Thanks Graham -- fun to know that someone else on this thread knows what a Composing Stick is!
I too had my mentors.

"Uke," the shop foreman was in his early 70s and could easily turn a galley of Linotype slugs and a few lines of handset into a work of art and was always willing to share the "whys and hows" that made type a joy to view and read.

"Kens," the Linotype operator, had operated and maintained the same Model 14 for nearly 50 years after helping to install it as a high school student working part time. When the installation was finished and it was time for instruction, the man scheduled to run the machine was ill. The installer couldn't wait and suggested to the boss that Kens seemed like a good candidate for the job. The boss agreed and Kens got the job while finishing high school. When I arrived as the new kid in the shop, the Linotype company had just done an article on Kens and the machine for their magazine. He had operated the machine continuously except for a few months during WW2 when he lost a leg but returned to the job when he recovered.

With their combined knowledge and experience, they were a formidable pair and always willing to share that knowledge. In the late 60s and early 70s the printing industry was changing rapidly from letterpress to offset printing and I've always wondered how they would have reacted to the technology that I now use. What would have taken them hours of tedious detailed work, I now accomplish with the computer's assistance in a few keystrokes. I like to believe that they would embrace the technology and push their skills to new highs.

And to not neglect the photography side of this forum, I'm in the process of photographing nearly 300 different composing sticks for an upcoming book project. That includes lots of closeups of the mechanical details of what are now mostly relics of the past. I've always done a lot of product photography and can hardly imagine what it would be like step back into using film for this current project!

Dennis

I'm also from Oregon and visited Chicago a few years back as a birthday gift to my wife who wanted to see the King Tut Exhibit that was at the Field Museum. Also visited the Museum of Science and Industry and enjoyed the view from the Sears Tower. That view included the freeway exit where we were involved in a wreck that nearly demolished our rental car that had less than 200 miles on it. Luckily we walked away with only a few bruises.

Yes, the exhibits at the Field are incredible and I have photos nearly like yours -- I especially like the gorilla, the photo doesn't really show his size -- ours includes our son standing by the case making a face at the gorilla.

I grew up in the Midwest and we had family in the Chicago area, so I had visited the museums several times.

Did you happen to visit Buckingham Fountain for the evening light show?

Dennis

The first time I saw the picture. the last part of the caption was " . . . volume one."

I'm in Newberg, about 20 miles SW of Tigard. Moved here from Kansas for a job in 1970 but would move back to Kansas and the wide open plains in a heartbeat if all our kids and grandkids weren't within a few miles of us.

Western Oregon is beautiful, but the locals don't understand when I say it would be better if they would cut down the trees and level the mountains so I could see something. Where I grew up in western Kansas, we could walk out on the front porch and watch the sun come over the horizon, and in the evening go out and watch the sun go down over the horizon with only the barn and a few trees in the distance.

My wife tells me that that she can just feel me start to relax when we get to the flatlands of eastern Oregon when travel back to Kansas.

I also "did it the hard way." When I was growing up if some kid in the community caught the measles, there would immediately be a "measles party" scheduled for all the kids who wanted to come and visit. Most parents just wanted their kids to get the measles and get it over with rather than having multiple kids in the family having them in succession and being tied down for weeks on end.

So I had them all -- measles, whooping cough, mumps, and chicken pox, plus at least one case of pink eye mixed in.

We did get a diphtheria shot and later the polio vaccine when it came out.

Just a question -- has it ever bothered you that most jokes are about white people?

Bills larger than $100 have not been printed since the mid-40s but are still valid. However several years back the Fed made the decision to withdraw bills larger than $100 when they were deposited in a bank. Thus they have become more collectible as time has passed -- especially those in good condition.

Many of the old-style $100s in circulation internationally are what are known as "Super Bills" because of their high quality -- counterfeits produced by foreign governments on presses just like the ones used to print our currency. Some say the half of the 100s in circulation outside this country are counterfeit. The new multicolor design has probably put a stop to or slowed continued counterfeiting, but there are still a lot of them in circulation worldwide.

My experience has been that the time of day -- the angle of the sunlight is the most important consideration. I've been there many times and after awhile, the view is so vast a lot of the views start to look alike. My personal favorites are those shots from early morning and late afternoon where I've captured the play of light on a smaller area.

If time allows, don't miss Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto in eastern Arizona.

I've been called to serve several times with one of those times being advanced to Grand Jury. That was quite an experience. You learn a lot that you just as soon didn't know about people and the real world. During the three weeks we indited 16 persons for various offenses including two for rape and battery and three for child molestation -- those were the hard ones. In the end, those five plus some of the others plead guilty and didn't go to trial.

A chuckle came in one instance where a prospective juror asked to be excused because she didn't have a drivers license and therefore she couldn't always get to court. The judge glanced again at the paper he was holding and said, "Your name was selected at random from current licensed drivers." Then picked up is gavel, gave it a whack, then said, "Guilty of lying to the court. Sentenced to 48 hours in the county jail, beginning now."

Such "scenic trips" are usually the result of the parcel getting a barcode other than the correct one for the destination -- or the barcode is damaged and is being misread. When the package arrives at an incorrect destination, the correct response is to check the address on the piece and correct the destination barcode, but it is just easier to toss it back in the mailstream and assume the information will be read correctly by the next scanner. In a worst case scenario the package will continue its "scenic tour" until a human takes the time to intervene.

I also had some problems with eBay and return in the distant past, but they have instituted new policies and made returns/refunds much easier.

PayPal has an "invoice" function in that you can request a payment from the buyer -- you just need their email address. You will probably already have that if they agreed to buy by email.

I've had three and the prescribed "cocktail" has been better tasting each time — but the result was the same. I was semi-conscious the first time, and remember seeing a pea come floating by that had somehow escaped chewing and the the purge! My daughter is a surgical nurse and she says the newer sedatives keep you "under" but with a lot less recovery time and fewer side effects.

I've noticed that direction makes a big difference in shipping times with USPS. I recently bought an item on eBay from a seller on the east coast. Iimmediately after mailing the shipper realized that they had shipped the wrong box so despatched the correct one. Both arrived in Oregon the second day -- about 3000 miles. Since the first box was supposed to go to northeren California, I offered to send it on rather than shp ot back to Maine. So I prepared a label so the box wouldn't even leave the PO. But this time the PO took THREE days to send it 400 miles!

Overall I'm not complaining. I well remember the 60s and 70s when if you saw something you wanted in the Antique Trader, it wasn't uncommon for nearly two months to pass by the time you mailed your intent to purchase and address to the seller, waited for the total including postage, sent the payment, seller waited for the check to clear, and shipment was made by Parcel Post. Everthything was done by mail becasue long distance calls were just too expensive unless it was something very special. And, because there were no pictures, all the while you hoped that the seller actually knew what they had and had described it correctly!

Can you imagine today's "gotta-have-it now" generation getting dropped back 50 years in time?

Death wish also makes BioHazard coffee -- 928 mg of caffeine in 16 oz.