Richmond Music Journal Blog: My Craft Has Turned to Craft Beer

My husband had a weekend sound job and texted me after he got there that the Summer Moon Music Festival was at the same place where I used to have the Richmond Music Journal printed, the Hanover Herald Progress building. Only now it was the Center of the Universe Brewing Company. The Herald Progress had moved to a squat little brick building on Thompson Street in Ashland, between a feed store and a chiropractor.

I was filled with curiosity to see what had become of that building in the Hanover Air Park. For 11 years and two months, I drove out there at least twice a month to deliver my box of pasted up flats, and then to back up my little car at the loading dock and pick up from 1,000-2,000 papers. Toward the end, it was only one trip a month since technology made it possible to deliver my paper in the form of an emailed .pdf file. I wrote my check and got my papers. Easily 80 percent of everything I made those 11 years doing the paper went to pay the printer, maybe more.

I blew up two cars picking up and delivering that paper. The first, my old Toyota Corolla, was totaled on the Boulevard next to the porno shop and I chronicled that colorful incident on my other blog where it is my most-read blog post ever because it has the word porn in it. The trunk was full of my papers. I blew the engine out of my old Mercury Tracer on 295 heading from the printer to Innsbrook in 2001. My trunk was, again, full of papers. (Although the fact my trunk was full was not the cause of either disaster. It was just bad luck that I was on a delivery run both times.)