Hot Type, Cold Reality

Summary:
From the book, "Break Out: Finding Freedom When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold," a modern literary memoir of 51 short stories about what it means to be presumed different.

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"Life is the game that must be played:
This truth at least, good friends, we know;
So live and laugh, nor be dismayed
As one by one the phantoms go."
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ballad by the Fire

The poster was the first thing I saw as I walked into the men's restroom.

The blonde stood there at the urinal, her backside to her intended audience, in calf-length black boots; tight, black leather mini-skirt; and red, free-flowing blouse. With both hands in front of her, she looked down into the drain and appeared to be urinating just like the man three urinals to her left.

Her male counterpart, brawny and dark-haired, duplicated her stance. Dressed in khakis and red-and-blue striped shirt, he glanced at her out of his right eye, unruffled but curious.

The four-color poster of this unisex restroom scene was carefully taped to the off-white concrete block and covered the wall above the restroom's two urinals, stained brown with a continual trickle of rusty water and years of haphazard cleaning.

As I stood there at the urinal with my face six inches from the woman's perfectly proportioned thighs, I found the copyright in small print at the right-hand, lower corner of the four-color poster: Calco Productions 1965.

It was my first day on the job and my first trip to the men's restroom at the central office of Heartland Dairies at Prairie Center, a rural area of the Badger State our human resources manager, I later learned, liked to call "the armpit of Wisconsin."

I wondered who had placed the poster in the men's room. But, I didn't ask.

And, I wondered what Lonnie, the receptionist with melting blue eyes and a body the men in the office ogled over, thought of the poster. Or, maybe she didn't know.

Behind closed doors but just 15 feet from Lonnie's desk, the poster daily reinforced the silliness which with the male employees probably viewed the women's movement that was taking shape throughout the country.

"Mr. Foreseth is not at his desk right now," Lonnie answered the telephone. I didn't take much stock in that exchange until I heard the women refer to Mr. Harland, Mr. Sands etc. during their coffee break.

Lonnie and the other clerical staff workers -- all female -- were losing a silent battle within the second-story, brick office of a pre-World War II milk drying plant, and they didn't know it.

In the hallway, I recognized Boyd, production director, as he slipped out of his office with another man behind him.

"This is Jim Hasse, who will be working with Sid Turner on our newsletter," Boyd announced, as he introduced me to Carl, chairman of the board. "Jim has done what most of us haven't had a chance to do -- graduate from college. He took journalism at the UW-Madison."

I shook Carl's hand, a broad, callused palm developed through years of labor as a farmer.

"Hello," I said. "I'm very glad to be here."

I chose a string of wrong words and they came out garbled.

Carl didn't understand but covered the awkward moment quite eloquently. "Well, welcome to Heartland Dairies. We'll be watching what you do with the Wisconsin Report."

I went back to my manual typewriter and my desk, a folding card table outside the office's coffee room. The room, large enough to sit eight, had cookies, candy, and coffee. But it was an area, I noticed, men in management didn't visit.

The deadline for the October, 1965, Wisconsin Report was less than a week away. I shuffled through the stack of dairy magazines, daily newspapers and USDA reports Sid had given me to scan before our visit to the local newspaper office, where the newsletter was printed.

Half way through the stack, I discovered a joke book for speakers, yellowed and tattered, that various people had apparently saved through the years. I quickly ran through the pages to see if it contained anything appropriate as a filler for the upcoming newsletter.

I came up empty because most of the jokes poked fun at women, African Americans or people with disabilities -- in about that order.

But, I decided to keep the little book, which was dated 1956, with the hope I could use some of the material by changing the characters involved but retaining the essence of the humor. It would be difficult but could keep my creative juices going.

Sid and I drove into town where he introduced me to Wally, the local printer who also published the weekly newspaper. A graying man with a crew cut, Wally was still using hot type for his newspaper and the Wisconsin Report. That shouldn't have surprised me.

I had looked at the previous month's newsletter and wondered why the printing was so poor. Two photos, each showing a 4-H'er with a prized calf at the local fair, stretched across two columns of the first page, but they were crooked, not quite perpendicular to each other.

"A little drinking problem there," Bob told me on the way back to the office. "But, catch him when he's sober, and he does a pretty good job."

Through college, I had dreamed of working in an advertising agency on Chicago's Wacker Drive. Instead, I ended up in the "armpit of Wisconsin." Was this the fate of a person with a disability who had graduated with honors from the UW-Madison's School of Journalism?

It would be easy to show improvement in the newsletter after just a couple of months. Or, was that expecting too much? I didn't realize it then, but my education had just begun.

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