Memoirs of a Stripper

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

I'm lucky. I grew up in my parents' ad agency - Don May Advertising, one of the top 300 in the country (as rated by AADA) for 16 of the 17 years of its existence. I started 'working' there when I was 9 - as, believe it or not, a stripper. (Bring that out at a cocktail party and see what happens!) No, my folks were not perverts; in those antique days the idea of what we know as computer publishing was not even a dream, it was the stuff of science fiction.

Back then you first thought up the ad, then did a rough pencil sketch of layout to the specs of the ad space, whether it was in pixels, columns and/or inches. Then you decided how much space you had for the information your client wanted in the ad and how much for graphics. Then you typed your copy - yes, typed, on a typewriter and in our office that meant on an office-sized manual. Some clients wanted blocks of typed copy instead of fancy fonts, so we gave it to them, which meant what you typed had to be not only within certain space parameters it had to be letter perfect. And if you had a client (as we did) who wanted typed copy in different typefaces, you had to buy different typewriters. When my folks' office closed back in the early 70s, we had 27 of them. All standard manuals, big as an old-fashioned monitor and heavy as an anchor.

You chose your clip art or photograph, your headline and sub-head, and added the client's logo/information. You chose which type font to use (if they didn't want plain typed copy) and then the fun began. You had to use that tool of the devil, the proportion wheel, to figure out how much space each unit needs and how it all fit into your space and design. The copy (perfectly typed and with every word - especially the names - correctly spelt) was then sent to the typesetter with the name of the desired type and the measurements of the space. The images were sent to the photostatter with the measurements of where they were supposed to go. Then you waited... sometimes up to three days, which was not considered abnormal.

Once all the elements were returned you could (hopefully) construct your ad. However, if some mathematically-challenged person got the proportion wheel readings wrong the process - which was quite expensive - had to begin again, which made both the agency and the client furious. Don't ask me how I know.

Once everything was right, you cut out the various elements and pasted them down on art board with rubber cement, then once it was finished, cleaned up the little escaping dribs of cement with a square of something rubbery whose name I have forgotten. I pulled the little bits of collected cement off the rubbery thing and, instead of discarding them as the other artists did, rolled them into a ball. When the office closed forever, I had a ball of rubber cement drippings roughly the size of a softball. Have no idea of whatever happened to it, though.

My first job, as I have said, was stripping, which meant taking an eyedropper of acetone and very carefully using the acetone to dissolve the rubber cement so I could lift off the reusable elements, put them on a sheet of typing paper according to type and file them, so we could re-use them later and not have the expense of photostatting. Hence - I was a stripper.

It was a smelly, sticky job and I did it proudly (remember, I was nine years old, and the status of earning a paycheck however minuscule was great) but when at the age of 12 I was promoted to writing copy I was ecstatic. It wasn't romantic or even really interesting - ours was an industrial advertising agency rather than a consumer one - but I took to writing copy about industrial washers and drop-coin meters and car washes like the proverbial duck. I worked there until it was time for me to go to college.

This was all long ago; aeons in technological time. When our agency closed copy machines were huge boxes with a tub of liquid that the copy went through to 'set' it, turning out a slightly slimy, slightly blurry copy - and we thought they were not only incredible, but almost magical. Computers were around, but they cost millions (millions then!) and took up entire floors of office buildings. The thought of a phone you could carry with you or a computer that would fit in your pocket only existed in the realm of fantasy. Now they're not only commonplace but ubiquitous.

I wish my father could have lived to enjoy the age of computers and desktop publishing. He would have delighted in it. I still do a few graphic jobs, mainly for organizations to which I belong, and in an hour or so I can produce a job (including the inevitable 'tweaking' time) in what used to take three or four days. How my father would have loved such ease and control! Unfortunately, he died before computers left the 'full floor of an office building' stage. My mother, on the other hand, lived well into the computer age and never ceased to regard them with suspicion and dislike. She said that nothing so easily done could be good and the internet was a tool of the devil. Well, I guess sometimes she can be regarded as being right, but on the other hand modern convenience can be wonderful.

The only sad thing about such ease and luxury is that there is no place left for 9 year olds to enter the business world by stripping.

Stripping, Deadlines and Memories

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

A writer’s mind is a funny – and sometimes fearsome – place. I was all set to write about deadlines and the havoc they can wreak on our lives, but yet we must adhere to them almost as much as the laws of God. I was going to tell how I learned to respect (and obey) deadlines while working in my parents’ advertising agency, but then I would have to tell you I didn’t just start out working with deadline responsibilities – hey, I was only nine, so my first job was as a stripper.

If you want to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, just say that your first job was as a stripper when you were nine years old.

Now to save my late parents’ reputations, I must say quickly that the job had nothing to do with removing any article of clothing. I did, however, sometimes wish to, as being somewhat spectacularly challenged in the dexterity department I got excessively sticky.

You see, in those antique days ads were built up with a great many pieces of paper put down with rubber cement. There was no point-and-click-shrink/enlarge-with-a-single-motion in those days. You had clip art (line pictures of all kinds of things which you bought in big books) or photographs. You had headlines and copy, done on a manual (in our office at least) typewriter, which was then sent to the typesetter to be set and printed in the font you had chosen. You had the size of your ad, generally enlarged proportionately on the working board so you could work on it easily. Then you had to figure out just how big/small each element had to be. Once that was done you sent each piece to the photostatter, to be reduced/enlarged to the desired size. So – hopefully - when everything was sized and pasted down the ad looked the way you wanted.

As we were a very frugal family, the elements that could be used again in other ads – clip art, some headlines, logos, etc. – were stripped off by using acetone, which dissolved the glue and rendered the whatever ready for use again. These were tacking in a big looseleaf folder divided into general categories, using just a small drop of glue to hold the paper in place. We could use an element sometimes ten or fifteen times before it got tatty, especially if it was of a standard size, saving the typesetters’ and photostatters’ fees each time.

Chosing the size of each element was done with a little tool of the Devil called a proportion wheel, which did exactly what it sounds like – told you how much bigger or smaller something had to be to fit in the space. God help you if you made a mistake, because getting things photostatted was expensive.

I have always been mathematically challenged (and why doesn’t someone do a telethon for those like me?) and the first time I got something wrong was on one of my first layouts when I think I was around twelve. I still stripped, but had received a sort of promotion to doing simple layouts. The first time I goofed Daddy took the time to walk me through it again and showed me every step several times, even giving me a written checklist.

The second time he docked my pay for the cost of the photostat. Yes, I received a paycheck – a token one, to be sure, as child labor is cheap – with social security and all taken out, just like a grownup. I have seldom felt so rich as the time I received my first paycheck – which Mother (the company bookkeeper) had to cash, as the bank wouldn’t believe that a nine-year-old child had her own paycheck. (And I have never used that bank since. Yes, I do hold grudges!)

After that I was very careful to get everything just right, usually by begging our real staff artist to do the calculations for me without Daddy knowing. As time went on I became more and more experienced and proficient, so by the time I was in high school I was working after school and weekends, and earning the same hourly wage as a regular artist.

That equality in my young years may be the reason I have always loathed school in spite of loving learning. (They are most definitely not the same, and a lot of the time not even close!) In high school I had to raise my hand and get permission from the teacher to go to the restroom, but after school I would take the bus downtown to the office where I could pick up the phone, call Tokyo and on voice order alone get over $5,000 (real money in those days) worth of ad placement. Heady stuff indeed.

Another memory. Most of the time in high school I dressed grown-up, in little Chanel-style suits or nice dresses and simple black flats, as after school I would go to the office where there might be clients – always have to project a business-like image, you know. Well, we had a period off in school once a day – they called it study hall, but it was impossible to study as everyone was so noisy. I quickly learned how to check in as present, then sneak out and go to the teachers’ lounge, which was usually empty and quiet so I could study in peace. The school year was almost half over before someone figured out I was a student and not a teacher and summarily ejected me. Sigh.

Strange how the pathways of memory will subvert even the most sterling of ideas and plans. I had been going to talk about deadlines, not stripping. Oh, well… maybe next time.

Attack of the Typo Gremlins

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

The Husband says I’m weird. I prefer fanciful. That does not, however, change the fact there are some things out there that we cannot explain and which we definitely cannot control. In other words, my friends, the Typo Gremlin is real. He’s out there and he’s both malign and sneaky. I give it the masculine pronoun, as it is changeable, sometimes irrational and very dictatorial. It doesn’t matter what you do – edit, re-edit, get multiple professional editors galore and still that sneaky little devil will get around everything and embarrass you.

When I was still a child I started working in my parents’ advertising agency. Even then I was the picky sort, and one of my jobs was to proof-read the ads we put out. Being commercially oriented instead of consumer, our ads were both word-dense and generally boring, so that was a time-consuming job. Of course I wasn’t the only proof-reader – before an ad went out just about everyone in the office had looked it over – but in spite of that the Typo Gremlin would still have his way. We’d see the mistake – usually in 30 point type – right after the bazillion copy print run was completed.

When I was most definitely not a child I was editor in chief of first one multi-magazine publishing group and then later another; wherever I was, though, didn’t make a difference. The Typo Gremlin always managed to find me. The first group I worked for had been plagued with a slipshod editor who apparently didn’t care what the magazines looked like. I had been brought on board to bring the group up to snuff. Needless to say, it was not always a pleasant process, but after an issue or two I had pretty much everything looking better and under control. Except the Typo Gremlin.

The first issue of my editorship was a disaster; the second one was much better and by the third we were putting out a product I could be proud of. From the first day I instituted a law that even after our proofreaders had looked over everything no board went to the printer unless it had my initials on it.

And in spite of that the sneaky little Typo Gremlin still made his presence known, dancing through every issue, sometimes leaving one, or maybe two mistakes – though by the second issue they were usually little ones. Being a firm believer in turning a weakness into a strength I finally gave in and made a partner of the wee beastie, running a permanent contest that whoever found a typo in any one of our magazines (that group published three) would win a prize. The prizes were little – a yearly subscription, one of the little booklets we produced on everything from gardening to fortunetelling – but our readership soared and our ad revenue went through the roof. It was so successful that I carried the idea to my next publishing group, where we had the same results.

So, as odd as it sounds, your enemy can become your friend if you play things right. Even a Typo Gremlin.