Everybody likes to show off & I am no different. The images below are the do-justice to a lot of printing, most of which was done for fun. Some of the stuff that I did for money is here too, but not much of it. What I think is nice & what other people think is extraordinary is another thing. Thus the filter.
     There are a couple shots of the shop in its early days under my hamfisted hand. There are a couple pictures of historical note & a few bits of what I can claim from the remains of Dad's shop to show. Then there is a whole pile of egoboo, stuff I've printed.
     All of the pictures have been reduced to 240 pixels width so I could fit 'em on the page. Most of 'em you can click on to see them in something approximating "regular size." I am particularly proud of the printing that makes absolutely no sense at all. Such would be the APA calendar page for April, done for an unknown year, since I didn't see fit to put the year on the page. The Radio Bogus card is another one. You gotta love pirate radio stations to understand that one. And the piece about the Holiday at Home Parade is from Dad's hand.
     Tal palo, tal astilla: As the beam, so the sliver.

Things My Father Printed

There's no doubt among family members that I have my father's twisted sense of humor but not a jot of his restraint. These few images are of things Dad printed. Early on he was more serious than later, as evidenced by the few copies I have found of the two little magazines that he and Mom started. The two of them together were a package of arts and crafts projects, painting and building, designing and writing, carving their notches on life by way of their home-brew creations. That should be easy enough to figure from the title of the two little magazines.

The first was Hobby Shopper, published for a while from the Amarillo, Texas print shop. I know of two editions under that title. At some point Dad changed the focus of the magazine to hobby printing and thus changed the title to Imprint. There were a couple publications in there over some time with the title of Tagalong. Only one of those remains.


Over the course of the four or five years that we lived in Texas, Dad went through a list of titles for the little magazine that had started out as Tagalong and which soon became Hobby Shopper. One step in that process was Imprint, which started out as a letterpress print journal that more or less became part of the AAPA bundle. This is one of two editions that I know of.


Early on -- probably after I was born and but before we'd moved to Indianapolis, Dad made this linoleum block cut to go as background for a label for my grandfather's honey production. I am attempting to find a copy of the label, which I believe was stashed somewhere in one of Dad's collection of type foundry catalogs. The cut itself is indicative of the range of talent my father had with printing. My regret is not having the original carving.

Dad was a well-known and respected print and radio journalist in the Southwest. At some point in my infancy, Dad went looking for another job. We would end up in Indianapolis, where Dad started working as a newsman for WIBC. Later he would end up working for the Indianapolis Star. This is Dad's resume, so to speak. It shows off a beautiful sense of space and color with the use of three common type faces.

We moved to Dayton, Ohio around 1957. The move marked the beginning of my father's finally turning his back on his addiction to alcohol. I suspect it was more an ultimatum from my mother than anything else. One way or the other we ended up in Ohio with Dad's voice on another radio station. After some time living there, as is made obvious by the sign below, Dad was able to joke about a situation that had had serious consequences for the family in the past and which would affect his health decades later. Today I can look at this and smile. There was once a time when it made us all nervous.

Dad joined the Amalgamated Printers' Association and became member number 405 in 1972. I remember him showing me the little Thompson-cast logo that he'd received as his membership token & I remember how enthusiastic he was about having joined and being able to put his rather well-set shop into use for fun again.
     This is his first printing after his having submitted his prop card. I have been unable to find any copy of the prop card he printed, although I'm sure that there's a copy of it somewhere in somebody's archives.
     You might notice among the various printed items shown here that he called the print shop by many names, among which was the Playbox Press, with the little bear in a box cut that's shown on this piece. The reason that I have chosen to call the press by the name it first received back in Amarillo, Texas is a desire to hold on to one other thing about Dad's printing: he seems to have taken to calling me "The Tagalong" and the use of that name keeps his memory closer. Nostalgia? Yes. Honor as well and good memory.


Dad had a lot of paper stock left over from his having chained himself to printing those hit lists for the radio station. To use the stuff up, he found every occasion to set a complete newspaper for family & friends at Christmas time. That the paper often didn't get finished until January or June made little difference. It gave Dad a huge sense of satisfaction to be able to put together a large-sheet press run and coax the huge 12x18 C&P O.S. into running slow enough for him to feed. This below is one of many such printings that he did for the holidays, with jokes and nudges and winks.

Things My Father Hung On To

Before I was born and well before he met Mom, Dad had already caught the self-published author & small press proprietor bug. He left behind in his passing a couple amateur journals from Australia and a few others from various American small presses. The covers of the two Australian journals are shown here. Note the date on Koolinda: 1944, a little over three years after Pearl Harbor. The date makes me wonder if Dad didn't get that journal while he was in the South Pacific, since his record of travel shows him being in Australia at some point.


I can remember my father talking about the beauty of the Goudy type faces, and I can only guess that I have these memories because Dad had gotten and kept this book, Goudy & the Kennerley Types, published in 1947 by The Attic Press in Omaha.

     When I saw this book on top of all the other stuff that Dad had taken the time to collect and leave behind I was immediately thankful that my sister hadn't gotten this far in her getting rid of everything my father's existence had been. I was also grateful to my father for having had the presence of mind to tell me the stories of Frederic Goudy and how important the man and his type face designs had been.
     Even more, I recognized in this little book the paper choices that my father had made early on in my life about his print shop. I understood from this little book how my father might have decided to put his print shop into the publishing business. At the same time I could see how the duties of providing for his family made it well-nigh impossible for him to take up the Roycrofter's style of art as life and life as art, which meant that he could never get as close to what this little book showed as my father, by his actions & words, would liked to have ventured.

Another small book that Dad had kept was Marvin Neel's Footnote to Webster, shown here in collage, cover printing over another scan from the front endpaper dedication. It's a very small book, only sixteen pages, but the way it's printed -- and the paper it's printed on -- are remarkably effective.


Last but not least is this ham radio QSL card that Dad printed for me back around 1968, when I was a US Navy radioman stationed in Puerto Rico. Over the course of the 35 years that I've had my ham radio license, this and two other versions of this card are significant to me because they showed my father's touch. I will not, however allow him the credit for the hugely overcrowded & ostentatious design.
     The design is my fault, not his.
     And with this I've shown some of the more important pieces of my father's work as a printer & artist. The next page of the gallery shots are my stuff. You can get to them by clicking on the pointer below.