We have Phyllis Boerner to thank for this copy of the famous “God willing” clipping. Phyllis told husband Dave it was time he started cleaning up the litter collected over years working at the BJ. And so Dave came upon the clipping.
We are still looking for the publication date of this weather report and the other famous clipping shown here.
The late Ron Kuhne was responsible for writing the weather summary for page 1. Kuhne thought he would have fun with his editor. It went through the city editor, the copy desk and slotter and was dutifully set in type. We have resurrected a file about the incident which you can read on our website. (Click on the headline)
The “slug” was a line of type set by a Linotype operator back in the days of hot type when each line of a story was a lead slug. The printer who set this line of type sneaked it into the middle of a story and it was actually printed in the newspaper.
We still would appreciate any other copies of these two most famous BJ clips littering around anywhere and would really appreciate knowing the exact date they ran.
I was working the days both of those appeared in the paper. that one about sticking the slug gave me the opportunity to run into the press room and yell: "stop the presses."
ReplyDeletethe foreman, instead of hittin a button, whistled loudly and those presses went down. course that was in the days of hot type, so the line was marred on the page plate on the press and the run resumed with little time lost.
as for the "God willing: i remember it was on a saturday. that line went unnoticed thru the city desk, the copydesk and the slot man and me, since I was putting out the paper that day. Needeless to say, Mr. Maidenburg came roaring out of his office when he saw it.