I miss the sound of a newspaper press.
When I first heard a press slowly cranking up, in late 1968 or early 1969, it sounded like a lumbering beast coming awake, yawning and creaking, then slowly gaining speed until it became a roar not unlike that of a 747 aircraft. The press was in the old newsroom of the Longview News-Journal. I was a 13-year-old paperboy delivering the afternoon edition throughout downtown Longview.
The press was almost certainly a Goss Headliner, a rotary letterpress from which the pungent smell of ink wafted. Next door to the pressroom, a small contingent of cigar-chomping...
Read more...
I bought a new recliner last week. It’s the first one I’ve owned in more than 25 years. My Beautiful Mystery Companion finds this purchase hilarious, mainly because I’ve railed against owning a recliner for as long as she’s known me — more than 18 years. I won’t delve into the domestic details that sparked my decades-long antipathy toward recliners. Buy me a beer sometime, and I’ll tell you in person. (I’m easy that way.)
The recliner is finished in cream-colored corduroy fabric, soft and comfy, with a nifty switch that lifts the footrest. No wooden handles to yank to go airborne....
Read more...
Snake Farm - It just sounds nasty
Snake Farm - Well, it pretty much is
Snake Farm – It’s a reptile house
Snake Farm ... Uuuggghhhhh
— Ray Wylie Hubbard
Earlier this summer, while my Beautiful Mystery Companion was out of town, I went to collect eggs from our hens. I peered into their nest boxes and saw nothing, which was unusual. The girls are reliable layers. I didn’t think much of it, but I noticed that a trash can lid on the coop’s floor was a bit askew. We keep diatomaceous earth powder in the lid to reduce insects. The lid was perched on a brick paver to keep the shavings out....
Read more...
PIER 39, FISHERMAN’S WHARF, SAN FRANCISCO — A sea lion, which I have arbitrarily named Matilda, waits patiently off the port side of the fishing boat that has returned after taking out tourists for a day casting for California halibut. About a half dozen fat, flat white halibut are laid out on the cutting table, now docked at famed Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. A fellow wearing mirrored shades and a ballcap, hands covered with disposable gloves, addresses a fish, quickly sawing a generous filet off its side
Matilda never takes her eyes off the fellow with the knife. (Disclosure:...
Read more...
