The "Lost In A Time Warp" Story

LDub showing students how to lock-up a
chase on the composing stone in the late 1960s.

 It was an ordinary day.  Just exited the door to Martin Printing which is located in Lititz, PA.  I had traveled to the business to have a few negatives made by Parke, who was a former high school student of mine, so I could print the graduation program for the  Manheim Township High School graduation.  Martin's Printing is located at the rear of what used to be a church on a small street in center Lititz.  Scared the cat when I first arrived an hour ago and it hustled into the print shop when I opened the porch door.  I had never been in the shop and when I entered it took be by surprise.  It was like a long ago time warp.  Very little high tech equipment in the business.  Place is run by a husband and wife and they seem to be busy doing most of the local printing that needs to be done in the town of Lititz. 

LDub running the letterpress

To my right was a letterpress that looked much the same as the letterpress that I used to teach my students at MT how to operate in the 60s and 70s.  We could print, fold and perforate on the press that looked like something that Ben Franklin would have used in the mid-1700s.  Everything has to be hand-fed in order to complete the task you are doing.  We got rid of our letterpresses at MT in the mid-70s when we added a couple of offset presses.  Not a real new technology at the time, but for a school district to add offset presses was cutting edge.  As I looked around the shop I saw the composing stone, type cabinets, furniture cabinets, chase rack, ....... the whole works; everything needed to accommodate printing with the letterpress.  Then I saw the same folding machine that the school purchased ages ago and still uses.  On the other side of the shop was the same plate burner that we have had since the mid-60s.  Starting to get kinda creepy.  Worked my way back to Parke and at last, the latest technology in the printing industry capable of taking my InDesign files and giving me negatives in a matter of minutes.  I must admit I really enjoyed my trip to Miller Printing.  So much that I asked one of the co-owners to snap my photo as I pretended to feed a sheet of paper into the letterpress.  "There's fresh ink on the disk if you really want to run a few," she said.  Now it's getting creepy again!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.