Not long ago Carolyn Bublitz of Albert Lea called and said she had found some rather odd newspapers while going through old family heirlooms and photos. What she found were several copies of the Glenville Progress weekly newspaper.

These old newspaper copies from March 11, 1927, July 19, 1928, and June 15, 1933, are the most distinctively different ones I’ve ever encountered.

It’s a real challenge to describe these unique one-sheet, eight-page publications, but I’ll try.

The front pages of these old Glenville newspapers measure 21.5 inches by 15 inches and six columns in width. Today’s Tribune is 21.5 inches by 12.5 inches and also six columns in width.

Turn these copies of the Glenville newspapers over and you’re looking at page 8. However, this page isn’t numbered, and there’s a good reason for this omission.

Open up these old Glenville papers and you will have a layout featuring pages 4 and 5. Again, these pages aren’t numbered.

Now, here’s where this subject gets tricky. The four pages mentioned so far are printed on just one large piece of newsprint, 43 inches by 30 inches in size.

With these four pages laid out flat, two are right side up and readable, and the other two are just the opposite.

Maybe the best way I can describe this is to use the example of a couple sitting at the kitchen table.

With the Glenville Progress laid out, the person on one side can easily read pages 1 and 8. The person on the other side of the table can read pages 4 and 5.

If this one sheet of newspaper is turned over, then the person on one side of the table can read pages 3 and 6 The person on the opposite side can easily read pages 2 and 7 at the same time.

One can assume the people at the table would just turn the sheet around to share the news of the week.

This all may seem to be somewhat confusing; maybe one more detail will explain what’s taking place with this one-piece, eight-page newspaper of another era.

From at least 1927 to 1933, the Glenville Progress evidently didn’t separate this newspaper into two pieces of four pages each.

This would have resulted in an eight-page publication with all the print on the unnumbered pages set up the same way.

All I can assume is that the subscribers and purchasers of this newspaper were supposed to take a knife and separate the one large piece of printed material into two pieces to create a more traditional newspaper.

Anyway, the publisher of the Glenville Progress back then was likely saving money with the production of his publication. Please keep in mind this newspaper was printed on a manual-operated flat bed press and folded twice by hand before being issued to the public.

There was a thought that the newspapers Carolyn found were oddballs or bad copies set aside years ago during the printing process at Glenville.

To check this out a little further, I went to the Freeborn County Historical Museum Library.

Linda Evenson, the librarian and researcher, has both microfilm and loose copies of the Glenville Progress.We checked through a bundle of 1932 newspapers and found several copies right away which were the one large piece type already described.

Other newspapers had been separated with scissors so one issue consisted of four sheets and eight pages.

Linda came up with the interesting point that one side of the Glenville Progress (pages 1,4, 5 and 8) were based on area news and advertisements. The other side (pages 2, 3, 6 and 7) consisted of feature material and advertisements from somewhere else.

I have no idea as to how long the Glenville Progress was actually issued in this unusual one-piece format.

A special thank you goes to Carolyn for her contribution of those old newspapers which resulted in this column.

(Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears each Friday.)