Reminiscing on 32 years with The Sun
dinosaurs roamed the earth is that they ask you to write a column for
the 70th anniversary section.
I guess it's about time I paid my dues.
I could have written a column for the 65th anniversary, and the 60th,
the 55th and the 50th. This is not to forget the 45th and the 40th.
The 35th year I wouldn't have made because I was a graduate student at
the University of Cincinnati at the time, working on being a professor
— or perhaps to put it more accurately, working on not having to go to
work.
By The Sun's 40th anniversary, though, I'd been here for a couple of
years and was writing this column — at the time called All Points West
— which except for a couple of occasions when I took some time off has
been run constantly since 1973 in the pages of The Sun.
During the course of those 32 years I've lived in any number of
Naperville apartments, gotten married to a woman so wonderful she even
puts up with me, bought a house, had heart surgery at Edward Hospital,
been an adoptive father to two cats, and more often than not thoroughly
enjoyed both my work and living in Naperville.
During that time, Naperville has had five mayors, five city managers,
more council members than I can count, five park district executive
directors but only two police chiefs and three fire chiefs. I guess
cops and firefighters don't wear out their welcome as much as the
others.
The theme of this special section in honor of The Sun's 70th is
Washington Street, which has certainly seen its share of changes over
the years.
In a way, this theme is appropriate because The Sun's first office was
on Washington Street, long before it was on Jackson Avenue and even
longer before we moved to our refurbished former Ogden Avenue printing
plant.
I don't go back quite as far as The Sun's Washington Street days, but I
did work for a great many years out of the Jackson Avenue office, which
is now where William Sonoma and The Pottery Barn are.
I really enjoyed working downtown and miss the days when I could walk
to lunch at The Lantern. On other days I would go to places that are no
longer there anymore, like Cock Robin, Fidler's and, if I was feeling
flush, Washington Square (now Clara's at the Square).
When The Sun was a weekly, with a publication day of Thursday,
co-publisher Eva White and Irene Dieter — who worked in page makeup and
was a good friend of Harold and Eva White — would have lunch once a
week at Washington Square.
When I first came to Naperville in the late 1960s, there was, if I
recall correctly, one stoplight in the city. It was at Washington and
Ogden — the four corners of which were home to three service stations
and a smorgasbord restaurant.
I first worked at The Sun over the summer of 1972 as a photographer. We
had one of those hundred-year storms that occur every few years around
here and I got to take pictures of Naperville firefighters and a
civilian or two rescuing some teenagers who had canoed down the west
branch of the DuPage River, which was more like a raging torrent than
its usually placid self. The canoe went over and they got caught up in
low-lying tree limbs. Thanks to the rescuers, they didn't drown.
At the end of the summer I went back to graduate school, where I had a
commitment to teach for a year starting in the fall of 1972. Over that
year I wrote a photography column for the newspaper, and then returned
to The Sun full-time in the summer of 1973.
In addition to still doing some photography, I spent my early years at
The Sun covering virtually every type of local government meeting,
covering the police beat, writing a column on a weekly basis, and
filling out my weekends by reviewing local theater productions.
The Sun was a weekly newspaper at that point, and didn't become a
twice-weekly until 1978. Later, we added an additional issue and then
finally became the six-day daily you read now. Someday soon I would
hope we will add that seventh issue and come out on Saturday as well as
the other six days.
More than anything else, newspaper technology has changed dramatically over the course of the years.
When I started we had big, old, black metal Royal and Underwood typewriters and wrote stories on half sheets of newsprint.
The clatter of people typing was a constant sound in the newsroom and
the coming of computerization made newsrooms all over a lot quieter.
In the old days it was permissible to smoke at your desk and though I
did not smoke (and still don't) we had a few people who puffed on
cigarettes as they worked.
Page makeup was done by hand then, and we waxed long strips of type and
photos turned into screen prints and pasted them on to pages.
Every once in a while a piece of type would end up on the floor where
it would stick to the sole of my shoe and I'd end up trying to find
some little story while blissfully unaware that I was wearing it.
Once a week, page makeup made for a nice change from the writing and
editing routine, though I did, as a registered klutz, have to learn not
to cut myself with the scissors, paper cutter, and razor-blade knife
that were the tools of the trade. Every once in a while I'd manage to
burn my hand on the waxer. At least the pica stick was more or less
safe, and it also made a good backscratcher.
Alas all of that is gone now, and stories are written and pages are
made up on computers using software programs with names like
QuarkXpress.
The advantage to typewriters is that they never crashed. On occasion I
would have to change the ribbon or clean the keys, but that was about
it.
Photography at The Sun is now all digital.
But when I started we used 120-roll film on cameras that made negative
black-and-white images that were 2 inches square or even larger.
I used 35 mm cameras in those days and eventually the newspaper changed as well.
One innovative device we had in the 1970s was a print processor in
which exposed print paper went into one set of rollers and came out
developed through the other side of the machine.
I stopped wearing a necktie in the darkroom after one day when I got
the processor stopped just as it was starting to pull my tie through
the rollers.
Too bad I wasn't holding those nice sharp scissors at the time or I could have just snipped the tie off.
Come to think of it, computers aren't entirely bad.
Commentary Editor Tim West's column is published on Tuesday, Thursday
and Sunday. Contact him at west@scn1.com or (630) 416-5290. His snail
mail address is 1500 W. Ogden Ave., Naperville, IL 60540.
7/17/05
