Kathy Hughes
Contributing Writer
If reminiscing is bad for you, I’m in critical condition, but don’t call 911 just yet. I miss typewriters, not only my typewriter, but all typewriters. Mine was baby blue, semi-electric (you had to make manual carriage returns), and a going away present for college. I think the typewriter was one of the greatest inventions ever.
My mother was well aware of the typewriter’s transformative power. She came of age during the depression, and had fortunately put a college degree under her belt, and was qualified to teach history, shorthand and typing. For my mother and the type-writer, it was a love match — she could make that clunky, manual typewriter fly.
When she typed, well into her retirement years, it was a solo percussion recital. The space bar thumped so hard, the whole second floor reverberated. It combined with the zip and ring of the carriage return, and the clackety-clack of the keys, you’d think it would keep the children awake, but it didn’t. My mother’s typing speed was fast and rhythmic. The only place to hear those rhythmic taps are on re-runs of “Murder She Wrote.”
When I reached the age of about ten, the keyboard letters were covered with tape, it was going to be touch typing all the way, no peeking. There I sat, typing triplets of letters — fff jjj rrr — over and over. Then I graduated to combinations of letters — fgf — until the well-known complete, nonsensical, alphabet sentence: “the quick, red, fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.”
Other children were doing similar exercises, but at the piano, not the typewriter. The music of our household was produced for practical purposes, namely getting a job. Performance was a matter of typing speed, at least forty words per minute (women), a goal which I barely achieved, I was not a speed demon like my mother.
Typing and the typewriter saved my mother’s life as the country prepared for WWII. On the recommendation of her professors, she was recruited to go to Washington, DC to serve the government. Her typing abilities, combined with her knowledge and expertise with shorthand (both Gregg and Pitman), qualified her for the highest rating, with a beginning salary of 25 cents an hour. Her life prospects were golden, then she met my dad, and she was off and running.
Every summer from when I was old enough to work, through the end of college, I typed at a minimum standard. My rating greatly improved with the electric typewriter, but I still struggled with accuracy.
When I started writing, I was slow to adapt to typing my drafts, preferring to write them out first with longhand. When I finally made the switch, it was a whole new experience. My thoughts were immediately recorded on the page — it like an intravenous injection. I only gave up my typewriter when it became difficult to obtain ribbons, the inked tape that imprinted the letters on the paper.
There is no technology available today that can equal the manual typewriter; requiring no electricity or batteries, they functioned in a tent on the plains of Africa, as well as in the Arctic or the Amazon. There was little, if any, environmental damage or exploitation in using them, or producing them with minor redesign. Typewriters were portable, as mine was, and it went wherever I went. Why was this technology jettisoned so quickly, and so readily?
Oddly, the manufacturers of typewriters were largely the same as the gun companies: Remington and L.C. Smith were both located in Central New York. The Smith typewriter company was even located on Clinton Street in Syracuse.
I want my typewriter back, and I want to hear typewriters pounding away in the middle of the night. Where are you, L.C. Smith?
