An old-time favorite was, of course, the classified ad stating simply, 

     Nothing was promised at all - just a listing as to its being the "end time" as it were.  Never failed, said George, to yield pocket money at the very least.  I believe PL&R (Postal Laws and Regulations) now specifically  protect the "nifty challenged" from such fleecings.  Making "pocket money" incidentally was another fetish George had.  It was sort of  a hedge-your-bet-gambler's nostrum he played again and again through Life.  We shall meet it soon in another guise. 

    There was "double-bucks day" - favorite of the puzzle and contest crowd.  George and Ruthie had a  full-blown mail-order business here and employed many "nifties" of varying types - including none other than the famous Ubie Eyewerks who later rose to fame as Disney's Number One animator... They developed "rhebuses" for  magazine "fun pages".   They  designed crossword puzzles and solutions.  They developed countless contests, both for radio and for direct mail and magazine publishing.  They were one of the first to work out and promote the details of "China Nights", where local theaters gave away sets of cheap glasses and dishes to lottery and contest winners.

    “Double-bucks” by the way was a device to bunch contest entrants and keep them from dropping out of the race.  The way it worked was this:  those entered in some contest, say, might find that as they got down to the last few submissions (these usually appeared serially in magazines),  that they had to pay "fees" to stay in the race.  To prevent drop-offs at this stage, the contest operators would announce that all entries postmarked by a certain date, would be awarded double points for their submissions.  Now anyone who was at all seriously interested in the contest, was not going to miss out on these "free" points - so they would make sure their entries were in on time. 

     From the point of view of the contest operators, however,  no advantage accrued to anyone - for all received the same relative lift ( "a rising tide lifts all boats").  Further, double-bucks had the added benefit that it "bunched" receipt of the mail, with everyone getting in under the wire at the same time.  This meant  fewer trips to the post office to check the boxes... 

    It was, in short, a technique to "get your ducks in a row" and knock them all down at one time... 

    Kid contests were preferred over adult contests, too.  Adults "got sore" over "technicalities" that kept them from a coveted set of dishes or a new Ford coupe'.  They might (and did!) on occasion resort to potshots and other unsportsmanlike behavior.  Kids, however - win, lose or draw -  were a far more tractable lot.  Give 'em all bubble gum or Tootsie Rolls - as long as they got something, and no one ever got dangerously mad. 

    And so George regaled me and others for many years with his colorful tales of these times.   But I must turn to yet another aspect of George's character and of the work I did under him and what I learned from him.  For George was one of the most consummate craftsmen I have ever known.  There was literally no craft he did not know and could not perform.   And he knew the history and evolution of everything!  He read antique tomes from the auction continually, and he could lecture on how thus and so evolved in tool and technique from cave days to the present.  He was a modern-day Diederot come to life! 

    He could weave rush seats, and work a loom.  He built and ran sawmills.  He knew forging, and iron casting, ceramics and chemistry.  He was an expert in the early days of plastics and synthetics. (Here he often gave lectures to industry groups on the history of plastics, noting that there is nothing new under the sun: Noah was the first to use plastics (resins) since his Ark was "...pitched within and without with pitch..." as the Good Book tells us...). 

    The printing arts and trades, writing and typesetting were second nature to him.  He could operate linotype machines, handset type, read trays of "Flyspeck Condensed" upside down - he knew the whole nine yards. 

      "Oh! Matchless Among the Arts of Men, Is This Our Art of Printing"

    So read the specimen line over and over in the old type book in George's office.  I thrill to that line yet and the exclusive company of wordsmiths and printers I once knew.  Those of us in the Fourth Estate, whose words (if not our deeds!) show the way for lesser mortals.   Our intellectual progenitors having long before passed down their credo to us that the pen is mightier than the sword... 

    I recall those hot-type fonts now only distantly, but once I knew them all - with their suggestive names... there was True-Cut Caslon, of course - didn't John Wayne play his role in the movies?, and Boul' Mich' which always summons memories of Sunday morning strolls to sober up along the Lake by Chicago's  Merchandise Mart... and Cheltenham Bold (Knight of the Round Table, wasn't he?).   Oh! reader, to return again to the typewriter of my youth, copy which sang, and the inky smell of lettershops, and the sight of your name on the masthead passing by over and over again as the pressmen "jogged" the big web presses in their final check before full power committed your thoughts, your views, your copy, your way of presenting things to miles of paper... This was heady stuff, indeed, but your pardon, please, I reminisce. 

    He played every kind of musical instrument, did George (so did Chuck).  You couldn't believe it!  None of that clan ever had studied anything - but they could  pick up trumpets, piccolos, fiddles or banjos in any hock shop and launch right into playing!  It was in their genes I guess. 

    George in fact, bore a great scimitar-shaped scar that ran from nipple to nipple across his chest.  When he worked without a shirt, this  fiery bow was visible from yards away... He had gotten it, he said, when as a young man he played trumpet in a dance hall band in Cairo or St. Louis or one of those river towns.  One night the cops raided the dance hall and the band went out the back window one jump ahead of them.  They ran down the alley still playing their instruments as they dispersed, when suddenly Wham! George tripped over a telephone pole guy wire he did not see and fell flat on his face and on his trumpet!  The force was so great the trumpet bell simultaneously flattened out and curled up a jagged lip; which gave him his lifelong Mark of Cain...