Category: Printer’s Drawer

One of the items that you will find in our printer’s drawer is a playing card. The back of the card is printed with “Wheeler and Steele”.  The Steele family lived across the street and a couple of doors up the hill from us when my family lived on Vine Street in Alamo.  My earliest memories are of the houses we lived in on Vine Street and my parents playing cards with the Steeles on Friday and Saturday nights.  Their daughter Nan and I are the same age.  We would spend time together playing while our parents played cards.  Their game of choice was canasta.  I never understood how to play the game and I understand that they didn’t play by the official canasta rules.  But they wore out many decks of cards over the years.  At one point, they ordered a deck of cards with their names on the back.  This deck became the official deck.  They played with it long after the cards were worn out.

Printer’s drawers were originally used in the printing business to store the type that was used in the presses.  When printing technology changed most of the type was melted and repurposed for other things.  Many of the drawers from the type cabinets were sold to antique stores where they were sold as knick-knack shelves.  We have one of these in our music room.  But there is a story behind our printer’s drawer that makes it special.