It’s hard to believe in this age of digital creation, but the church bulletin used to be created with a mimeograph.  The original model dad used was a messy machine.  Ink was poured into a drum.  The bulletin was typed on a stencil and the stencil was laid on the drum.  Paper was inserted on one end and a hand crank ran the stencil over the paper and out the other end came the finished project.

Dad didn’t like it that the ink bled on to the other bulletins, so we had to throw cardboard pieces between the bulletins.  We didn’t need video games to develop our hand-eye coordination, we got to throw cardboard pieces between inky bulletins on a hand-cranked mimeograph.

If that doesn’t sound like a Saturday night chocked full of fun, we usually got to watch dad tinker with the ink flow and the crank and listen to a few un-church like words at the machine.  After the bulletins were done, the machine had to be cleaned off with an alcohol product and we spent time with a bar of Lava soap scrubbing off layers of inky skin and trying to get the toxic smell out of our noses.

And today I click Print.