I missed a deadline!
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I have been in the newspaper business since I was a little boy. The first job I ever had was cleaning up waxed paper off the floor. In return, my Dad, Max Gardner, would pay me with a shiny 50-cent piece. Next, I started helping insert the newspapers and then progressed through practically every position in the newspaper. I’ve been a pressman, a reporter, a salesman, a bookkeeper, an editor, a publisher, and yes, even a sweeper and toilet cleaner.
But there is one thing I have always been proud to say‚ “I’VE NEVER MISSED A NEWSPAPER DEADLINE!”
Come rain, sleet, snow, or hail, as long as I have been printing the newspaper, we have never missed one deadline. That changed last week. Mind you, I have been printing since I was a teenager, and well, that’s roughly 37 years. I have always made sure your newspaper left our printing plant on Tuesday.
For an extended period of time, we have been challenged by our old press folder. It has been on a temperamental streak for several months, and last week it decided to show me who was boss. I have always been able to fix any issue with our presses. I am actually on my third Goss printing press.
Do y’all remember the Ray Stevens song “Mississippi Squirrel Revival?” You know, “The day the squirrel went berserk, in the First Self-Righteous Church, in that sleepy little town of Pascagoula, it was a fight for survival, that broke out in revival, they were jumping pews and shouting hallelujah…”
That’s about how last Tuesday went, except it was in the sleepy little town of Baxley, Georgia, and I probably needed to find an altar after I shouted a few things at that folder.
Our folder basically exploded into many parts before lunch, so many in fact, that at about 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., I finally realized that I didn’t have all the parts needed to fix it.
At about that same time I realized that I was also too late to get my good buddy, Brent Armstrong, down at Florida Sun Printing in Callahan, Florida, to put our one last run (the front section) on to be printed. You might say‚ we were up the creek without a paddle.
I begrudgingly made the call that I have never had to make before: It is going to be tomorrow before we can get the newspaper finished and I sent everyone home. I missed a newspaper deadline for the first time in my life.
To all our readers, rest assured I don’t plan on this happening again anytime soon and I offer my sincere apology for the newspaper being a day late last week.
After a plate of turkey on Thursday, Amy and I hooked up the gooseneck trailer and headed out to Tupelo, Mississippi. It was a long trip and we finally rolled in to Baxley around 10:00 Friday night with what we hope will be a good replacement folder for our press. If not, I’m sure there will be some more shouting and repenting going on around the pressroom at The Baxley News-Banner.
I am thankful for my staff and their efforts, including my sons, Cole and Jacob, who helped get the old folder busted out this weekend. We will begin installing the newer folder on Monday and hopefully have it ready to go by next week. We will be calling on Brent and his staff again this week to help get this week’s issue out‚ ON TIME!
Thank you all for your understanding.
