Telling The Truth?

The hardest thing is telling the truth. That's the prompt I chose for our fledging Potter County writing group in early October.

Go for the jugular I heard writing guru Natalie Goldberg tell me and the other 1,000 or so writers from across the world as she smiled secretively from my computer screen. Tell the truth.

But when does the truth come as self-indulgence - that sin of sin in my Puritan background. Puritans with their stern black clothing and even sterner rules. Johanna characterized our family as such long ago when she was new to this part of the world and to this particular family. And I remember that.

Truth telling in my writing - thoughts not self-indulgent but rather self-aware – not only the sparkling, fuzzy, warm things - but the dark, gray, sharp, icy things. Good thoughts and bad thoughts.

Again, Natalie's voice, "No bad, no good. Feel free to write the shittiest prose or poetry as the scribbles pour out on the page. Keep the hand moving." She also talked about the hardest part, removing the self- censor, the editor, the little demon sitting on your shoulder begging for attention as he (and it is a he!) tells me "you suck, that's crap, you're kidding yourself if you think you're a writer."

Looking back at files of my writing - those typewritten - yes typed on a typewriter and it needed a new ribbon - on newsprint. Some of was good - quite good - and some of it was ghastly - truly shitty and I'm the judge. That's my truth.

And if we don't tell our truth who will?

And what if I don't want to write about pain or sadness or frustration, disappointments and anger? Naming and recognizing those emotions, feelings, thoughts. If I don't and if nobody does, each of us is alone in those same things.  

It's hard to come to any kind of comfort with this truth at this time, in this place - in this United States of America. 

Linotype

As we planned my mother's memorial service, I knew I would tell about the years we spent working together at our family's newspaper. I didn't know exactly how I would frame it and in the weeks between her death and the arrival of our far-flung family for the ceremony in her church, I struggled with how to tell the story.

But just two days before the service, words began to flow. 

Since my mother has died, several have related to me that they first met her when on a tour of the local newspaper office. It was common for Camp Fire Girls and Cub Scouts to plan a visit the local newspaper. Kids would follow their leaders through that old swinging door back into what we all called 'the back room' and there would be this little lady, perhaps clad in her infamous orange and white striped pants, an inkstained apron tied behind her back and wearing that big smile.

She was a linotype operator. Linotype you ask? It’s just what it says - a machine that produces a line of type. It was a giant contraption and she sat in a rolling chair before the complicated keyboard. Her fingers flew across the keys accompanied by the clickety clack of the pullies and other mysterious innards of the machine. She’d press the lever with her right arm and soon a lead slug – line of type – would magically drop into the tray. And that was how the type you’d read each week in the newspaper was produced. Week after week, year after year.

From the time I was in elementary school, my mother walked those six blocks to work every day at a job she loved. She took great pride in mastering the intricacies of the linotype, loading the big magazines of brass matrixes that made up a font onto the machine, tinkering with whatever needed just the right touch to function. I can still see her on that worn-out rolling chair, her legs neatly tucked to one side, her feet clad in her Hush Puppy oxfords, She worked five and one-half days a week, and often going back to work in the evening on Mondays and Tuesdays, after fixing dinner for the seven of us. No take-out at the Heimel house!

As a child I was resentful when my mother went to work and I believed the only reason she was hired was because her father owned the newspaper. Those men in the print shop had to put up with her because she was the boss’s daughter. I wanted her to have a lady’s job– maybe in an office. It was embarrassing to have a mother who worked with the men in a dirty old print shop.

It was when I went to work at the newspaper - likely hired exactly because I was a family member - that I discovered a side to my mother that I had never imagined. She was the one knew just how everything worked and she was the one with the answers. I quickly came to realize that she more than held her own as the mechanical superintendent in the back room of the Enterprise. What a foolish girl I had been! 

I cherish those years spent working at the newspaper with my mother. She taught me how to design an ad or a pamphlet or even a book and how to mark up an ad for the typesetters. There were rules of typography– rules such as never use all upper case italics and, for heaven’s sake, don’t use every available typeface in the same document! I learned how to set my own type - not on the linotype but on the newfangled phototypsetting equipment. And pasteup – keeping all those lines of type straight!

Then there was proofreading, a special skill to spot the mistakes - the typos. Those of us in the business would always be just a little horrified when one found its way past all scrutiny and onto the printed page.

Though I’ve been long retired from using those skills learned from my mother at a paying job, I still use them. As a matter of fact, the funeral program you are reading today was my creation and yes, she was with me as I selected the fonts, decided about placement of the photo and other graphics and put everything together in an easy-to-read document that does the job it needs to.

She was also with me when I spotted the typographical error. I probably should have just thrown the pages away and reprinted but no - knowing how my mother was loathe to waste anything - I decided to let it stand.

Yes, I have learned the lessons well.