Dewey Petigo says he’s been “scared to death” twice in the 44 years he’s run C&P Printing. First was in 1978 when he and Paul Carpenter left secure jobs in the print shop at Besco to open their business — Petigo would buy out Carpenter five or six years later.
“I was scared to death,” says Petigo. “We knew we had to make it work.”
Then there was the day the Secret Service agent came calling. More on that later.
Dewey Petigo grew up in a sharecropper family in rural Itawamba County.
“Someone said we were so far out in the country we got ‘The Tonight Show’ by mail,” he said.
The night of his high-school graduation in 1966, Petigo, like most of his 16 siblings before him, headed north for a better-paying job. There he lived with his sister and husband in Melrose Park, a suburb of Chicago, and worked as a machinist.
While in the North he married and served a tour in Vietnam.
Petigo’s Mississippi-born wife longed for home, though, and in 1975 they moved to Columbus, and he went to work in the print shop at Besco.
He and Carpenter first set up shop in the Cox Building on Fourth Avenue South near Columbus Light and Water. They quickly outgrew the space and two years later moved to the present location on Gardner Boulevard near its intersection with Highway 182.
They printed football programs, brochures, letterheads, student manuals, business cards and invoices.
“Pretty much if it could be printed and it wasn’t stamps or money, we printed it,” said Petigo.
At one time C&P employed six. New technologies and the advent of home computers have changed all that. He’s the company’s only employee now.
“When I started this business,” says Petigo, “a color brochure was at least two weeks. Now I can do it while you wait.”
Though he still uses the offset presses that were once the mainstay of small print shops like C&P, most of his jobs now are done on a sleek Toshiba color copier.
He still prints purchase orders and invoices on an offset press, but for wedding invitations and announcements, often designed by the client online, he uses the color copier.
Don’t ever try to print currency in a copy machine, says Petigo. The machine will shut down, and it will require a technician to restart it.
Petigo has some experience printing currency, or something like it.
In the late 80s, early 90s Petigo started printing business cards on the back of what looked to be a $20 bill. The card was the same height as the bill but about 40 percent shorter. Petigo, as best he could, matched the color used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and used a parchment paper.
“From five feet away, you couldn’t tell the difference,” he says.
The cards were a hit. Mechanics, body shops and even out-of-state businesses were ordering the currency business cards.
“I had people drop them in the grocery store and watch people’s reactions,” said Petigo.
Charles Younger, who was running for chancery clerk, had Petigo print campaign cards on the back of the truncated $20 bill.
All was well until someone in Oxford paid for a pizza with one of Younger’s campaign cards. Apparently, the pizza company was not amused by the prank, nor were the Feds.
A Secret Service agent came calling. He had traced the source of the card through Younger, who, along with County Attorney Jeff Smith and the Lowndes County Sheriff had phoned Petigo to alert him and tell him he had nothing to worry about.
The calls had the opposite of their intended effect. Petigo was scared.
“He was the nicest guy,” said Petigo about the agent, who relaxed after he realized the printer was doing nothing nefarious.
Petigo still has the agent’s business card in his pocket. For nostalgia, he says.
Petigo turned over all the plates and negatives to the agent. “He didn’t say “please,’” Petigo said.
The agent asked him if he wanted a receipt for the confiscated materials.
“I said yes. I wanted the receipt to show my grandkids I got busted.”
As for retirement, Petigo, 74, is unsure.
“I was going to retire at 66, but it got easy. I don’t know what I’d do if I retire,” he says.
For now he’s going it alone. Well, not exactly. There’s Pepper, the African Grey Parrot, who’s been a fixture of the shop off and on for 21 years.
“I can walk to the back, and she will yell ‘Deweyyyyyy,’” he says.
Entering C&P Printing is a bit like going back in time. Unlike most of today’s businesses — often corporate, glossy and standardized — there’s a homey clutter about the place. Add to that Dewey … and Pepper.
I asked him what he likes best about his work. Keep in mind he’s been doing this for 44 years, 42 of them in the same location.
“Just meeting people and doing something different,” he said. “Pretty much every day, I see something different.”
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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