Fond memories from working at the Southeast Missourian

Editor's note: The following guest column is part of a letter the writer sent to Southeast Missourian publisher Jon K. Rust.

I am writing to let you know how much I enjoy the online version of the Southeast Missourian. As a Missouri expatriate living in the overly open-minded Pacific Northwest, it is absolutely refreshing to read about God's Country and its denizens.

In the summer of 1972, I was an employee of the Southeast Missourian. It was during a summer break from Southeast Missouri State (it was a college back then), and I worked in the pressroom. I have absolutely no recollection of anything they tried to teach me at SEMO, but my brief tenure with the Southeast Missourian was indelibly etched in my memory.

I'd spent the first part of that summer working in Kansas City, and I didn't want to spend the few weeks before the next term within earshot of my parents in St. Louis. I went back down to Cape Girardeau, found a place to live and set out to find a job. I remember a beautiful sunny day as I started walking down Broadway toward the river from Sprigg Street, asking shopkeepers if they needed any help.

I walked into the Missourian building sometime before noon and told the nice lady at the counter I was looking for a job. She motioned to an older fella, presumably the boss, to come over and talk to me. I vividly remember he looked me over head to toe, and then said yes, I could go to work right now. (He meant right that minute!)

At the time I was 6 foot and 3 inches and weighed about 220 pounds. I was about to find out that it wasn't my engaging personality or acerbic wit that launched my newspaper career.

The boss took me back to the pressroom where I met the head pressman; I think his name was Dick something-or-other. Dick was an interesting guy. The fog of 40-plus years obscures most of the detail, but I remember Dick as about 35 to 40 years old. Dick lived with his mother, collected 45 rpm records (he had thousands) and drove to work every day in his brand-new Cadillac, a green Coupe de Ville with a vinyl roof (he always parked it in front of the murals on Lorimier). Dick bought a new Cadillac every two years, and freely admitted it consumed a big chunk of his take-home pay. Dick's greatest passion in life was the St. Louis Cardinals and the fortunes of their star pitcher of the era, Bob Gibson. Dick had two or three printer's devils working for him in the press room, of which I became the lowest man on the totem pole.

The way the Missourian was printed back in the day was with "hot type." Molten lead was cast into blocks that were hand-assembled into pages. (Gutenberg would have been no stranger to the process.) When a page was complete, the metal layout was pressed into a piece of what looked like cardboard. The cardboard mold was sent to the pressroom, where we put into a cylindrical casting machine. Molten lead was poured in to produce a solid lead half-cylinder that was bolted on the press. I don't remember what these things weighed, but it was a lot, and there were a lot of them. My job was to carry the lead cylinders from the casting machine to the press where Dick and his crew would bolt them in.

The rhythm of the pressroom was you basically goofed off all morning, at least until after lunch, when the pages for the day's paper started coming down. When the pages arrived, the pandemonium commenced. Pages for the day's paper had to be cast, and the hot lead cylinders bolted into the press as fast as we could move. The press rollers were inked, and Dick would hit the big yellow start button. A claxon horn would wake the dead, and the press came to life. It started very slowly, and then wound up to an amazing crescendo of speed and noise.

The press was nothing short of awe-inspiring at full tilt. Huge rolls of newsprint spun off their layers into one end and, neatly folded, bundled newspapers spit out the other, just like in the movies. The bundles were sent by conveyor to the loading dock and into waiting trucks. It was a symphony of industrial production that ended way too quickly for all of its magnificence. The trucks left us loaded, and we started the cleanup. It all began again the next morning.

There was a big table in the press room where employees on breaks sat around and read the newspaper; not just the press crew, but folks from the front office as well. It was a popular place to have lunch, and where Dick held forth in heated arguments about Gibson and the Cardinals. I remember it struck me that everyone, from the big shots to the guys like me on the bottom rung, read every single page of the Southeast Missourian every day. We had company loyalty back in the day.

A lot of people came in for lunch and often lingered. I don't remember noted Southeast Missourian photographer G.D. Fronabarger, but I'm sure he must have been among the luncheon crew. There is one reporter I do remember vividly, and his story has been etched in my memory since I met him.

Often, at the south end of the table was a slight figure in a black suit, black tie and black fedora. (His fashion sense would later be made famous by the Blues Brothers.) I worked at the Southeast Missourian in August, and I never once saw him without his jacket or chapeau. He always sat by himself, and he was never involved with anyone over lunch. One afternoon the luncheon crew drifted away and left the two of us. I asked him what he did for the paper, and probably a lot of other stupid questions. He finally put the paper down, looked me square in the eye and told me this story.

The man in the fedora had been with the Missourian since sometime in the 1930s. He graduated from the University of Missouri's Journalism School and was hired by the Southeast Missourian sight unseen. Shortly after graduation he received a telegram confirming his employment, and he boarded a train for Cape Girardeau.

He told me he got off the train and walked up to the Southeast Missourian building. When he reported to the editor, along with a handshake, he was given instructions to go immediately to New Madrid. His first assignment would be to cover what he said was the last public execution in Missouri. A pair of murderers were to be put to death in a double hanging.

With a patient voice, he told me how he reached New Madrid the night before the hanging and found a carnival atmosphere. He said the bars were packed with people from Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky. They came to see two men meet their maker for murder. He said the next morning there would be food vendors selling to the spectators.

He told me how he had spent the entire night with the two condemned prisoners, the sheriff sanctioning some sort of a vigil in the jail.

I asked him what they talked about. He answered more with what they didn't say. He told me there was no mention of the crime or the trial. Nor was there anything said about the situation the two men found themselves in. They spoke only of things and places far away. In their last hours on earth, the two hard-bitten killers sought the comfort of quiet conversation. They talked the way two elderly matrons might chat over tea.

He told me that just after the sun came up the next morning, in front of a hushed crowd, the condemned men were led to the gallows. In a backhanded example of efficient jurisprudence, he said the pair shed their mortal coils and their remains were interred before the sun went down that day. After the hanging, the man in the fedora made his way back to Cape Girardeau and started what had been a 30-plus year career with the Southeast Missourian by the time I met him.

The fedora man finished his story, his lunch and went back to work. I had just had my first taste of shock and awe. For the last 40-some years I've often pondered what insight this story offered into human mortality. (It wasn't until I found myself in the waiting room of a hospital oncology department chatting with a bunch of other old men that I finally understood.)

I think my few weeks at the Southeast Missourian left a greater impression on my post-adolescent mind than the four years at SEMO. It was a first taste of the real world offered by a cadre of very nice people whom I shall always remember.

John Bennet is a former employee of the Southeast Missourian. He lives in Bellevue, Wash.