The Red Pint Rag is 20 years old. Who’d a thunk it. (I know the volume number doesn’t reflect this — that’s because the RPR went AWOL a few years.)

The original home of the Red Pint Rag. (Click on the image to see a larger photo.)

You may recall that the RPR was born as a means of keeping in touch with friends and relatives up north when yours truly was living on a boat in San Diego Bay (preceding the Mobile Mansion by several years).

The first issue was a rather vanilla affair. In those days desktop publishing consisted of a typewriter, a blue pencil, a pair of scissors and a bottle of rubber cement — and several gallons of white-out. The terms personal computer and word processor had yet to be coined.

Tom Rozum, as fine an artist as he is musician, took pity on me and fashioned the RPR logo. I was making music with Tom in those days, playing bass with The Rhythm Rascals, a swing-style band started by Jay Waelder. That RPR tradition was continued after I returned to Seattle following the deaths of my parents and my subsequent return to San Diego in 1981.