Back in the mid-1980s, when he was 40 and looking to start his own business, Andy Klein flipped a coin and chose the photocopying trade.

Now he's closing his Federal Street shop, across from the ballpark, for the same reason so many blacksmiths closed up when the last century was young. Personal computers and the Internet have done to Mirror-Image Printing what the automobile did to the village smithy.

"If a business used to want to communicate with 1,000 customers, they'd order 1,000 letters and 1,000 envelopes,'' Mr. Klein, 62, said. "I'd print them and fold them. They'd stuff them, seal them and send them out.

"Now all you have to do is sit at that Mac in front of you and push a few buttons and that's it.''

He had a party last Thursday afternoon for his customers and friends. He was blown away by some of the gifts. Mr. Klein can talk in more colors than he can print and, if he doesn't like you, he'll probably let you know that, but he's fiercely loyal to his friends and old customers. He has a little magnetized sign on one of his desk drawers -- "We Pride Ourselves on Friendly, Prompt Service -- So Shut up and Wait." But that isn't how he treated people.

"Andy's from a different cut of meat," said Glenn Whitfield, branch manager of All Floor Supplies, who stayed a customer even after moving from the North Side to Monroeville a couple of years ago. "He's from a different time."

You could place an order with him in the afternoon and have the package waiting on your doorstep when you got to work the next day at 7 a.m. He'd recommend his clients to each other, helping them find new customers. The Mirror-Image page designer, Rae Lynn McKown, helped design price lists for customers.

"He's from a time when building a relationship in business is what mattered," Mr. Whitfield said.

Dick McCormick, owner and president of RTR Business Products in Murrysville, has supplied him with copiers since he opened 23 years ago.

"We've always had a handshake deal," Mr. McCormick said. "He's never been under a written contract with me, ever. He's the only one. We've never had a problem with him. In fact, he's the only customer who's ever paid me in advance."

And when Mr. McCormick's son, Brian, broke his back skiing, Mr. Klein called every other day for more than a year to see how his son was doing. "He is probably the most sincere individual I've ever met in my life." And "a little crazy," Mr. McCormick said.

Mr. Klein's mouth can get him in trouble. His business began as a franchise operation, but at a meeting of franchisees in suburban Houston, he walked up to the owner's wife as she was pulling badges from a box and said:

"Badges? Badges? I paid $50,000 for a franchise and all I get is a stinkin' badge?"

The owner didn't appreciate him playing off the line from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and ripped him up one side and down the other. By 1995, Mr. Klein was in federal court trying to get out of his franchise agreement, which took two and a half years.

"I was the same person then that I am today: Attitude, mouth, so forth," Mr. Klein said.

Jack Hunt, a partner with Atria's restaurant across the street and lead singer of Johnny Angel and the Halos, said, "As far as neighbors go, you couldn't pick a better one." If the restaurant needed copies in a hurry, "he'd stop what he was doing and get it done." And though Mr. Klein's mouth has at least a blockwide reputation -- enhanced by his pungent political proclamations on an electronic sign in the window -- he was also ready with a kind word or a hug.

Mrs. McKown worked for Mr. Klein for 12 years until late last year, when she became a full-time mother for her four children. "He made going to work fun, and it wasn't like going to work. In the neighborhood, it was like a family."

Mr. Klein is wrapping things up now, but he's not the kind of guy to put a bow around anything. He never had a business plan or a budget, and never did any advertising, and so is still playing by ear. Yesterday may or may not be the last day he conducted business. He has another month on his lease.

Before he went into printing, he was a clothing salesman who sold wholesale to men's stores. When he started, "I gave myself five years at the most.'' He got 23.

He still wants to work and says he's looking everywhere. Restaurant dishwasher or retail salesman, he'll do something. He has friends he hasn't met yet.