It’s National Newspaper Week. Feature writer Gordon Cotton, also a historian, author and former director of the Old Court House Museum, prepared a five-part series on his more than 50-year association with newspapers. It continues through Friday.

Every day in the spring of 1959 I would drive past a print shop, Keith Press, on the square in Raymond, and one day I couldn’t control the printer’s ink in my veins any longer: I had to stop and check out the operation.

It had been about two years since I had left Summit and The Summit Sun, had gone to Alaska for a while and worked at Anchorage Printing, where our most exciting publication was a bar room and red light district tabloid. One winter was enough in Alaska, so I headed home, enrolled in Harding College in Arkansas and landed a job in the school’s print shop. I felt pretty smug — I had my own pica pole and makeup rule. My Harding venture lasted just long enough for me to make a lifelong friend, Katy Watt, and then I transferred to Mississippi College in Clinton. I had told my daddy years before that MC would be the last college I’d ever go to, and it was (if you don’t count correspondence courses from State).

To my surprise, I liked MC, liked it so much that I bought two degrees there. (They don’t give ’em away.)

The Keith Press building was the home of the Hinds County Gazette, second oldest newspaper in Mississippi, and in the Keith family since 1926. Three brothers ran it — Thomas, Billy and James. I told them a little of my background and within 10 minutes I had on an apron and an eye shade and was making up pages. We had a verbal contract — I would work when I wasn’t in class, and sometimes those shifts lasted way into the night.

We published four weeklies, three area college papers, several magazines, church and football programs and just about everything else that required ink on paper.

Thomas looked for all the world like Alfred Hitchcock. He had a twinkle in his eye but no smile in his voice, so the clientele usually walked past him to deal with Billy, the kindest, nicest gentleman God ever made.

James came late in the day as he was a rural mail carrier and later mayor of Utica. The Keiths were hard workers, but they’d stop at the flip of a coin or a roll of the dice to see who was going next door to Taylor’s Grocery to pay for the afternoon refreshments.

I learned a lot more about printing, about operating equipment and making up pages. I eventually moved into a small apartment upstairs, just a minute from downtown Raymond. One of the advantages of working for the Keiths was the letter Thomas wrote to MC about my work schedule — I never had to go to chapel, required of all (other) students at the Baptist institution.

It was only natural that I should also be on the staff of the Mississippi College newspaper and magazine as Keith Press printed both. Charlie Deevers was editor of the paper, and he had just a bit of devilment in him, an example being the time we ran a cigarette ad in about a dozen copies, then pulled it — but it was enough to stir up the administration. He also loved April Fools stories. One was about a new building being constructed just a little over the line — and how it would have to be moved — and another about my favorite professor, Martha Bigelow, winning the pinball machine queen title.

The most fun we had with printing, though, had nothing to do with the newspaper. Elections were coming up for the Baptist Student Union, a cut-and-dried procedure manipulated by the BSU director. Late at night, Deevers and I printed cards and posters for a new candidate for BSU president, and when the unsuspecting candidate awoke the next morning he found his posters and photos plastered all over campus. One of the qualities we gave him was “self-righteous.” He was our friend, and he loved a joke, so he didn’t get mad — just embarrassed. Best of all, he was a Presbyterian. His campaign caught on, and he would have won had the election not been postponed. For some reason the BSU leader never did like me or Deevers.

The work at Keith Press was strenuous, but the staff was great and the entertainment unusual.  Small town printshops and newspaper offices always seemed to attract the local eccentrics, and the Raymond shop was no exception.

Pat Fairchild was the not-too-bright resident whose life centered around hunting dogs and visiting Keith Press.

He often put a Mc on a name that didn’t have one — “Mr. McKeith” — and left it off of one that did — “Mr. Murchy.” His favorite dog was “a Jap hound with long yaller ears that come from Berlin, Germany.” Sometimes Pat would “desire to pronounce a speech,” and he’d take his stance and deliver a discourse, usually about how there was no law in Raymond except for a little bit right under the water tank. (That’s where the night marshal parked.)

The story was that the Keith boys’ father had told Pat that his sons would look out for him after Mr. Keith died — and they did, from providing food and clothing even to giving him a much-needed bath. If he didn’t show up at the office for a few days, and they demanded to know why, he had a stock answer: “Mr. McKeith, I am 21 years old. I am old enough to receive company.”

Another quip he often spoke was, “Can’t no veterinarian cure a dead dog.”

My favorite Pat Fairchild story, however, was one Gov. John Bell Williams told. The governor, who was from Raymond, was walking down the street when he saw an out-of-state car that had pulled over and the driver asked Pat how to get to Vicksburg. His directions: “Mister, go to Meridian and turn due west.”

All good times must come to an end, so after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at MC, I left Keith Press for the schoolroom. If I hadn’t graduated, I might still be working there today with the present editor, Mary Ann Keith.

The Keiths helped educate me, but like Mary Cain they taught me a lot that wasn’t in the books.