Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2017-31

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IN THIS ISSUE

• A young Taiwanese girl´s desire to wed a Frenchman is honoured
• Tom Williamson has some suggestions on how to stay young at heart
• For want of something from my readers, here is the story of my apprenticeship
• Shirley Conlon forwards the story of a calendar using senior models
• Tom Telfer sends statistics for 1917, one hundred years ago
• Sites are suggested by Tom and the editor

Alain Fontaine in Ile de France, France, writes in Heroic Stories about

HONORING HER CHOICE

Seventeen years ago, I was a young man with an open mind and a goal: to go to Asia, first to Taiwan and learn Chinese, then to Japan and learn Japanese. I figured that already knowing French and English, I would be on top of the world.

I first went to Taiwan and started to learn Chinese, but soon my plan went astray: I met a Taiwanese girl. It wasn´t exactly love at first sight, but after a few weeks, I did start to like her very much. She was beautiful, lively and outgoing, the opposite of me, who at that time was in fact shy and a bit bland.

We dated for a couple of months, but she got tired of me tagging along with her and her friends, some of whom must have asked what she was doing with a guy so different from herself. One day she called to say that it was better for us not to go out together for awhile. I can´t say the news shattered me. I just went back to my student life at the Taipei International House with the other fellows who lived there and that was OK.

Then four or five months later, she called again. She wondered if I would like to go bowling with her and a friend. This time, it was a totally new start for us. Maybe I had changed in those few months, maybe being able to speak much better Chinese I had better ways to communicate with her.

We started a stable relationship, eventually got married, and are now the proud parents of three wonderful children. I never really wondered why she had called me again to ask me out after dropping me. In fact, I found out only a few years after we got married.

The reason behind the call was my mother-in-law to be. She asked her daughter: "What happened to that nice, quiet young Frenchman? You know, if you want to pick a foreigner to go out with, he is a good pick."

You see, when my mother-in-law was young, she fell in love with somebody different. She was Taiwanese, he a Mainland Chinese who had arrived in Taiwan from China with the Kuomingtang retreating army. At that time, over forty years ago, Mainlanders were often despised by the Taiwanese, for many reasons. So when my mother-in-law decided to marry a Mainlander she had difficulty convincing her family to accept her choice. She luckily had the support of one of her older brothers, who managed to convince her parents.

Later she promised herself that she would never go against her daughters´ choices when it became their time to get married. Too often, parents don´t remember that they were once young people needing freedom to find their own way. My mother-in-law did remember, and honored this daughter´s desire to marry a foreigner. I adore her every day for that, and will use her example as my children grow.

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Tom Williamson shares these suggestions on

HOW TO STAY YOUNG

1. Try everything twice. On one woman´s tombstone she said she wanted this epitaph: "Tried everything twice. Loved it both times!"

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down. (Keep this in mind if you are one of those grouches!)

3. Keep learning: Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever.... Never let the brain get idle. "An idle mind is the devil´s workshop." And the devil´s name is Alzheimer´s!

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath. And if you have a friend who makes you laugh, spend lots and lots of time with him/her.

6.. The tears happen: Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life is ourself. LIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it´s family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don´t take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county, to a foreign country, but not to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

11. Forgive now those who made you cry. You might not get a second chance.

And if you don´t send this to at least four people - who cares? But do share this with someone.

Remember: Lost time can never be found. Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

Long before modern technology changed the craft forever, I was a printer,

A WOMAN IN A MAN´S TRADE

When I graduated from high school, the war was in its second interminable year and all the young men had long ago signed up, leaving no-one to begin an apprenticeship in the local printshop. Recommended by my high school principal for my "neatness, practicality, and methodicalness" (not for my brains nor brawn, obviously) I was given a job by Peter Campbell and his son, Don, who owned the small weekly newspaper, The Salmon Arm Observer.

During the year it took for the last apprentice to finish his time and become a journeyman, I did odd jobs - everything from sweeping the floors and the sidewalk in front to sending out the bills, with the occasional reporting of a Women´s Institute meeting, or rewriting of an account of a local wedding or afternoon tea. One of my most trying assignments was to listen to Mr. Campbell tell stories of his youth in a brogue so thick I could only pretend to understand. He was a delightful old gentleman and I liked him very much, but it was still a trial to talk to him.

At the end of the year, I became the first woman apprentice anyone in the trade in British Columbia had ever heard of. I was sworn into the ITU, the International Typographical Union, "the biggest and best union in North America." Like the old hot metal printing, that union has now gone the way of the dodo.

I started at a salary of $7.00 a week. Every six months for the next five years I received another $2.00, so that by the end of my time I was earning $25.00 a week. Those were less expensive years, but if I had not been living at home I could not have survived on my wages.

It was a good thing I was built low and sturdy because the work was heavy and dirty. We worked with hot metal (a mixture of lead with some additive), an echo of the early days in the trade when the average lifespan of a printer was 28 years.

Much of the type that went into the newspaper was cast on the Linotype, a machine with so many moving parts that people would stand and watch, fascinated by its complexity. Those machines are museum pieces now, but in those days it was the fastest way of setting type, and over the next few years it became my special domain.

A number of sizes and fonts of type were housed in metal cases which fitted onto the top of the Linotype, and while most type was the size and font which appears in newspapers still, there were heads to set, and different types for advertisements and printing jobs, which entailed changing these magazines. They were heavy and awkward, but it never occurred to anyone (me included) that someone else should lift them for me.

The Linotype was not infallible, and if the interface where the hot lead was forced onto the recessed type faces was not tight, hot metal would squirt out of the lockup, often splashing the operator before he could move out of the way. Cleaning up one of those messes meant chipping off the solidified lead which had coated all the moving parts. There were no machinists in town, so we had to cope with the problems ourselves.

In addition to operating the Linotype, we set type by hand from a variety of trays which held fonts of all sizes and designs, from large wooden letters to tiny letters used for business cards or wedding invitations. The type was laid out in these cases in individual boxes, with lower case letters arranged at the bottom and capitals at the top - which is where the designation of upper and lower cases came from. The worst part of hand- set type was putting it away again, and we avoided it for as long as we could. The type would be tightly wrapped with string and stored on shelves (in case we needed it again), but eventually we would need it for another job and would have to sort it out into the appropriate boxes.

Headlines and larger type for ads were set by hand, but the stories were set on the Linotype. The "lines of type" were lead slugs set to the desired length, about half an inch high, with reversed type on top. (This is where we learned to read upside down and backward.) These slugs were arranged in columns, which were transferred to iron frames which rested on large slabs called stones. The type was fitted into the frames so tightly that the whole thing could be lifted and carried downstairs to the press. On rare occasions, they were not properly tightened and the whole thing fell onto the floor, which is where the expression "printer´s pi" came from.

The iron frames, or chases, were the size of tabloid newspapers, and four of them would fit on the big flatbed press downstairs. The flatbed was literally a flat piece of metal on which the frames were arranged, and it moved back and forth under a huge cylinder, which carried individual sheets of newsprint down onto the type and out the other side. Feeding the press was a dreary job, and sometimes a very hot one, flipping one sheet at a time onto the roller. The printed sheets went through an automatic folder, which turned out about a thousand eight-page newspapers every Wednesday.

Then, of course, the papers had to be delivered to the local stores, or wrapped and addressed and mailed. After the newspaper was finished, the type was washed with gasoline; Linotype material was thrown into a bucket to be carried downstairs to be remelted into pigs, and hand-set type was put away. For the rest of the week, which was 44 hours long, we worked on other jobs - letterheads, envelopes, hand bills, business cards, invoices, invitations ... anything and everything that local businesses and people needed. We were the only printers in town.

For five years, during which the war raged on and was eventually won, I worked five and a half days a week, studying my lessons in printing, while the foreman, Don Campbell, and I got out the newspaper and did all the other printing jobs that came in. Only during holidays did the ink stains come off my hands.

Toward the end of my apprenticeship, the paper was sold, and when I completed my time, the new owner told me he could not afford to keep two journeymen on staff full time, and I could not afford to work only three days a week. So ended my six years spent in that little shop.

Printing has changed since those far-off days, and the invention of the computer did much to hasten that change. The linotype is now a museum specimen, and paper newspapers have nearly disappeared, replaced by on-line news organizations. There are still some local newspapers, supported by ads for everything from soup to nuts, but I´ll guarantee they are not produced the same way we used to do it.

Shirley Conlon sends this story of

A CREATIVE CALENDAR FROM A RETIREMENT HOME

The Comitia Retirement Group in Essen, Germany, made what is probably the best calendar ever with a few of their seniors.

According to German press, 5000 calendars were printed and were given out to residents of the senior centre, along with relatives and staff.

The calendar models were interviewed about the project and said it was a ton of fun to dress up as their favourite actors. The shoot was done with professional stylists and photographers to make sure everything looked as cool as possible. The oldest senior involved with the calendar was 98 years old!

Here is the calendar for August:

"CABARET," starring Martha Bajohr, 77

Tom Telfer forwards these interesting statistics for

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

The year 2017 is the 100th anniversary of WWI. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some statistics for the year 1917:

The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.

Fuel for cars was sold in drug stores only.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only eight percent of the homes had a telephone.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year; a dentist, $2,500; a veterinarian, between $1,500 and $4,000; and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at home.

Ninety percent of all doctors had no college education! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were 14 cents a dozen. Coffee was 15 cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death were:? pneumonia and influenza?; tuberculosis;? diarrhea?; heart disease?, and stroke.

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn´t been invented yet.

There was neither a Mother´s Day nor a Father´s Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn´t read or write, and only six percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at local corner drugstores.Back then pharmacists said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health!"

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the entire USA.

Without retyping, this message could be forwarded to others in a matter of seconds. If you are old enough to appreciate that marvel, you´ll agree that it´s impossible to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years!

SUGGESTED SITES

Tom Telfer forwards this link to a BBC video of magic meerkat moments:

Tom also sends the URL for a GoodNewsNetwork story about a backyard pool that took 20 years to build, and became a national destination:

"Game of Thrones" helps rescue a farm with uncommon animals in Ireland:

Mason, an elderly feral cat with advanced kidney disease, loves playing with kittens:

Many families in the world do not have access to clean water. This Aquaduct cleans four gallons of water using a type of bicycle, which filters water while it is being ridden from a source:

Al Gore talks about his new film, "An Inconvenient Sequel," which ends with a victory for humanity:

This Leamington, Ont., Anglican church opens its door to Muslim worshippers: