling the type, the similarity and the ease of making the mistake and putting a wrong character or putting a character in the wrong box causes confusion and wastes time.And even the old-time printers were very concious of the time involved in correcting errors or making changes in the proofs, Confusion over the characters if the, . c,f Cov,1.5{'.. The term I can see, e;i,Awith your type setting experience you can realize how easy it. is to confuse the P or Q, as well as the Band the D, and in many cases the U and the N which are also very similar. And if youn:a little bit careless in putting them back into the box, why the next guy who comes along and sets out in that same case um would have to re-do part of his work. We had that same thing happen the other night, we got a D distributed back into the B box, and when we set the headlines, why the word came out completely wrong and we had to stop and re-do it which cost us time and money. So I'm sure those same conditions existed from the beginning of printing. And the Coffin Corne~ which is a football term now. K. Well, um Coffin Corner as I recall it, and of course now you'll have to remember that I am a newcomer to 1 P, the printing trade and I have not had the experience of being apprenticed in a shop or actually working with printing or printers except on my own. And uh, so I'm sort of a hobby print~ turned pro and my knowledge and experience has been gained primarily from reading old type manuals, old trade books uh, that describe printing techniques and processes and every once-ina- while, the term will come up and Coffin Corners, as I recall it, relates to the very early days when they were building wooden presses, uh the local cabinet maker was the guy that was called on to print the press or to build the printing press, and he also would probably double~ as an undertaker or a builder of coffins. And the bed of the early presses was a, the presses were built of wood, good hard wood, Oak, and Ash, and Hickories and woods of this material$ and the corners of the bed of the press which moved back and forth on the ways, had to be very strong, very sturdy because they supported a rock of plaster uh, flat surface which was actually what the type was placed on and these corners were joined in a specific manner, I think we might call :!.t something like dovetail today, but the early term for this,was for a very strong corner was a Coffin Corner, And~referring to the construction of the building of the beds of the oldtime wooden presses, why the corner was called the Coffin Corner if you started your form at one part of the bed why they would refer to it as the east part of the Coffin Corner, or the south part of the Coffin Corner and so forth, And the lay-out of a football field is very similar to the bed of an old press in that it is rectangular and so I am assuming that the Coffin Corner as we use it today is uh relation to measurements towards an item that would serve to locate as well as describe the type of construction. And you were telling me the other day about the history behind pied type and how that got started. K, Well, Pied type is the term that is used when a large assortment of type that has been set into an orderly arrangement through careless handling or improper composition or imposition is reduced to the individual pieces of type and you wind up with a lot of a number of pieces of loose type that are not in order and the traditional term for this is called, "Pying the type," I like to use the parallel that pied type came out of a. chineese contribution to printing, because they were actually doing printing in China from ceramic tile types in China or Korea about two hundred years, at least two hundred years before the accepted uh beginning of printing from metal types by Guttenberg. But uh, in the 1200 1s, 2 '1"11A11A ncf<:c 1:, ()_ re1e;~t,rbe_ +a "- there were fine examples of Chinese printer/\ who tk:.-.'"'.._ f'i1-;,.. ~<.<L actually did this in the 12th century. And his name was Pi Ching. I don't ~r how you spell Ching, whether it was Tsching or Ching, but in the book "The History of Printing in China it's commented that the traditional term of pying the type, relates to this particular Korean or Chinese who did print and that uh his name survived as a discription of confusion or that sort, and there is also.another term on this I like that particular version better than this one because a pie used to describe a meat pie that was made of various odd pieces of meat and it was an assortment of meats and this was always handy to have around the print shop, cause the printers were expected to take very small periods of time to eat and they liked the meat pies which was an assortment a hodge podge of meat that's-perhaps the more accepted or valid .t""Slil.$.Ofi but, V e. \z s '"""" P, I think that was of European origin, K. Yes, definitely of European origin and this goes back I'm sure uh to the uh Germanic areas whether or not it was in Nermburg or places like that, but I think it was of Germanic origin, Some of the other things that relate to uh printing, some of the things in this particular area not necessarily the words, but uh out of sorts" is a term that is now-a-days used to describe when a person feels bad or he is cross or he's irritable. This relates to the earliest days of printing when a print shop would have a relatively few faces of type but they would have large quantities of it, The traditional term for buying an assortment of type would be to purchase a Bill of type and a Bill of type could be anywhere from a couple hundred pounds, maybe up to 500 pounds, they were sold by the characters. And the scheme or the fogging scheme would include maybe as many as 2,500 A's which are very common in the English language, far fewer B's, they might get uh 1,200 B's, and uh E's, they might have oh, six to 8,000 E1s, Well, you could not keep this quantity of type in one of the traditional cases that was used, so each day when the printer began his compositions, he would go to his case, and then set from the take that he had been assigned by the Chairman of the Chappel, or the Head of the composing room or the Master Printer, or whatever the term to describe the man who sort of oversaw the operations might be, and then he would set all of the copy that he could until he ran out of characters. And if he ran out of E's, which is the most common one, then he would have to go back to the Foreman or the Overseer and request permission to get more sorts. And the term was "I'm out of sorts," And then he would have to go back and replace the most 3 P. common characters primarily the vowels as we know them today. What about the different customs around the shop uh that they would follow, I know you weren't supposed to whistle in the shop, you weren't supposed to sit a.own while you were working K. These old-time printers were pretty sharp operators, and uh they were very concious of production and the cost of wasted time and things of this nature. So they imposed uh, some rules and regulations that still exist today 'cause they make sense, They made sense 400 years ago, they make sense today, Now one of the is that uh whistling is forbidden. uh This is considered uh bad luck, uh bad manners, a breech of etiquette, and the reason for it being, that whistling is quite distracting to perhaps other people in the shop and it 1s a sign that the worker is not really concentrating on what he is doing. So, for the reasons of g(itting the best production possible, as well as avoiding disturbing other people on either side of them or immediately around him who might be whistling or who might be composing, whistling might disturb them, distract them and cause them to either make mistakes or slow them down or something like that. The same thing applies for sitting down in the shop, Uh, sitting down is a sign of laziness, of indolence, and uh in the event that the compositor didn't have any work to do is a reflection on the overseer, the foreman, he is supposed to keep him busy and if he saw the guy was sitting down while he was, get busy and get him off his tail and get him to work. And uh, the same thing still applies, if the Person doesn't have any work to do, chances are he will be sitting down, shooting the breeze, wasting time while somebody is paying him and it is good economics to keep people busy and active. That is also hard to do sometimes, One of the other unusual customs uh that I ran across somewhere along the line, is that printers have always usually been traditionally pretty good drinkers. They would drink a little bit and they uh, they used to gamble for beer by taking pieces of type and casting them up on the stone so instead of using dice, they would use types. The way they would do this, they would take the types and shake them a little bit and then throw them up on the stone, and then count the number of nicks that were showing. And the one who had the most showing would be bought the beer or wine or whatever they were drinking, by the guy 4 who had lost the casting. Well, this defaced .the types, and if you used types like this long enough, you are going to deface the characters by tossing them on the metal or on the rocks. It would cause excess or undue wear, or maybe break off a delicate .a.e.wx so that the character would have to be replaced. If they were doing fine work so it was a real simple evolution for the owner of the shop or the overseer to forbid this to preserve the types and make them last as long as possible, and to avoid excess wear. P, And you were talking about the nicks showing, and that is the nick that is naturally on the side of the type, K, That is the little nick on the side of the type that is used to aid identification after the compositor sets a line of type, he can look at the open end of the stick, which the types are placed in the stick so that the nicks are vislble on the open end, And if all the nicks are matching, t~ll.Y he knows that the type is right for printing-and no character is being upside down or whatever. Now it doesn't mean that the word is spelled r~ght, but if he is a good compositor and he is the following his copy which is correct, then the line will be correct and he won't have to respace or rejustify . P. Right. How about the customs around the printers devil who is sort of the lowest man on the totum pole, The younger boy who would come in. K. Printers devil at the time usually applied to an apprentice, An apprentice who was brought into the ~hop to learn the trade and why he was called the devil I don't know, except that I think that he was very dirty, uh very inky, because he inherited all of the distasteful jobs in the shop and since he was an apprentice, and apprentice in those days meant that he probably got only uh, the terms of his apprenticeship meant that he got almost no money. He was given food, which might be one or two very sparse meals a day and a chance to sleep on the rags at night, But he was the guy that was the, he did all the dirty work, all the odd jobs, and he was just sort of the butt of all the jokes in the shop, as well as having to do all of the little errands and what-not, He was the guy that' had to make uh sure that the types were cleaned and got it ready. As he progressed in his knowledge, and this was uh uh very good, and very accepted way of gaining knowledge because a printer expected and did know 5 how to read and in most cases write. And because of the work that they were doing, they had a chance to read materials that uh were being set in the shop for printing, and added to their store of knowledge. So a printer was somewhat of a learned person, in the very early days of printing and up until the mid 18OO 1s. But uh, the apprentice program they would generally start uh, in their very early years, seven to nine I guess, it's not very uncommon for a lad to be an apprenticed to the trade as he learned by absorption-, uh and licks on the ear and what-not, this being a real common way to correct a devil an old slap him across the head or the ear, As he progressed and picked up and observed some of the things .that were being done, then he would be given the chance to perhaps distribute type, uh perhaps in some cases to assist in the dampening of the paper, uh then to the eventually to the composition and when he had completed his apprenticeship, perhaps as a youth of twelve or thirteen, the length of the apprentice program varied considerably. Then he might be considered a printer and go out and hire himself out as a printer in other shops. And by his experience as he progressed and learned other things, he might make Master Printer and uh or an Overseer . P, Can you think of anything else right off? Or something that we haven't covered? K, I can think of an awful lot of things and uh one of the uh little customs in the shop that is still being done is a sort of an initiation to a neophyte. The type used to be cleaned by lye water and a soft brush, and it was distributed in the case wet. Well, ink is primarily a greasy material and after type and then cleaned, some of the moisture would condense in little beads in the dusty type and it_looked very much like little bugs. So it was a common joke to show a newcomer or an apprentice or a neophyte or somebody the type lice. So they would take a form that had recently been cleaned and it was dusty, and pour a little bit of water or lye water in and open the form and separate the characters so that the moisture would accumulate at the bottom and would bead in little small gobules and then to show them tye type lice, they would hold a stick up right under the eyes so that they could see it real well and when they were asked, "Do you see the type lice?", "Oh yea, I see those little things, 11 because they looked like little moving creatures. And then the stick 6 P. K, would be snapped shut real quickly forcing the water out of the stick and into the persons eyes, And he would get ink with a little bit of lye in it which would cause his eyes to sting.,and this was called seeing the type lice." uh, There is a variation of this today and most plants that still operate linotype machines, the lead is melted in excess of 450 degrees in the pot, And as the matrixes lined up and the molten lead is squirted into the matrix, it cools right quickly but, by the time the lineotype had completed its cycle and is ejected into the board why it still is extremely hot. And with experience you learn to handle this so that it doesn't burn you but it is considered a good old printer~ joke to hand somebody a freshly set piece of type and invarably they'll drop it. Because they hang on to it and after a second or two the type which is still quite hot will scorch their fingers and they will drop it to the floor. And this is "Hey you dummy look at there, he dropped the type." This still happens. Occasionally, Like to you the other day, only you didn't drop it . P, Laugh, Well, we've covered a pretty good bit, Course there are a few more volumes more. K, One other thing we did uh discuss as uh, uh a printing term, and I don't know whether it will confuse or add to your project is the fact that ornaments, the little ornamental devices they used in printing since printing began, uh at one time were called flowers because at one time, the little dyes from which they were struck resembled uh a little ornate flower, Today we call them in addition to flowers, we call them ornaments and the most commonly accepted term for describing the little ornamental characters today is bing-bats. And I'm sure that it was used to describe little ornamental affects in type for a long time before the term was popularized by a television show. P. Right, K, One of the other things that I had mentioned that the early printers were pretty good businessmen. They were sharp, they had a lot of practices that are might have been very hard for the type you will have to. remember that uh back in the very old and 7 P. K, and earlier days of printing the normal working day was from sun up to sun dotm and even after for many twelve to fourteen hours.being the normal working day, This would mean that in some seasons of the year when illumination was necessary, the only way they had to light their shop was by candlelight, And the printer, as he began his work each day, wo11ld be required to draw a candle which w1:1s expected to last him for a period, a given period of time, maybe a.11 day or maybe not quite all day. uh, The shons were not well lighted by our standards, they were pretty dim and pretty dusty, so the candles were necessary and if the printer wasn't careful where he put it, if he put his candle in a draft, his candle would burn brighter but it would also burn out sooner. And if he would have to go to his overseer for an additional candle, he would be severely chastised for wasting candles, They had uh little tin candle holders and the same thing was sort of true for uh kerosine lights that were used for an awful long time. If you have seen some brackets that were designed to hold kerosine lanterns,and the printer was also expected to keep the glow off of the kerosine lantern clean and uh to keep it trimmed so that he could get maximum illumination, and to avoid wasting the burning oil that was used or kerosine. So a lot of the ole terms uh do have a relation to this what little we've talked about here, and what few I can help you with. I know that, for instance, the normal term for the printers in a shop who had been unionized for years, and years, and years is a chappel, Because it is a benevolent thing with the head man who would correspond with the priest, the head priest or whatever his title might be, And then the graduation all the way down to the altar boys who would be the apprentice types or the devils. So the association has the group of printers in the shop where an association existed has been called a chappel because it does have sort of a clerical or church hierarchy. That's interesting, I 1ve seen that in That's a good boo~,I wish we had that. It could certainly add a lot because this man uh had the facility and the nack for describing every minute operation of the print shop, He would describe the stance of the printer, uh how he should position his candle so that the light would fall right for economy as well as for illumination to avoid the possibility of making mistakes, and how he should 8 P. K. place it in each stick with his thumb, how it should be justified, how it should be removed from the stick, and his word descriptions of the manual processes or actual physical processes were tremendous. I think he did this around l6b7 or somewhere before 1670, It's been out of print for a long time, It was reissued in the early forties uh or in the late forties, but even reprints are very hard to come by. That'll do it. The End, 9 A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. 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