Another Potrero Hill journalist

Pub date July 31, 2006
SectionBruce Blog

Bob Rezak, a journalist for many years and a Potrero Hill native, chimes in with this tale:

Your item on the 13 year old publisher makes me think there is something in the air on Potrero Hill that causes the veins of youngsters to be infused with printer’s ink.

I was 13, perhaps even 12, when I started producing my own newspaper on Potrero Hill (18th and Kansas). But the circulation was limited to family members.

I produced headlines by tracing letters from a stencil that contained the alphabet. Stories were “typed” on a toy typewriter made of tin (no plastic in those days). The instrument did not have a keyboard. The letters were on a wheel that you had to spin to the right letter, then press a button that tipped the letter over a felt pad and then impressed the image on paper. It was a painstaking process. Letter by letter, word by word. It took hours. But I did not know any differently. It must have been a little like the way Guttenberg operated. But the more papers I produced (single copies), the more convinced I was, even at that early age, that I wanted to be a reporter. Of course, my stories were about family activities–my dad painting the house, my brother getting engaged–that sort of thing.

It must have been good reading. I recall them all laughing. My sister -in-law still has some editions but will not relinquish them to me or anyone else.

Maybe that is for the better.