Reminders of this trait keep coming up, the most recent being the appearance of my column in this newspaper's issue of March 9. What I had written as the last paragraphs appeared instead at the beginning, and then again at the end; they were there twice. And what I had intended as the lead paragraph was, so to speak, buried.

It occurred to me as an afterthought that if there had to be repetition, those were fortunate paragraphs because they had to do with the upcoming library parcel tax issue, which needs all the promotion it can get.

As to the living-in-the-past angle, my first thought when I saw all this was that it wouldn't have happened in the days of hot type; this was computer work.

"Hot type," for those not familiar with the term, has to do with the machines that created slugs or lines of type from molten metal, hence the name Linotype. The machine itself has been described as the most complicated mechanical device ever created, and its inventor, Ottmar Mergenthaler, was said to have become something of a mental case. Anyone who has watched the marvelous workings of a Linotype can understand how its inventor could have gone off the deep end in the process of devising it. It's an absolutely incredible piece of machinery; talk about moving parts!

Still dwelling in the past, there's something about the original craft of printing--setting type by hand and operating a machine that presses the type against paper--that's uniquely fulfilling. It's almost therapeutic, and I use the term advisedly because back in 1950, I got my first small hand press. At about this time I was dating a girl visiting in Saratoga who was an occupational therapist in a mental hospital back at her home. When I exulted over the pleasures of printing on my own press, she noted that printing was one of the activities used in treating some mental patients. I didn't "press" the issue.

Another aspect of this appeal of basic printing is represented in a group called the San Jose Printers' Guild. Its members, who staff the Printing Office at San Jose's Historical Park, include a lot of high-tech people, at the other end of the scale from hand-set type. But this is what they like to do. Call it recreation, therapy, whatever.

No, I'm not overlooking the fact that this column is supposed to be about Saratoga. The local angle is that hot-type printing is, in a large way, responsible for my being here to begin with. That's because back in 1920, my dad, the late Llewellyn B. Peck, was assistant editor of the Berkeley Gazette, but he considered small-town newspapers the most worthwhile aspect of journalism. So in 1922, he borrowed money from his mother and bought Saratoga's weekly paper, the Star, which had been founded in 1917. My dad, mother and older brother moved here in that year, and I was born the following year, 1923. My birthplace was actually Oakland, where my mother's doctor was, but I consider myself a native domiciliary of Saratoga.

Originally, the Saratoga Star was printed in Los Gatos, but my dad felt that a hometown newspaper should be published in its hometown. So he had the printing shop, press and Linotype, set up in back of the old Saratoga Post Office on Big Basin Way, then Lumber Street. As it turned out, Saratoga wasn't really ready to support its own newspaper, so my dad moved the whole operation to Los Gatos and established the Los Gatos Star. He also did commercial printing.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of that newspaper office at 37 East Main St. in Los Gatos. I can recall watching the rhythmic movements of the job press, its huge flywheel whirling and the rollers hissing as they passed over the disk absorbing ink to be applied to the type. The Linotype was another source of fascination.

Years later, when I went to work for the San Jose Mercury Herald, now Mercury News, I eventually did duty as a makeup editor in the back shop, which was Linotype territory. I like to think that raised type printing has always been part of my life.

Today at home, I have several presses, including an 1887 foot-treadle job press that I use extensively. There's also a Linotype awaiting restoration. Computers? Yes we have one, but my wife is the computer person in the family. I stick with my therapy.