Another old gal lost

Another iron press, remnant of printing days gone by, will join her forebears in history at the end of the month. The Iola Register, heretofore printed in house, on that monstrous creature that devours half the length of the building, will jump on the bandwagon that most newspapers caught years ago, and begin having her printing outsourced, at the Lawrence Journal World. It was a somber meeting we were all called to. "It's like losing a family member," said Register Editor Susan Lynn. Lynn's family has owned The Register all but a few years of its existence. Printer Ron Helman had spent 33 years with "The Old Gal," and she was more than just a machine to him, he acknowledged. With just a year and a half to go until retirement, Helman will take on the duties of driver, hauling The Register from Lawrence back to her home town every day. It means a shift in hours, a shift from physical labor to seat-work, a shift from working with one crewman in a small crowd of comrades to being alone, on the road, every day. "Bless his heart," Lynn said of his decision to abide. For the rest of us, it has meant new deadlines, coming in earlier, trying to get our mental selves around a faster work pace. An afternoon paper, we had the luxury of coming to work in the morning, writing stories, designing pages and seeing them go to press. The metallic squawk of machinery squealed to a hault for press checks, and we could all glance at a copy of the news before it hit the newsstand. No longer. Now, that fresh-ink smell will belong to someone else. We'll get our papers when we get our papers, just like everyone else. Something of that feeling of belonging to a special club, of nurturing something and bringing it to fruition, will be gone. But, as the boss said, it is a good time, too. Color pictures for black and white. Extra pages and consistenty, day by day by day. A new look. More professionalism. Color. Still, it has been upheaval, and humans, by nature, avoid change. Goodbye Old Gal. I hope we throw you a heck of a wing-ding farewell.