Way's Magazine Service

     Back in the nineties I was managing a neighborhood 
recycling service and Jack Way would come by once in a while 
to pick up any magazines people recycled.  Usually there'd be 
ten or twelve heavy boxes full of magazines and Jack would 
huff and puff, sometimes with an assistant, loading his 
magazines in a van.  Jack wouls pause, and catch his breath, 
and always in the most 'glad to see' manner be ready to tell 
a story or two.  Eventually I found as a manager of a retail 
establishment, with customers waiting, it was easier, and 
more polite if I just tossed the boxes into his van and got 
him on his way.  Jack was genuinely appreciative, but we were 
always too rushed.
    Jack invited me up to see his magazine service up in 
North Seattle, off Stone Way and I regret never having had 
gone up there to see his operation.  You see Way's Magazine 
service provided lost magazine articles to libraries all over 
the World and Jack had, what was possibly the largest private 
collection of magazines anywhere.  Imagine the organization, 
the structure, and Jack's love of information of all those 
documents.
     It's amazing how people love certain things, like books, 
or cars, or antiques and Jack loved magazines.  He collected 
them, organized them, cataloged them and probably had a 
fairly thorough knowledge of what kind of information could 
be found in the periodical industry.  Remember, this was 
before the internet, and reliable information was found in 
print media.  Jack once told me that there were 572,000 
magazines published in the World.  This was around 1995, just 
when the Internet was getting started.  Jack probably made 
all of two dollars a day providing lost magazines to 
libraries, but his reputation, and listing in all the top 
journals and directories validated his service while his love 
for information transcended notoriety.
   Toward the end, Jack had a pretty good promising protegee.  
Unfortunately, even though the internet information age was 
just getting started, and this extensive magazine collection 
was turned over, and the internet was just starting to 
demonstrate its hunger for information, Jack's protegee could 
not carry Jack's system over to the network.  With Jack's 
passing, and the Seattle real estate speculation boom, Jack's 
magazine business were lost.  Another reason why the internet 
does not precede 1995 or so.




kbushnel.sdf-us.org/contact.html