“O.K.,” I said. “I’ll send you to the proper man at Merganthaler, the Linotype people. They’ll cut your mats. Then, if you want privacy and access to a Linotype, go see George Ronson. He runs a little country biweekly right here in town. For a fair price, he’ll turn his shop over to you for long enough for you to set your type.”
And that was that. Two weeks later, George Ronson and I went fishing on a Tuesday morning while the L.G.W.T.P. used George’s Linotype to assemble the weird-looking mats he’d just received by air express from Mergenthaler. George had, the afternoon before, showed the little guy how to run the Linotype.
We caught a dozen fish apiece, and I remember that Ronson chuckled and said that made thirteen fish for him because the L.G.W.T.P. was paying him fifty bucks cash money just for one morning’s use of his shop.
And everything was in order when we got back except that George had to pick brass out of the hellbox because the L.G.W.T.P. had smashed his new brass matrices when he’d finished with them, and hadn’t known that one shouldn’t throw brass in with the type metal that gets melted over again.
The next time I saw George was after his Saturday edition was off the press. I immediately took him to task.
“Listen,” I said, “that stuff about misspelling words and using bum grammar on purpose isn’t funny any more. Not even in a country newspaper. Were you by any chance trying to make your newsletters from the surrounding towns sound authentic by following copy out the window, or what?”
Ronson looked at me kind of funny and said, “Well—yes.”
“Yes, what?” I wanted to know. “You mean you were deliberately trying to be funny, or following copy out the—”
He said, ”
Come on around and I’ll show you.”