- Patrick Sisson
- The Seed‘s detailed drug guide. Click to expand the image and expand your mind.
Every week during a stretch of the Chicago Seed‘s 1967 to 1974 print run, staffers would make the trip: a pickup or VW Minibus loaded with hand-mixed ink and negatives for the next issue—diligently pasted up and typed out twice on an IBM Selectric—would drive two hours north to Port Washington, Wisconsin, so William Schanen, a free-press advocate, could print roughly 35,000 copies overnight. Loaded down with so much weight on the return, the van would often fishtail on the highway.
“Mayor Daley once said, ‘What trees do they plant, what are their roots?’” says Peck. “We took that very seriously. If you look through the paper, we had this whole framework of stories—draft resistance, drug information, high school stories . . . We wanted to get out of the money economy, and for awhile, it seemed like it was something that could happen.”
