A Half Century of Service – 50 Years Ago This Month, The Barton Family Purchased The Record

In March 1976 Dick Barton, my fatherin- law, purchased the Fayette County Record from Bonner McMillion. He would be the 3rd owner and publisher of The Record since its beginnings in 1922.

When Papa B (as Charles Priebe used to refer to him) decided to buy his own paper, Dickie and I decided we would like to continue our newspaper careers as a family and go along with him.

The purchase of the newspaper was kept a secret until we moved into town. Both of our families bought houses in La Grange without anyone really knowing why we were moving to town. In 1976, things were very different. La Grange had very few realtors and very few houses for sale. I believe Dickie and I had a pick of only three houses in our price range. We picked the home on Franklin Street because we could afford it and we could remodel it to our own liking. In the previous four years we had moved six times due to school and jobs. I asked Dickie if he thought we could actually stay in one place for a while and he said yes. Be careful what you ask for – we lived in that same house for 38 years with many additions and remodels throughout the years.

Life in La Grange

Saturday morning was the time when everyone came to town and we opened the paper office and worked until noon when the whistle blew at City Hall and Fire Station complex. Fayette County folks were ready to conduct their weekly business on the square at the two banks, three grocery stores, two department stores, three ladies dress shops, three drug stores, two newspapers, car dealerships, men’s clothing store, furniture store, appliance store, bakery, meat market, barber shop, beauty shop and many others. Of course there was a movie theater with one screen and a bowling alley that hired people to stand behind the wall and set up the pins after the ball was thrown. We also had a choice of two grocery stores located a bit farther from the square.

My sister-in-law, Regina Barton Keilers was only 12 years old when we made the move to La Grange. Since her mother Nelda was teaching school in Rosenberg, she and Regina stayed there until the school year ended.

Regina is now the publisher of The Record after a distinguished local teaching career.

The Record came with a wonderful experienced staff who continued to work for us for many years. Charles Priebe, as I mentioned earlier was the editor. Lillie Sulak, whose father-in-law had started the newspaper, was our society editor. Aileen Loehr was a staff writer as well as other employees Jim Zuhn, Sharon Belota, Cathy Walla, Joyce Steinmann, Fred Karcher, and George Eilert. Don Hengst and James Roy Wessels ran the printing and office supply portion of The Record. The following year saw Don open his own business Hengst Printing just down the street.

Papa B was the new publisher, and Dickie became advertising manager. I was appointed to be the corporate bookkeeper doing all but accounts receivable. This is a job I’ve held for the 50 years we have owned the newspaper.

But back then all of the bookkeeping was done by hand. I entered figures into the double entry General Ledger with a pencil and eraser in case I made a mistake. Using a ten key adding machine, the numbers had to equal 0. Sometimes it took hours to find the three cents that I may be off. The first two years I worked full time at the newspaper doing the bookkeeping and “paste up” of the newspaper pages.

Back in the ‘70s we didn’t have computers, as we know it today. We had a Compugraphic machine which was “state of the art” at the time. It actually printed out the newspaper copy in one long continuous column. This was revolutionary in the newspaper business. You could change the font by switching out 24” filmstrips on a wheel and inserting it in the machine. We probably had about 12 different strips allowing us to change fonts and sizes.

Once these columns were developed and printed from this machine, they had to be dried and trimmed before placing through the waxing machine to enable it to stick on the page. The waxing machine was actually pretty functional. We bought wax in 12’ chunks and had to cut it into pieces, add to the heating well of the machine so it would melt. As the copy ran through the machine, wax would adhere to the back of the copy. One had to be careful not to get burned by the machine and keep the excess wax cleaned off of the wires. We had layout pages that were the size of an actual newspaper page. At the time, they were 8 columns wide and 21 inches tall. Newsprint sizes have changed over the years.

Advertisements were created on separate pages and cut out and waxed when finished. They were placed on the ad board. We made a “dummy” of the paper meaning all ads were drawn in on a miniature replica of the pages. My job was to paste up ads and place them according to the “dummy.” We used black construction paper to create a window for any photos that would run in the paper. All of our pictures were in black and white. Dickie bought film in bulk and rolled his own spools for the camera. He developed and printed all of the pictures in the darkroom. They had to be sized and made into a negative so it could be stripped into the black window created by the construction paper. I then began cutting and pasting pictures, headlines and stories from the copy board onto the pages sort of like working on a jigsaw puzzle. I enjoyed putting it all together.

After the pages were completed, we put them into the pass through window to the darkroom in our office. We had a huge page-size camera where a picture was taken of the page. I can simplify the rest of the process by saying we stripped the photos into the page negative, opaque the excess lines on the page and burned a metal plate (imprint of the newspaper) to send to the press. The box of plates was delivered to the press in Brenham where they were attached to the press and printed.

Computers and the internet gradually changed how the newspaper was created. Now everything is created on the computer and emailed to the press (we now print in Bryan).

All we have to do is go pick it up when it’s ready.

So as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our Barton family ownership of the newspaper, we want to thank you for being so supportive and faithful as readers and advertisers of The Fayette County Record. We hope to continue to serve you for many more years in the future.