Fred Haynes has always been drawn to running his own business. In the mid-1980s he had a cleaning company, but he quickly found a new path. “A friend of mine wanted me to come work for him doing screenprinting,” Haynes said. “But I’m an independent person. I realized there could be a good future in this, so I went to school for it and went from cleaning toilets to screenprinting, and I’ve been doing it ever since.” Haynes, who owns East Side Screenprinting with his wife, Marcia Haynes, has been churning out T-shirts since 1987. Standing in the back of his immaculate and modern shop on Washington Avenue in Portland, Haynes methodically presses ink through a photo-synthesized screen and onto a shirt. From there it’s one minute under a dryer before being folded and sent out the door. “It’s most gratifying when I see someone walking down the street wearing a T-shirt I printed,” Haynes said. “I live for this.”
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