Moments in Time: Stories of New Mexico's History; The Estancia Press

Thank you. I have always been astonished at how difficult it was to set type for a newspaper and how quickly they could do it because in the early days they bring it was just to take a piece of type out of a box and stick it onto a imposing stick and then set that in type and it may as well do that every day or every week. This press is a 1907 Chandler and Price Platten press and it came here in 1908 and was the first press used at the Astancia News.

Other presses joined it during its lifetime. It stayed at the Astancia News after it merged with the news Herald press and stayed there all this time until 1969-1970. Every aspect of it reflects the use by hand. So I'm pumping it with my leg with one hand I'm putting the paper in with the other hand I'm taking the paper out really sort of a 19th century stairmaster. I just love the movement of it. The way the flywheel is spoked. The sound of this press is mesmerizing. I love running this press. When the railroad showed up in 1900 it brought the people in and Astancia has it now

exists at its beginning. As I walked out one morning for pleasure a spot a cow punctured all riding the loan. Astancia was a major creed center. His hat throwed back in his spurs was a jingling as he approached me a singing this song. Whoop it I, I hold it alone little bogeys at your misfortune and none of my own. The railroad brought in the home scatters and they started farming everything they could every quarter section had a farm on it and this area was the pinto bean capitol the world for some years driving down Astancia's main street is a trip to the past and it's a past that doesn't exist anymore.

Today it's just a shell. Jacob Alva Constant came to New Mexico and started his newspaper in Astancia in 1912. It was called the Astancia News Herald. Would have meant something to live in a town that had a printing press for one thing. But you know it was the internet, it was the radio, it was the TV, it's how word got around. The News Herald building was right in the center of town next to the movie theater down the street from a couple of restaurants, a couple of bars, two mercantile companies. I suspect Mr. Constant was busy walking around town asking people what was going on stopping at the depot when the train came through to see who got off and who got on where they were going and where they'd come from. Once a week the printing press as I understand it was started and it probably was loud

and smoky inside that little building. But the sound as the press ran the pages through was the heartbeat of the town. The plant and press was a real workhorse, it was primarily a workhorse for job printing which was one of the economic mainstays of small newspapers. Besides the day-to-day bread and butter work, probably it's claimed to fame and this is why everybody should love this press. This press printed the first book of cowboy songs ever published. Well, songs of the cowboys was a seminal work in that it established cowboy music as a genre. Before that people didn't know there was such a thing.

Once they were aware of it it just took off like wildfire. Recordings came along and movies came along so we had Tom Mix, we had Gina Tree, we had Roy Rogers. All of that came out of that book. I considered the book a national treasure. It was very important to the people then but it's very important now because we can go back to the newspapers that were printed and see how everything evolved. And it isn't just the legal notices that say a piece of land was foreclosed or that there was an election and it had certain people won. It tells us the day-to-day trivia of life which is probably not very interesting when it's happening but extremely interesting years later. Well boys are seeing back on my old red run a fine there's no place like this old ranch home singing Tyra, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay. And Periscinales make for a wonderful reading.

So birth and death and parties who had a party. When you look at these you see what was happening on a day-to-day a week-to-week year-to-year basis. I mean we have notices during the depression of people selling off their farm and what's printed on that hand bill is a listing of everything that's being sold. One article I recall and how to achieve lumpness and it suggested eating extra meals, sleeping a lot so that you could gain the proper, girlish figure that was popular at the time. It's important because it's a real chronicle of the activities of a particular town. When it came to New Mexico in 1834, certainly there were literate people but by and large illiteracy ruled.

Nothing wrong with that per se, people got along just fine but when you see what happens when print is introduced to a culture everything changes. I remember one joke that was printed which I thought was hilarious, these two little kids were in the courtyard of the courthouse and one of them saw these people walking out of the courthouse and said oh there goes that jury that they're having and the other kids says can't be, they hung that jury last night.