Connections: The Devil Did It
Constant readers, especially those with a flair for gardening, would have seen and I hope enjoyed The Star’s gardening supplement, which was part of last Thursday’s edition. As sometimes happens, though (even in the best of publications), something unfortunate occurred between the time the pages were readied at The Star and their electronic versions arrived at the printing plant.
What in the old days might have been called a printer’s devil had made a “pie” of the pages, duplicating some advertisements and losing others. The word “devil” isn’t quite right in describing a the culprit. Nor am I using the word “pie” exactly right, because pie used to refer to the mess that occurred if a tray of lead type was accidentally dropped and the letters scrambled. So much for what could go wrong in the old days.
When I looked at the paper last Thursday morning, the first thing I noticed was that the supplement’s masthead was missing. It was to have the names of the staff members who put the supplement together. None of us has enough of an ego to be slighted by missing credit for such aspects of production as advertising sales and design, page layout, and, yes, editing, but the masthead was also supposed to explain the supplement’s front page, which was, we thought, not only good-looking but intriguing.
There, in 14-by-15-inch broadsheet glory, were 12 images of vintage gardening objects with a “Plant-A-Garden-Chart” at center. Of course, our readers are savvy enough, for example, to recognize images of wooden pitchforks and old-fashioned flower frogs without explanation, but it had been my intention to let readers know that the objects and the chart were from the collection of Durell Godfrey, The Star’s photographer, and had meant to explain how the chart, an honest-to-goodness 1938 artifact, worked.
Not everyone would have held on to the supplement (which was a good read, if I say so myself, and contained a massive calendar of events related to gardening), so I’m going to try to describe how the chart worked here. You can take a look at it below.
The chart has two layers; the top layer is a large circle that can be turned. You do so until the arrow at its center points to the name of a flower on the chart’s outside edge, where you can access all kinds of information about it. And it still works.
The chart originally sold for 25 cents, but Durell isn’t telling where she got it or how much she paid for it. Maybe that’s because she missed out on buying it in 1938 when, for $1, it came with packets of seeds for 10 prize-winning flowers.
P.S. Those whose advertisements were duplicated without charge were surprised, of course, and pleased, while we’re doing what we can to make good on those advertisements that went missing.