Pulling All-Nighters

I am not wont to all-night binges—no all-night movie marathons, no erotic orgies or all-night eating food fests.   Even in college, I never pulled “all-nighters” to study or finish a paper. My only stay-up-all night events have been work-related. My job was to go press-side to make sure that the junk mail or brochure you as a consumer received in the mail was a beautiful, consistent, and persuasive piece of advertising. I am sure that many of the pieces I have worked on through the night have landed in your mailbox.

Sometimes, I worked the “lobster shift”: twelve hours on and twelve hours off from midnight to noon. I watched huge rolls of paper hunkered into place or large pallets of paper maneuvered up to hungry presses that waited to consume the dried muck from which paper is formed. I listened to the clamorous machines, with the clapping and cranking platens, the aluminum plates thrumming tiny dots of ink onto rubber rollers that gob-smacked the color onto the paper substrate. From one tower to the next and the next and the next, four times, five times, six times, even nine times, until an optical illusion of image and type was birthed on each successive sheet. Aerosols, ink vapors, powders wafted through the air, mixed with the sweat of men who manned the machines and pushed the controls and levers of the heavy machinery that marshalled the small little dots to their allocated places.

The often-dingy pressrooms were such a contrast to the airy cathedrals to commerce where I spent most of my time.  That’s where ad agency creatives created, writers wrote, and ad men added up their conquests, both business and personal. Sometimes we worked through the night to make sure a campaign was completed for the next morning’s “dog and pony” presentation or when there was just so much to do that a late night was the only solution. On one such “all-nighter” for a presentation for our important tobacco client, I came into the office at 9 AM and left at 5 AM the next morning.  I didn’t report to work that day. “Where is she?” the disgruntled president of firm wanted to know. That’s agency-style appreciation.

There were often emergency press OK’s that would be caused by client crises or rescheduling at the plants. One morning, the head of the agency announced, “You have to be in Chicago tonight. The client wants you there for a press check.”

“I have to pack,” I declared.

“Fine. You live in Queens. Go home. Go to the airport. It’s in Queens too.”

 I landed at O’Hare around 11 PM and was driven to the plant on the outskirts of the city, about an hour away. After hours of press delays and various adjustments to the color and fit, I signed an OK’d sheet at 6 AM. At the hotel, I fell into bed and attempted to sleep. I had been up all night, but the sun was shining and I was fidgety.

I could have caught an early flight back home. Then again, I could take advantage of where I was and take a serendipitous train ride into Chicago, a city which I had never visited. There was a special Degas Exhibit at the Chicago Museum. This was going to be my reward for my surprise expedition from New York. At the train station I asked a fellow passenger if the exhibit was worth attending. “Worth seeing? Yes,” he chuckled, “but you won’t remember it, considering you’re on no sleep.”  Ha! The exhibit was great and I remember it.

It is important to grab the good from these inconvenient and invasive, sometimes boring and lonely business trips. Most the presses are in dingy areas of industrial parks, near railroads or trucking depots. A Philadelphia trip changed from one day into three due to a paper problem. I was able to visit the Rodin Museum, attend a concert and listen to   the grand piano at the famous Wannamaker’s (where, incidentally I bought a change of undergarments and a pair of walking shoes to replace my heels). I found myself on-press, repeatedly, in the beautiful, mostly French-speaking town of Magog-on-the-Lake, Quebec. Once, in a snow storm, it was just me and the non-English speaking pressmen. The foreman from Montreal who spoke English couldn’t get in because the roads were closed. It is a testament to Mrs. Oliver and my other French teachers, my sister who spoke to me in French so the children wouldn’t understand us, as well as ingenuity and cooperation, that we were able to communicate and move on with production. Even at press “OK’s” in the middle of winter, in a printing plant in the middle of large barren, frozen cornfields, I discovered a peace and quietude in being the only person beating a path around the corn rows.

Grab a snooze when you can. Grab an experience where you can. Now that I am retired, I am always ready for a good nap.  I suppose I could pull an “all-nighter” if I wanted to, but I have no desire to try. I’ve had enough of them.

 

Marsha H.

12.25.20