Holding a scrapbook compiled by his children, Ed Moore points out his first employee review, the one C.C. Harvey wrote in October 1931.

“Quiet,” “clean” and “industrious” were the adjectives Harvey used to describe the 18-year-old in his job at the Fort Fairfield Review. “A natural mechanic,” the owner called him, “and greatly interested in his work.”

The young man could not imagine that in the year 2000 he would mark his 70th anniversary in the printing business – and still show up for work every morning at Bacon Printing Co., the Bangor firm where he has been employed since 1962.

Moreover, said company owner John Bacon, the printer, who will be 88 on Christmas Day, has taken probably no more than a half-dozen sick days in his 38 years at the company.

“That means a lot,” Bacon said. “It takes a long while in a print shop to train someone. It may take a couple of years on a particular press.”

Not that you’ll find Moore with the company’s new four-color envelope printer, the first in the state.

“I don’t know about that new modern stuff,” he acknowledged. But the man certainly knows printing, and in fact, he grew up in a printing family.

Moore’s brother also went into the printing business, and his own career took him to the Bar Harbor Times and L.H. Thompson Printing.

Their father, George E. Moore, at one point worked for John Bacon’s father, Henry Bacon. Henry was the second generation to run the business, founded by his father, John H. Bacon, in 1872 on State Street in Bangor. The company now is run mainly by the current owner’s son-in-law, Carlton Strout.

Bacon Printing’s downtown workplace and equipment burned during the Great Bangor Fire in 1911. The company reopened on State Street, then moved to Exchange Street and then Franklin Street before relocating to its current large building on outer Hammond Street.

“The business has changed a lot,” said John Bacon, who himself came to the company in 1948, right out of high school. “When Ed first came here, it was all letterpress,” Bacon said, speaking of the old printing process. “Now it’s 98 percent lithograph – offset printing.”

On a recent morning, the white-haired Moore used “the Mealey” – a several-decades-old die-cut machine – to cut paper for an order of business forms. Wearing a dark green apron over his work clothes, he stood by as the Mealey’s silvery jaws clacked away.

“I kind of inherited the Mealey, and this is the chase,” he said afterward, holding up the wooden frame that holds the die. “I’ve chased ’em around a few times,” he joked.

Moore has performed a variety of tasks over the years, at his first job casting the lead by picking pieces out of a case and putting them in a “stick.”

“And I enjoyed the old Ludlow,” he said, referring to an older piece of printing equipment, “and the old job press – a 1912 Thompson, I think your father told me it was,” he said to Bacon.

“At the Bar Harbor Times, I ran the cylinder press – and also in Fort Fairfield,” Moore said, explaining how different presses could produce newspapers with varying numbers of pages.

For his current employer, Moore once set up small web presses, an exacting job that required the machinery to be level within thousandths of an inch. Now, he often can be found doing bindery work.

“He’s done everything there is to do in a print shop – and then some,” Bacon said.

Despite 70 years in the business, printing is not all there is to Moore’s life. The Orrington resident counts himself lucky to have a close relationship with his daughters and their families.

Mowing his 4-acre lawn takes a bit of time during the summer, and he also takes pride in his woodworking projects that can be seen throughout the area. One family effort is evident in the communion table at East Orrington Congregational Church – Moore assembled it, his brother engraved it, and his daughters embroidered the cloth for the table.

He’s a member at the church, as he is at Orrington’s Ralph J. Pollard Masonic Lodge No. 217, where he built another altar table.

In addition, he restored a 1931 Chevy half-ton truck – which he doesn’t drive much. “The only enjoyment I got was doing it,” he said, ever the worker.

Yet with all his hobbies, Moore plans to keep showing up at the company where the people really are a second family – one that has helped him weather life’s ups and downs.

“If it hadn’t been for such nice bosses, I wouldn’t still be here today,” Moore emphasized. “It’s a great relationship.”

Though he has no plans to retire, Moore did have a good time at a recent company cookout celebrating his 70 years in the business. His family was on hand, as well.

“It’s a good life,” he said simply.