The summers were miserable after a 2-week Spring. The factory where all the huge presses were was NOT air conditioned, we did have fans. It would be 100 degrees outside and 110 in the pressroom, you wore a headband to keep the sweat out of your eyes at times. You woke up sweating in your bed in the summer.
Heat in the rooms was through steam pipes, which were turned OFF like 9PM or earlier, and didn't turn on until 5 or 6 AM. It was cold. I ended up with a penthouse corner room of the 107 Columbia Heights building, with an outstanding view of Manhattan from the Statue of Liberty way down the East River. The Twin Towers and Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges were my view. They were just finishing up the Towers when I got there. The following pictures were taken by getting on the roof directly above my room. My little Minolta, but took damn good pictures (slides).
about 1977
Entertaining the kids from my congregation in my Bethel room.
One view from my room
Pressroom boys: me, Tom Cabeen, Hoe operator, and Jim Rizzo.
When the Margaret Hotel was arsoned the night before it was to open because it was under code. All wood. The fire trucks could not put out the smoke for a WEEK because they couldn't get inside. The fire truck got embedded in the street under 3 feet of ice. Wind chill was 30 below zero. This building was about 50 feet from my window! The society later bought it and rebuilt it.
Out my right window: scroll to right to see Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, Twin Towers, Empire State Building, etc.
View from my room at sunset.
The Wood-Hoe was purchased by Nathan Knorr (3rd Watchtower President) at the peak of the 1975 fever. It was a prototype costing $1.6 million with three huge letterpress cylinders about 54" in diameter and 72" wide. It was designed to print 100,000 "Truth" books a day and was directly connected to a bindery upstairs. Chief Engineer (and formerly my roommate) Milan Miller was in charge of getting it going, but was away most of the time setting up presses in other countries. Eventually, I got the job.
The problem with the Wood-Hoe was that the cylinders were made up of magnetic, concentric rings that expanded and contracted so much during the course of the day (we had no air conditioning) that the printing looked like it was done with rubber stamps. Just webbing up the press took a case of books in paper, it was 70" wide and moved very fast. The press created such sway in the building when we ran it, the lathes in the machine shop on the floor below us could not keep register. The press was eventually sold to a low bidder in another country. After 1975, they had decided to print pretty books instead, as they could make much more money and woo in more people at the door. This was a monster press; two stories tall and 100 feet long. My baby! LOL
