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

You . astonished at how difficult it was to set type for a newspaper and how quickly they could do it. Because in the early days of the newspaper, it was just take a piece of

type out of a box and stick it onto a composing stick and then set that in type and it makes me do that every day or every week. This press is a 1907 Chandler and Price Platten Press. When it came here in 1908 and was the first press used at the Estancia News, other presses joined it during its lifetime. It stayed at the Estancia News after it merged with the news herald press and stayed there all this time until 1969-1970. Every aspect of that 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 that, the way the fly wheel 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 the Estancia as it now exists at its beginning. The Estancia was a major trade center. The railroad brought in the homesteaders and they started farming everything they could. Every quarter section had a farm on it and this area was the Pinto being capital of the

world for some years. Driving down Estancia'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 Alvaconstant came to New Mexico and started his newspaper in Estancia in 1912. It was called the Estancia News Herald. Would have meant something to live in a town that had a printing press for one thing. But 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 mercantil 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. Little Joe the Wrangler will never wrangle more, his days with a removed, they are done. 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. Things came along and movies came along, so we had Tom Mix, we had Gene Autry, 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. 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, I see them back on my old red run, I find there's no place like this old ranch called Singintariati. And personal is made for wonderful reading. So burrows and deaths 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. When article I recall and how to achieve wonkness, 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. Printing came to New Mexico in 1834. Certainly there were literate people, but by and large, literacy ruled. Nothing wrong with that, per se, of 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 kid says, can't be, they hung that jury last night.