Keyed up | A computer glitch spurs nostalgia for the hefty typewriters of yore
After a few exasperating hours of trying to get my new computer to perform a simple task, I gave up and went for a walk through the shade trees that make up our tranquil backyard. As I walked, I soon remembered the different writing machines I’ve used over the years.
When I started high school, my father let me use his Underwood portable, the ponderous writing machine he used for years when he was a student at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. Like most typewriters of that time, it was made of heavy-gauge tempered steel. How heavy? Well, if you had run a chain through its hefty middle it probably could have been used as a mooring for a pretty good-sized boat. Though I can’t say for sure, since I never got the chance to use it for that purpose. For all I know, it’s being used as a mooring at this very moment.
When I finally finished high school, one of my graduation presents was a sleek Royal portable. Being a lot newer than my dad’s Underwood, it weighed a few hundred pounds less. If I had to, I could almost lift it without injuring myself too badly.
That Royal was such a fine writing machine that I took it to college with me and used it all four years. You have to understand that this was back in the 1960s and people tended to keep things like typewriters for a while. I know it sounds strange these days, but back then there were even places you could take a broken typewriter and for a few dollars a guy who knew what he was doing would actually spend time fixing it, and even clean it all up like new before giving it back. As everyone knows, there are no such people around these days to repair typewriters, even if we were still using them.
Lessons learned
My first job out of college was at the Pawtucket Times in Rhode Island, where I was hired to be their suburban reporter. Could I write, you ask? I guess I could. Don’t forget — I had been an English major and written all kinds term papers with fancy-sounding titles on them. I had pounded out a lot of readable stuff on my Royal portable over the previous four years, so I figured how hard could it be to write news stories?
Since I majored in English, I didn’t have one marketable skill that employers were looking for. Oh sure, I knew a lot about the Indo-European family of languages and I knew way more than anyone needed to know about diphthongs, but I didn’t know much useful stuff.
They used to say that after graduation new engineers would continue to ask questions like: “How does it work?” Philosophy majors never stop asking: “What does it all mean?” But English majors, after graduation, are likely to ask: “Would you like fries with that?”
At the Pawtucket Times, we used these giant, industrial-strength typewriters made of steel originally meant to be used as armor plating on Navy destroyers. And no matter how you abused these massive writing machines, you couldn’t destroy them.
When I left Pawtucket behind and returned to Maine, I got a job with the Bangor Daily News as a reporter in their Ellsworth bureau. I can’t remember the details of the first electronic typewriter I ever used, but it was in that Ellsworth bureau where I first used it. I also remember the first “word processor” I ever used was also in that Daily News bureau.
One day, out of the blue, we were introduced to a Zenith Data Systems machine that used BASF flexi-discs to store our stories. It was the most absurdly designed contrivance that ever the mind of man concocted and I was glad to move on to another job, just to be done with it.
Since that time, there have been many word-processing computers and it seems the most wearisome one is always the one I happen to be using at the moment. Resigned to that fact, I turned and walked back through the trees and went into my office and rebooted.
The next morning, I bought an Uncle Henry’s to see if there were any Underwoods or Royals available. At that point, even a Zenith Data System machine with BASF flexi-discs would have been an improvement.
John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com. Read more of John’s columns here.
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