The Monthly Rag

How could it be done again, without access to either school equipment or the college lab? I recall sitting the boys down and telling them to get everything finished that could be done on paper, then handing it in so I could figure out how to get it all typed and printed out. It would have to be done in sections, because this round we couldn’t afford to sit in any one place working for too long. Matt typed some stuff up and printed it with The Howl’s only Wolfgang, smuggling them to me on the sidelines. Summer drew out his comic. Andrew and I wrote everything else down and then basically we used about three different places to get things transferred into binary language.

One was the library in the college, which had two very outdated pc’s that students could use without anyone sitting over their shoulders playing big brother. Still enrolled at the time, I asked around the grounds and after my attention was directed to these public access machines, in we went. Neither of them had Aldus installed, so that was nixed. Instead, we just typeset the columns in word documents, got them prepped and saved to our cheap three and a half inch disks (remember those?). I can’t quite remember if the C/R library had NO printers, or dot matrix ones that we weren’t going to subject upon our readers, but either way completing the task was not an option in this location.

So we gave the disks to somebody–a friend of a friend if I remember right–someone with enough home income at the time to actually OWN a decent computer and inkjet printer, and had them finish the job. The final thing that was left was Andrew’s Police Squad! column, which was late because he hadn’t had time to work on it yet. We were already finished with the rest and past the point of going back to reprint last minute entries. Reluctantly, we selected a typewriter from the Fort Bragg high school library, which was sans two vowels and a few other keys just like the one in Misery. Andrew typed up his column and then filled in the missing letters with a fading sharpie.

This whole period of production went on for over two months. Dismayed by the delayed release schedule, I made up some simple flyers that announced our COMING SOON…ISSUE 3! status and went and hung them up at bulletin boards all over town. To this day, I’m not really sure why, since our reader base was limited to the school itself, but I guess I was trying to vindicate our efforts.

It was while tacking up one of the last of them that a bearded, long haired Jedi-looking guy wandered up, asking what our advertisement was for. I explained it to him in a couple of sentences, and he smiled. He then told me that he ran the local newspaper Memo, to which I nodded and said I was aware. His grin stayed on as he then asked me to slip a copy of our paper under the door to his office downtown when it was finished.

To be honest, I was skeptical. He seemed pretty genuine but I had actually gone to two of the other local papers over the last few weeks, inquiring about getting some time to work and learn with them, explaining that our school had booted us. Both of them declined to help out. I wondered why this dude would be any different.

I couldn’t dwell on it long, since there was still so much to be done. With the whole mess of columns in my hands finally, we went back to my house, where for some inexplicable reason I was entirely without parental units for the week. We fired up some oven pizza and played music nice and loud. Matt, Summer, Andy and I stayed up until midnight that evening, stitching the master copy together, pasting things on and filling in the blank spaces with hand written quotes and cartoons. We all signed something personal and nonsensical on the back page to sort of authenticate our work (Andrew, I believe, wrote “It smells of pickled eel” and “What is the meaning of my bellybutton?” in Japanese), and then we took a last look at our recent accomplishment. It had the feel and smell of a ransom note in many ways, and started what would become a trademark look for most our of career.

One thing was missing, however, and I pointed out: “hey, this should be a special collector’s edition, since it’s 6 pages long.” Matthew, dear tired fellow that he was (zero period Journalism, work after school at Thrifty’s, now here at my abode sniffing glue fumes and trying to stay awake) grabs the nearest ink pen, flips the cap, and writes COLETER’S EDITION right near the masthead. I tilted my head, wondering if it’s an inside joke I missed.

“COLETER’S?”

Matt grunts something that could have been “oh, shove it” and then adds an L–making it now a step closer.

“Try one more pass.”

More grumbling, eye-rubbing, and finally–a real English word is present, albeit with a few consonants just a bit too close together.

A toast in soda sent the gang home for sleep, and I agreed to meet up with Andrew at the copy store early to press the new babies off. I went to bed, dreaming the dreams of a content completest, knowing that a third edition of us would break the surface in less then twelve more hours.

I just had to, you know…find some way to pay for it in the morning.

When I awoke in the sunny dawn following our Frankenstein construction, it was a chilly coastal day. I was fairly rested. I didn’t have to go to school, since I was currently back in independent study (one of those little switches I had performed in our three months of downtime). As mentioned previously, no authority figures were present in the house. My mother was out of town and had left a twenty for emergencies, but it was at the moment down to a five dollar bill because I had used the rest of it to buy a few non-nutritional freezer items.

Copying prices tend to vary on several levels, usually depending on A: the day, B: the store, and C: the employee handling your order. At any rate, I knew my Lincoln wasn’t going to get much mileage on the print run, so I resorted to the only thing that was left to scour. In my mother’s bedroom, tucked away nicely in a large jar, was a few years worth of spare change. Most of it had already been plundered, sadly, so aside from a couple of holy grail quarters it was down to dimes, nickels, and most unfortunately, pennies.

I think I got about ten bucks from that none-too-pleasant raid. With my fifteen in total and our master print of issue 3, I went downtown to meet up with Andrew, who turned out to be a no-show. It was between 10 and 11 am somewhere, and business was in full swing. After a short wait in line, the nice copy guy showed me to their best available black and white machine, and the set-up of what would become our biggest run to date began.

With upwards of 50 issues (still needing to be sorted and stapled) in my eager paws, I approached the counter and declared my readiness to be taxed and seen to the door. Nice copy guy rings up my total, which comes to somewhere near thirty bucks, and I sheepishly slide him a five and several rolls of coins.

“Well how much does that get me?”

“Just over half.” he says, not looking happy about the concept of being left with twenty-five issues of a banned underground high school fanzine.

“All right…okay…” I licked my lips, quickly thinking, formulating a deal that might keep me in good graces with a business that I was pretty sure I would need again in the near future.

“I guess I just miscalculated–I’ll take half and come back with the rest of the cash in an hour.”

He was a decent enough citizen and shrugged it off, saying it was fine, so I went to work finishing on the layouts. Once they were all put together, I divided my stack into equal parts and got my sorry ass walking as fast as possible up to the campus.

I didn’t want to do it, but I had no other choice. I was completely out of options for coming up with the bread to free my hostage held newspapers, so with a cheap feeling and the only time ever in the Rag’s long running career, I stood outside the high school as lunch got out and sold my first batch at seventy-five cents an issue. Some of them went for fifty cents, some for even a little less, depending on the budget of the spender (I wasn’t about to turn anyone down), but to my unbridled joy all of my copies went, and I then had just over twenty five bucks in my pocket when the dust finally cleared.

By the time I got back to the copy store, it was almost two o’clock in the afternoon. The schizophrenic Fort Bragg weather had switched personalities and in had rolled the oppressing gray clouds, showering a medium drizzle on my journey back downhill into the west. I paid for the remaining RAGS, left, and decided that the atmosphere was far too wretched for me to trek all the way up to the school again.

No worries. I’d just let the first round sink in and get some talking going on, then bring in the reserves tomorrow or a few days later. Beautiful marketing strategy–time tested, Satan-worshiping mega corporation approved.

With my extra cash, my first and pretty much my only ever “profit”, I bought a rice bowl up at the Safeway Chinese express. And an eggroll. And some Snapple. And I sat down and damn well enjoyed my tiny victory meal.

CONTINUE TO PART 6