Cyberfun brings back the good old days

Photo by Louis C. Stas, Wheeler Times

By Bill Patterson, TPA president, 2024-25

In September, a group of TPA publishers had some cyberfun reminiscing about “the good old days.”

It started with an email from Gladewater publisher Jim Bardwell. Like any good old East Texas newspaperman, he jump-started his computer, then beamed a report from behind the Pine Curtain to his ink-stained brothers and sisters across the Lone Star State. The missive was about Jim’s recent need for a straight edge — a need that inspired him to search for his trusty old pica pole.

Jim reported that he never located his pica pole, but he made do with an old Texas Press Association ruler, possibly a souvenir from a TPA convention in the days of yesteryear. Perhaps many of you still have a TPA ruler in your desk, too, possibly right beside your own pica pole.

Jim didn’t dwell on the magnitude of his loss, but the misplacement of a newspaperperson’s pica pole is a troubling development — even in this digital age when computers routinely handle chores such as measuring an ad or making a headline fit. Like his colleagues, Jim has not used a pica pole for its intended purpose in years. Nor has he missed using one. But for whatever reason, perhaps to measure a 1995 Kroger ad for old time’s sake or to underline something on a spreadsheet in red ink or neatly line up his empty coffee cups, on this occasion Jim apparently waxed nostalgic and wanted to use his pica pole. Grizzled veteran that he is, Jim knew that there’s no straight edge better than a pica pole to put one’s picas, dashes or ducks in a row.

Across Texas, from the mountains to the prairies to the ocean white with foam, Jim’s message set keyboards to clattering in the hushed way that keyboards clatter these days. Larry Jackson noted with pride that his brass pica pole was still handy. Richard Stone followed, saying he had a pica pole similar to Larry’s in his desk. Larry proudly responded that his old proportion wheel — a.k.a. “reduction” wheel — also stands guard in his desk, ever ready for an emergency resizing of a photo in the event a terrorist attack should fry the grid.

In Galveston, Leonard Woolsey wiped sunscreen off his well-tanned fingers to chime in from his keyboard. He wistfully suggested that when the “internet fad is over,” we’ll all need these old tools again.

Barbara Brannon took Throwback Friday to the next level, inviting everyone in the email discussion to drop in and visit the Texas Spur next time they’re tooling around the Greater Spur Metropolitan Area. Hermetically sealed and perpetually preserved in their cabinet in the dry heat of the Panhandle is an impressive collection of pica poles, proportion wheels, waxers, Letraset burnishers and numerous other hot- and cold-type artifacts to warm the cockles of a vintage news hound’s cold heart.

The discussion drifted to the “good old days” related to advertising. Many of us remember all the time we spent with our pica poles in hand, laying out pages and pages and double trucks and double trucks of Wal-Mart ads during those late nights and early mornings at the office getting those ads turned in. And morning after morning, scurrying to the post office in eager anticipation of the mail truck’s arrival from Bentonville.

The discussion moved Leonard to quaff down a cold Starbucks Megajolt and zap off a question to the group in cyberspace. He pecked on his keyboard briefly, checked the surf conditions, donned his Maui Jims, and hit send. The keyboard woke up the CPR, the CPR translated the keystrokes into code, the coded message zipped through fiber optic lines from Galveston to an overheated server farm in Williamson County, was diverted to a backup in Borneo, bounced skyward to an Elon Musk satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, then descended to the inboxes of widely scattered TPA members hunched over their keyboards exactly 37.5 milliseconds later.

The question: Should we create a TPA depository of items to preserve and celebrate such fond memories? Perhaps a display and exhibition at the TPA convention in Denton next summer?

That sounds like fun for everyone. Well, maybe everyone but the TPA staff. They would get the privilege of packing and hauling the collection to Denton and setting it up before taking it down and hauling it back to Austin. If you like the idea, get with Mike and let’s see what we might work out.

A word of caution, though: Make sure you can actually find the artifact you’d like to share before you call Mike. And don’t ship it C.O.D.