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Printers collect low-tech 'Eighth Wonder of the World' . . . So, impressed? By
Kendal Bates
Keith W. Watkins' 1936 Linotype typesetter looks like an H.G. Wells time-machine. And when you consider the 1831 Otis Tufts press, the 1860-70 Gordon self-inking presses and the 1950 Multilith that keep the Linotype company, the time-machine comparison seems extremely appropriate. Watkins was born in 1926 in Cache Valley. He has always loved printing. When he was 10, he completed his first printing job . . . club-membership cards for his Junior G-Man "Gang." "When he got mad at them (the gang members)," recalls LaVona, Keith's wife, "he took their G-Man cards away." Watkins made the cards on a small, rotary toy press courtesy of Santa Claus. His first "real printing press" was a 3-by-5-inch Kelsey Hand Press. With this machine he churned out postal card water bill imprints for Nibley. This first "real printing job" was provided by an elementary school teacher who wanted to encourage the young entrepreneur. Watkins recalls his excitement for printing in those days. "I would read all the printing catalogs I could get my hands on. I knew the approximate cost and shipping weight of every item in every catalog." In 1942, Watkins began working for the Herald Journal. "If you want to learn something, you go to where the teachers are," he says of his choice of employment. The start of his printing career was put on hold for three years when Watkins served in World War II as a marine. He buried his "treasures" - the printing catalogs and an old .38-caliber pistol- in the dirt floor of his mother's basement before he left to war. He finished the war in the Pacific campaign and stayed almost a year in China as a peacekeeper. When he got home, someone had stolen his "treasure," but that and the interruption of war didn't dampen his printing spirit. "After the war my old boss had a Linotype for me to run at the Herald Journal," he says, "but the machine needed a spring, and parts were scarce because of the war." So Watkins became a plasterer or "hod carrier" to make money. In 1947 Watkins" friend put him in the awkward position of meeting a girl. "I was quite shy, to put it mildly," he says, "We were waiting around at some place and I thought we should be moving along, but my buddy kept stalling." Watkins' buddy had arranged a "chance" meeting with his girlfriend and LaVona. "Two young fillies walk in and the rest is history." LaVona thought she'd give Keith a try. "I grew up on a farm and swore I'd never marry a farmer," LaVona says, " so I married a printer." "LaVona is a hard worker," Watkins says of his wife. He tells a newlywed story of helping LaVona's parents with their sugar beet fields. "I wanted to show her and her dad that I could work hard too," recalls Watkins, "We were topping beets and I was working and sweating and I thought I was moving right along. "When I looked up to see where LaVona was, she was way ahead. Three to one." In 1950, the beet fields became a distant memory when Watkins went to work for the Cache American, an old weekly newspaper. He and his wife also started a part-time print shop of their own. Watkins knew that he wanted to do something a little less monotonous than printing news. "It's kind of like canning peas," he says, "You get tired of seeing the same things over and over. I wanted to print different things. I liked the art form of printing." So LaVona would look at the wedding ads in the paper and go the brides about ordering wedding announcements. This part-time work had the potential to blossom into a full-time company in 1966, when the Watkinses were thinking about buying a 29-inch Webendorfer press. It was a huge decision for the Watkinses because the press was in Portland, Ore., and it was very expensive. "We always counseled together," says Keith. "If she had bad vibes, we stayed away from it," he adds. She had good vibes about the Webendorfer, the decision was made, and Watkins Printing was born. Keith's oldest son Dennis says that the purchase of the Webendorfer took his father, "from the small leagues to the big time." Keith says the Webendorfer was like a kindred spirit. "Keith could run the Webendorfer and get it so fine-tuned," LaVona recalls, "Then he would leave for a day and someone else would run it and it would be off again until Keith ran it again." The years passed and the Webendorfer was replaced by other, more modern machines. It was put into storage until finally it had to go. Keith recalls, as if remembering a fond, childhood pet, telling one of his workers to take the press away while he was out fishing so he wouldn't have to see it go. Watkins Printing grew through the years to a regional company with a substantial number of employees. Keith and LaVona's numbers also grew. There were five children in the family and all grew up around the print shop, learning the trade of their parents thoroughly. Unlike his dad, Dennis didn't have a natural love of printing. He remembers running a press when he was 8 years old. "It wasn't fun anymore," he recalls, "It was work." But the entire family contributed to the success of the business and today, the "indentured servants," as Dennis liked to call himself and his siblings, now own and operate Watkins Printing with Dennis as the president and majority stockholder. Keith and LaVona Watkins ran the company until 1991 when they "died" and went to old- printers" heaven -- the antique printing-shop next to their house in Providence. "We have created an old printer's play pen," LaVona says. "It really is junk compared to the modern, high-tech world," Keith says, "but we can still print when the electric power fails." The Watkinses have traveled far and wide to assemble their impressive collection. They have machines from Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Kansas. They've spent over $27,000 for the antiques, but have repaired each one to working order, either by "scrounging" parts from other machines or making new parts from scratch. Each press is operational and each historical. The Otis Tufts presses are similar to the "Smith-Improved" (no connection to Joseph Smith) press that printed the first run of the Book of Mormon in 1830. Keith's Otis Tuft is shaped like a giant acorn and he'll show you where the machine's frame finally cracked from the pressure of thousands of impressions. These old machines are made from cast iron and weigh about 2,000 pounds. The Linotype was called the "Eighth wonder of the world" by Thomas Edison. Keith gives demonstrations of how the Linotype quickly sets type by shuffling and reordering letters at the command of "typewriter keys." Compared to setting the type by hand, the Linotype was an innovation that sped up the printing process immensely. Keith and LaVona welcome tours and they can be found in their shop, printing modern wedding napkins, using the old presses. When you step into the shop and see the old machines both of flesh and metal, you might take a journey to print shops of old with Keith at the controls of the Linotype/H.G. Wells time machine. It's a great ride.
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