It started out innocently enough, playing pool with my friend Margaret talking about getting a hobby. Next thing you know, I'm en route to a scrap metal place in Burien and before you can say "dingbat" I am the owner of a tabletop letterpress machine. As my Mom said to me "this is how your father wound up with the pipe organ..."

They say that freedom of the press is for those that own them. Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha. There is a big press and a small press. The big one is Margaret's, the small one is mine. The big one was brought here from Boston before the Panama Canal was dug. It travelled around Cape Horn by boat.

The gears on the presses turn so smoothly, it is hard to remember that they were built back before electric power. The big press is retrofitted with an electric motor, making it a supreme finger-biting machine. The man who was selling them had just sold trays and trays of metal type to an antique dealer. Now I will have to pay antique prices if I want to make anything more than potato prints with my press.

The presses were in two different rooms of this large scrap metal place. There was a ten year old boy there in coveralls who probably should have been in school. I saw a foot-powered band saw and some things I didn't recognize.