I Miss the Sound of a Newspaper Press

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...

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