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The Granville Historical Society Oral History Project 2001 - 2002
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18) The Granville Times
Don W. Young and the Linotype Machine(Don D. Young) Dad (Don W. Young) learned the linotype and, if you’ve ever seen a linotype machine, it’s a kind of a Rube Goldberg contraption with all kinds of concentric wheels and pulleys and gears. Actually the basic linotype has not changed from the day it was invented until the day it was phased out. There were just improvements made in the way it operated but essentially it was the same machine. I can remember when I was a youngster maybe 8 years old, Dad was one of the few men in Licking County who knew the linotype machine inside and out, because he had been trained at the Mergenthaler Linotype School. So these other little country newspapers, like Pataskala and Johnstown, had linotype machines but they didn’t have anybody who could fix them when they got out of adjustment, and when the linotype’s out of adjustment, it just doesn’t work. So they would call Dad to come and I can remember many times when we’d go over to Pataskala after supper at night, and Dad would start working on the machine. And there’d be some cussing and swearing. He always had to throw a few cuss words to make the adjustments take hold. Then about 9:00pm or so it would be working fine and we’d come home.
(Don D. Young) Dad and his brothers bought the Granville Times in 1927, but on paper and on the masthead of the newspaper, Kuss [ Henry Kussmaul ] was still listed as manager (although all he ever did was sit on the bench out in front.) At that time the 140 West Broadway was not part of the business. The entrance to the business was around on the side street at 105 North Prospect, which is Jay’s delivery entrance now. Kuss died in 1933 and Dad decided in 1934 to take over that front room had been empty for a couple years (it had been an electric store, I think, that went broke during the depression). He would move the office for the printing business to the back part of that front room, and put a small stock of office supplies in the front part of it. I can recall Mother saying, “I just wonder what Kuss would say if he walked in here and saw this.” As time went on, we added more office supplies, some stationery and school supplies and things like that.
Selling Books in the Cellar(Don D. Young) Then when I graduated from college, I didn’t realize I was going to get drafted right away. But I came back and decided that I would manage the store. Of course we kept expanding and adding this and adding that and taking more space. We just kept needing more space constantly. One day a fellow from the Doubleday Publishing Company came along and sold me a rack of paperback books. That got me into the book business. So we went from that one rack to the book store in the basement of the building. It was just a natural thing to call it the Book Cellar. My wife was always active in it with me, especially in selecting books. She always referred to it as her own private library, which it was. We very quickly learned to read a paperback by just opening it two thirds of the way so we didn’t crack the spine. And we had some of the greatest experiences in the world going to the book sellers’ conventions almost every year -- fascinating people that we met at those conventions, including Barry Goldwater, Martin Luther King and Ogden Nash.
Granville Times, the Newspaper(Don Young) My memory of the Granville Times newspaper was from about 1934 until it suspended in 1941. Dad hired what he referred to as an editor. The first one was Don Weaver who went on to become the editor of the Columbus Citizen Journal. Don graduated from Denison and went to work at the Granville Times when it resumed publication at the end of 1924. Then there was Jimmy Cox, who also was a Denison graduate and had worked for the Denisonian. Just prior to the time he came in as editor of the Times Jimmy had worked in the public relations department at Denison. So he was the editor for a couple of years. Then Mary Kay Short, (who we know now as Mary Kay Larimer), was editor of the Times until she met and married Alan Larimer around 1938. And from then on, Dad edited the thing himself. The paper never made any money, especially in the last few years because there was no staff to go out and sell the advertising. What advertising there was, was what walked in the door, because Dad had a printing business to run, besides the newspaper. He worked seven days a week. I can remember him saying’ to me, “You know, the only regret I have for my whole life time, was the fact that the years that I could have been making some money, I had to scratch like the devil just to pay the bills.” Of course, this was the 1930s and the time coming out of the depression. But he always felt that that was the time in his life that, if things hadn’t been bad financially, he could’ve made some money. |
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