My Life With Computers

During my junior year of high school, I took a job with the local paper, The Daily Missoulian. I was a stuffer.

The antique press that the Missoulian was using could only print one section of the paper at a time, and that section could only be 16 pages (or was it 24? It's been a few years). That was enough for most days, but the Thursday paper needed two sections and the Sunday paper needed three (one was the comics). We stuffers put the sections together.

Every Wednesday night, the inner section got printed starting at 9:00, and the outer section got printed starting at midnight. We'd show up at midnight, and each of us would stuff 4500 papers. The comics would get printed during the week, and Saturday nights we'd stuff the comics into the inner section at 9:00, and stuff the inner section into the outer section at midnight. My weekly paycheck was $14.50, or a little more those weeks when stuffing was needed for the Wednesday paper as well. Doesn't sound like much, but money went a lot further back then. It covered my gas and a few other necessities.

I well remember my first night as a stuffer. The seven other stuffers all had stations in the main press room, but as the newbie I was at the overflow station in the back room all by myself. The longest-established stuffer (the "head stuffer") came back to show me what to do. We'd put a stack of 50 inners on the table, then a stack of 50 outers on its left. We'd layer our hands up with glycerine for better gripping, then we'd open the top outer section, grab an inner section, and slide it into the outer section and let its momentum carry the complete paper into a third pile. When the set of 50 was done, we'd turn the pile to face us, grab it and pull it vertically and throw it up and down and use our arms to get them all lined up nice and neat for stacking on a cart. Sounds easy enough, but it's a slow process for a newbie. I only had to do 1000 papers that first night, but it took me until 4:30. They had warned me about paper cuts and told me to wear a long-sleeved shirt. I wore a fairly heavy flannel shirt, and by the end of my shift the sleeves were cut to ribbons - as were my arms. And I was covered with ink from head to foot.

It wasn't long before I was doing the full set of 4500 papers, and was getting done around 3:00. I was always envious of the stuffers who had been there longer, who were generally done by around 1:30, at least on the nights when the press didn't break down too often. Soon, a couple of the other stuffers had left and I was out in the main room (boy, was it noisy out there when the press was running).

After ruining several shirts the first few nights, I finally decided to do like the others and just wear a short-sleeve shirt or none at all. For several months, my arms got cut up pretty badly but eventually they toughened up.

I kept the stuffing job for about a year and a half, until I left for school. When I finally got up to the #2 position, I also stuffed for the afternoon paper (it didn't have anywhere near as large a circulation, so only two of us were needed for that). And I wound up doing a lot of other odd jobs around the place as well.

About two weeks before I had to quit because I was heading for Bozeman, the long-established head stuffer quit. So I had a two-week stint as head stuffer. When people would ask what I did, I'd tell them I was head stuffer at the Missoulian. They could never understand why the Missoulian needed anyone to stuff heads.

The most interesting job I did at the Missoulian was melting down lead. They had about 20 or so linotype machines and a few other specialized machines that used molten lead to make type. After the day's shift, I'd collect all the bits and pieces of lead from the floor and wherever else I'd find it and haul it all up to the main furnace and shovel it in. Then I'd melt it all down, purify it, and pour it into bars. And finally, I'd deliver the bars around to the various machines for the next day's use. Each bar was around 20 pounds or so, and I'd pour somewhere around 300 of them each night, so I got in pretty good shape tossing them around.

On our Saturday night stuffing shifts, there was always the problem of what to do with our time after finishing the first shift until midnight when (if we were lucky) the final run would begin. Often, a few of us would pile into my coupe and head out for some fast food somewhere. A Model A coupe can comfortably carry two people, but we'd often squeeze in four. One night we managed to get six of us in the thing by putting one on the shelf behind the seat.

The Missoulian was situated on the north end of Higgins Avenue, which was the town's main drag. One night several bored stuffers dug a bunch of old papers out and folded them up for throwing, and went out and threw them at any convertibles coming by cruising the drag. Pretty soon, they came running in and all took up innocent-looking positions. Then several cops came in. Of course, no one would admit to being the paper throwers. But we all broke out laughing when one of the cops went up to the most straight-arrow kid there (who was just sitting there reading the funnies and had had nothing to do with it) and said "you there, I know you were there - I saw you!". The cops finally gave up and left.

We even had a stuffer groupie. Some kid that lived nearby was always coming in hanging around while we were stuffing. He was a very annoying little SOB. One night, a couple of stuffers got fed up with him, and picked him up and stuffed him into a mailbag and hung him from the ceiling. After half an hour or so, someone took pity on him and cut a little hole in the bag and gave him a bottle of coke. Then they cut another hole so he could smoke a cigarette. It was the funniest sight, that mail bag with a coke bottle sticking out of one hole and a cigarette out of another, and smoke coming out both holes.