Old Friends, Days Treasured —Cagle

As an adult and a purchaser of printing, Lis is taken by the very familiar sights and sounds of her local provider, Temp’s Litho, a mile from her Twin Cities home. Once inside the door, Lis allows her senses to become bombarded, beginning with a deep breath.

“It smells like a print shop ought to smell,” she wrote recently. “And by ‘like a print shop ought to smell’ I mean, of course, that the pervasive odor of the ink evokes a pleasant melancholy, the faint sound of old memories—wheels turning, metal plates slapping, the ‘ker-chunk’ of the machinery providing solitude because it limits conversation to only what is necessary. And what has to be said is called out above the noise in as few words as possible.”