At 7:30 a.m. on the first Wednesday of each month, the old red pickup truck pulls away from Victoria and points toward Crow River Press in Hutchinson.  There's excitement in the air, adrenalin in the blood stream, and gas in the tank.
If the roads are icy, the trip is worth about an hour.  Otherwise it's less than 45 minutes as the crow flies, straight west on State Highway 7.
The air conditioning in my 1985 F150 died about 75,000 miles ago so you can't hear much on a hot day with the wind flapping at your ears and everything else between the two open windows in the cab.
So you don't talk much either on those summer hauls or your voice gets hoarse.  That's okay.  If there are one or two passengers along for the ride, they know what's going to be said anyhow:  "Gosh, it's another miracle.  Can you believe it?  The Gazette is done again!"
It's been the same story for 25 years now, like a broken record that gets stuck in the crack.  It makes some sense, though, if you consider that every month it's a different crack, a different miracle.
The appointed arrival time for this pressing occasion at Crow River Press is 8:30 a.m.  Once I was late when my pickup did wheelies on the ice and landed in the ditch on the other side of the road, nose pointed in the wrong direction.  Neither Germaine nor I were wearing our seatbelts but we managed to stay put. 
One other time I was late when Julianne didn't answer her doorbell that particular Wednesday morning and I thought the worst and called 911.  Turns out that our pre-arranged plans had slipped the surly bonds of my mind.
It's not easy for Crow River Press when their other newspaper jobs get shuffled around because the Victoria Gazette is late.  But I figure twice in twenty-five years can happen to anybody.
Most of the time I'm early when I find my way down the hallway to the Camera Room, carrying my 40 hardcopy pages of the Gazette like a worker bee that just made 40 gallons of golden honey, or like a little kid that just completed a favorite 40-piece puzzle.
From start to finish, each page in the Gazette consumes roughly five hours of my time, which means it's more than a full time job from start to finish.  That's just the way it is if you chew it all up and spit it all out. 
And then Crow River Press works another miracle -- in roughly two hours!  I arrive about 8:30 a.m. with my hands full and leave around 10:30 a.m. with the back of my pickup full. 
On this 25th anniversary occasion of the Victoria Gazette, I want to show you around the press in Hutchinson and introduce you to another whole world and another group of people whom I've come to call friends. 
The individuals, tasks, and equipment at the press are also photographed in action for a special colorful page in Sue's Album at www.VictoriaGazette.com.  It's a fun and educational experience.  Try it sometime and walk a mile in our shoes.

Terry Theis is usually in the Camera Room finishing a previous job when I arrive.  He's a Shift Supervisor.
Terry takes the 40 hardcopy pages, on which I've typeset and laid out all the news and ads for the month, and uses the Process Camera to photograph them and convert them into full size negatives, about 24" by 16" in dimen-sion.  The floor of my Gazette closet at home is piled high with 25 years' worth of these giant negatives.  I'm hoarding them for their silver content, having been told there's a market somewhere for that sort of thing.
When I see the large Process Camera, I'm reminded of the old black camera with accordion folds that my mother had before instamatics became popular.  This monster at Crow River, however, develops and dries film in three minutes.
It's Terry's job to also prepare the photographs that I bring for my feature story or Victoria Moments and various other Gazette pages. 

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