51. The Writing of the Sketches - by John O’Rear and Dennis O’Rear

By John O’Rear, Ed O’Rear II’s son:  I particularly remember wrestling with a small offset press that Dad bought, on which we ran off several hundred copies of the Sketches, which were distributed at a family reunion later that year. This press was a Marx Brothers affair - when we started it up, it tended to spray paper out in every direction but the right one. However, after much adjusting, and judicious application of colorful four letter metaphors, the press would settle down and do it's thing. This was something we did one spring just out of curiosity, we had no idea that it would still be around 20 years later.

By Dennis O’Rear:  I received one of the last mimeograph copies of the sketches from Ed O’Rear in 1994, and while traveling to the middle east in 1995, I had a lot of time to kill. So I retyped them into my computer. However, the printer I had with me had a problem. As I was leaving the hotel room for dinner, I heard a pop and saw smoke billowing from the printer. My typing the sketches almost caused a hotel fire! Later I e-mailed them to various family members, and Paul A. O’Rear established the web site.

Last Revised: 08/01/2002 13:12:00

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