My sister-in-law mentioned something from years ago – a travel newspaper I used to publish called The Travel Examiner. I did it for two years. I can’t believe that she remembered it and remembered the name, it was so long ago.

I was thinking of my old boss Ron Miller just last week. He got me started in the newspaper and comics business. He was an insistent man. I remember I got a call early one summer morning, I think I was off from college, he wanted to meet me, he asked me to come into the newspaper that day. I had sent him my comics and was all excited that I would get my comics published in his newspaper – actually newspapers – he owned a slew of them.

I went in and it turned out he wanted me to design ads in the production department. He sat me down and gave me a small ad to create, it was probably the size of a business card. I had never done this before and it took me quite awhile. He said to me, “It’s costing me more to pay you than the ad is worth!” And I told him I wasn’t there for that!  But I ended up getting the job and that put me on my start.

I remember years ago he told us about the newspaper pages come out as one piece, something called pagination. We stood there in wonderment at what he was saying. Back then we used razor blades and big large Compugraphic and Varityper typesetting machines. There was even just one machine that made headlines. That’s the machine that did headlines in the photo. We did everything separately and pasted it all together, using a waxer, or waxing machine. Where the photos went is where we placed red boxes and the camera-man and stripper would strip in the photos separately. So we could not imagine a page coming out as one whole piece when he explained that to us.

I published many comics in the newspapers, I learned the printing and newspaper business from Ron and it gave me a good life all these years as I started my own business and printed many publications and other things for people over the years, including school newspapers and such.

I was thinking about The Travel Examiner and remembering that after two years I had to shut it down because Ron and others at the newspaper plant gave me a hard time. I felt it was jealousy at the time – you know, that they didn’t want competition, but now I am remembering what happened – for two years – once a month, they printed the paper for me, which was actually a sort of travel magazine on newsprint –  and I never once paid for that! I had like 20,000 or 25,000 issues a month printed for free. He never billed me, and me being a stupid kid, never expected to be billed. I guess I thought it was a perk of the job, you know, working at the newspaper plant. But I don’t think he ever explained what happened and he just stopped printing. I ended up sending the stuff to the Naples Star on the west coast of Florida for a bit, but that got old and I ended the newspaper.

I remember one time Ron called me over to his house.  I went over and he took me out back. He was so proud, out in his backyard, surrounding the pool, sitting against the hedges was THE MIAMI NEWS – the actual blue 10 foot high letters! It must have been 1990 because if I remember right, The Miami News stopped publishing at the end of 1989. So there they were – the actual letters from the building! He loved newspapers that much, and so did I.

Ron is gone now, but I still know his kids who are my age, they still run the newspapers today.

I have all the issues of The Travel Examiner somewhere, I think in my spare room and also I think there are issues at my parents’ house.