“That’s what I like to see,” said Sun Printing employee Dan Guyer, laughing as he walked by, pointing out a large glob of thick, black print ink on my arm. I hadn’t noticed it; too busy changing the plate on the press for yesterday’s front page of The Evening Sun. Turns out, as I discovered later when my shift at the pressroom ended, that the ink wasn’t just on my arm, but smeared all down the front of me and on my face, too (I wondered why Guyer was laughing so hard). It looked like I lost a fight with a pair of shoe-polished binoculars. But, after a scrubbing with a little pumice soap and scarfing down a glazed donut in the break room, my ego didn’t feel as bruised.

That was my initiation into the club at our sister company on Borden Avenue. And it was all part of a day’s work in the pressroom.

Before Wednesday, I thought all the magic of the newspaper happened at my desk every morning. I had often wondered, sitting in my cubicle, hacking away at my keyboard, sometimes Googling my name to see if it got any hits, “What would this place do without me?” Little did I know that my role at The Evening Sun is minimal compared to what these guys do.