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Printing Shops
The Print Shop In Quincy
The Print Shop
As a boy in East Tennessee, I carried newspapers for a weekly paper, The Maryville Enterprise. I would often go in early on Thursdays and stand by the linotype operator, smell the hot lead and marvel at the big clunky printing press.
In the mid 1960’s I saw a “For Sale” sign in the window of an old run down print shop on Hampshire St. in Quincy. I peered through the front door glass and saw four old presses and all the print shop accessories. I wrote on a business card, “How much for one of your presses?” and slipped it under the door. The place was locked up. That night I had a call from a man in a nearby town. He told me I could buy the entire shop for the price of one press. That his sister had been put in the nursing home and he had to dispose of her property. She had been living in the back room.
The cost was $1,250. I didn’t have the money, but my youngest daughter, Debbie, did have it in a savings account and she loaned it to me.
We sold enough antiques in the basement to pay off the loan and swapped some of the old clam shell letter presses to a paper box company for a later model Kluge.
A nearby church had purchased the property so we had to get everything out. We had this Kluge Press trucked to our basement. I learned a bit about the printing trade.
In looking back, I see the Lord used this as a training ground for printing I would do with the Dairy Association and later at the ABC Print Shop in Mission, TX. (We printed and distributed Gospel tracts in Spanish for Mexican pastors and evangelists...all free).
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