"Adjusting to the present, kicking and screaming"

  When I got started in newspaper work, we had to chisel hieroglyphics on slabs of stone.

  Well, not really, but it almost seems that way compared to the way we do things at newspapers now.

  Contrary to popular opinion, I was not a printer's devil for Johannes Guttenberg, who invented moveable type.  But I did serve in that capacity for Kermit Hubin at the Stewart (Minn.) Tribune in my home town in the early '50s. (I had really wavy lustrous brown hair then.)

  This was the era of the linotype.  The boss spent most of his time setting bars of types on that smelly machine, which used melted lead. I imagine that was an improvement over hand-set type.)

  (This column, by the way, is part of a series of retrospective articles inspired by my 35th year in journalism.  The '50s stuff doesn't count. I didn't write then.)

  When I started writing, in 1970, at the New Richmond (Wis.) News, I did everything on the manual typewriter.

  Then my stories were given to a Justowriter typesetter who would type it all over again, producing strips of punched tape, which in turn would produce columns of material.

  If there were corrections, they had to be pasted on line by line.  It was a nightmare on deadline mornings.

  And for me, using the typewriter was like chiseling on stone.  I had to write a story pretty much the way it would be in the end, with not much opportunity to make changes.

  If I wanted to change a story, I had to start over or literally cut and paste in additions, with a scissors and tape.

  It was a whole lot different from constant adjustments which are made on the computer.

  I write a story now and I constantly tweak words.  I feel it has made my writing much easier and better.  However, it also offers more opportunity to really foul things up.

  I didn't get into computers until the '80s. I'm very equipment-impaired, and I credit some very patient people who took very patient kindergarten teacher-like approaches when showing things to me--over and over and over.

  Until about eight years ago, the computer things I did were comparatively simple (although they didn't seem that way to me, at the time.)

  Then, I got networked computer systems, which meant way more details in doing everything.

  Now, it's "deja vu all over again."  The Pelican Rapids Press has a great computer system, but a person has to do a lot of different things to get it to respond.

  The closet comparison I can make is by saying the clarinet and the five-string banjo are both musical instruments, but very different techniques are required to get them to sound right.

  So currently, I'm confused and disorientated.  I've got all these great ideas for articles going on in my head, but can't get them on the computer screen until I figure out how to shift all the gears and throw the right switches (to use inappropriate terminology.)

  But you know what?  The Pelican Rapids Press also has the kind of people who know how to do things and can show me on a kindergarten level.

  Slowly (emphasize that word) but surely (I hope), I learn.

  Oh, I'll always be equipment impaired.  I'll never be a computer ace.  But hopefully, I can learn enough to do my job.

  Besides, computers sure beat those smelly old linotypes.

Pelican Rapids Press 12-07-05