The Magic of Typewriting

There is nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Youthful determination resulted in getting my first typewriter when I was 13. It wasn’t that I had trained to use one and deserved or even needed to own one. There was just something mysteriously intriguing about typewriters and I wanted in on it. Life would be so different if I had a typewriter and could type, type, type, any time I wanted.

No one in my family ever owned a typewriter. It was up to me to break the barrier!

With savings gleaned from delivering newspapers, I knew I could find just the right typewriter to fit my budget. It had to be sleek, fast and the most modern of typewriters possible. It had to make my fingers want to jump up and down on the keys.

There was only one store in town with the magical merchandise, Nanaimo Business Machines, and that is where I aimed to satisfy my curiosity. Peering through the front window of the old brick building on Bastion Street, I was amazed at how many different typewriters were available. Price didn’t matter now. My typewriter was in there waiting for me.

I pushed the door open, causing a bell hanging above it to tinkle as I entered. A man working on something at the back of the shop stood and turned around, looked over the top of his glasses and spotted me standing there. Something filled the air that had to be a typewriter smell. It was glorious.

As the tall man, wearing a black apron over his white shirt and dress pants, approached me, he asked, "Can I help you?"

My heart was pounding because I’d never before walked into some grownup-type of store to conduct business. Maybe this wasn’t the right thing to be doing. I was out of my league. I wasn’t sure what to say, but I blurted out something about needing a typewriter.

"Well, what kind of typewriter?" he asked in his official-sounding voice.

"Could I just look around?"

"Go ahead. Just don’t touch anything."

This was going to be harder than I thought. Fifty, maybe a hundred typewriters were arranged on shelves and various tables. I had no idea where to start. My typewriter didn’t just jump up and beckon me.

"How much are these ones over here?" I said, pointing to some sleek new electric machines. The man walked back across the floor and pulled a little card tag from the back of the typewriter. He lifted his head and looked under his glasses to read the tag. Whatever he said, it was way beyond what I could afford as a suddenly poverty-stricken paperboy. That’s when I explained my dilemma: desire versus dollar. He seemed to understand.

"Uh-huh," he said, turning and lifting a tag on an older contraption. "Here are some used ones. Very good, mind you for learning to type. Sturdy and reliable."

This is not what I imaged, but then I caught the vision and realized it was just the one for me. An Underwood typewriter made in 1934. Price $25.

"I’ll have to come back again because I don’t quite have enough for that yet, but this is what I want."

Several times over the new few months I stopped by the store. The typewriter was always sitting in the same place. Being a curious young lad, I eventually learned the man in the apron was Mr. Highett. He didn’t seem to mind me coming in every so often. Other typewriters disappeared and new ones appeared in their place, but my typewriter was always there waiting for the day I would take it home.

Then the day arrived when I had saved enough to make a deal on the typewriter. However, there was one small problem. How would I get it home? If I bought it, I had to get it home. Could I carry it in my arms five blocks through downtown, seven blocks up a steep hill, and three blocks along to the house? Realizing my limitations, and envisioning the sight of a young teenager slogging up a hill with an old typewriter, I knew my father would come to the rescue. He was surprised when I phoned from the store and wasn’t sure what I was up to, but he came and drove me – and my typewriter – home.

I just couldn’t wait to let my fingers fly across the keys and punch out words and sentences, and pages and pages of who knows what. I set it on the kitchen table. With a page of paper tucked into the roller, I twirled the clicking rolly-thingy knob until the paper popped up in front. I frantically scanned the keys, my eyes darting back and forth, and began pecking at the letters with my fingers.

dafv

Two little arms with letters on them jammed. I poked my fingers inside the typewriter and dislodged the arms. I tried again.

davio

Jammed again. "What’s the matter with this?" I said to myself. I dislodged the arms.

My father, who had been watching, suggested I try going a little slower. As much as I didn’t want to, I tried it and it worked.

david

"Okay, it works!" And away I went. qwertyuiop asdfghjkl; zxcvbnm,. Every letter worked perfect.

The continual banging of the keys making the little arms jump up and down, hitting the paper against the roller, echoed in the kitchen.

It was at that very moment my parents realized I needed some space of my own and relegated me to the basement where I could type to my heart’s content. The half-dug-out earthen basement became my office, where the muffled clattering sounds of creativity couldn’t bother the rest of the family.

And thus began the quest to make my brain and fingers work together, learning in the process that making typewriters work the way they should took a whole lot of effort on my part and not so much the typewriter’s part. Although a self-taught typist using my eyes to guide my fingers to the keys, I eventually learned to make those fingers do the magic they so much wanted to do so many years before.

The glory days of the typewriter are long gone. Children as young as three years are learning to use computer keyboards and growing up with the natural ability to glide their fingers across the keys to conjure brilliantly graphic images from some hidden source. By 13, most young people are computer literate and proficient in keyboarding skills.

Back in the old days, you were lucky to get into Cliff Pearson’s typing class in Grade 9 at John Barsby School. He knew how to teach teenagers to type by touch and not by sight. Students, row upon row, would sit, correct posture, hands on the keys of manual typewriters (or an electric if you were good enough) while they scanned the pages of their typing exercise book. Make a mistake, out came the old gray typewriter eraser. Then, ever so carefully, you gently removed the error then retyped. Accuracy, speed, rhythm and concentration was the winning combination.

Should something happen to the keyboard or computer, today’s teens fix it, get someone to fix it, or else they get rid of it and find the latest higher function model.

There was something about getting my hands into the guts of the typewriter, using an old toothbrush, some rubbing alcohol and a pin to clean the tiny pockets of ink out of the ribbon that made the letters appear on the paper. No one in their right mind today would poke a pin into a computer, let along drip cleaning fluid of any kind anywhere near the keyboard.

I’ve tried to remember whatever happened to that old Underwood, my typewriter. Did it find it’s way into a garbage truck or did my parents sell it when I went overseas for six weeks when I was 15? It doesn’t matter much now. The point is that old typing machine set me on a journey that continues today. I’ve typed literally billions of letters over the past 40 years, including stories about tragedy, politics, crime, religion, social events, and, most of all, about people. Along the way my fingers have also typed court reports, government data, genealogical information, tests and lessons for college and university students, and a graduate thesis t’boot. They’ve also been used to edit a few books and fill in a few forms.

What I’ve done is not unique. Somewhere out there in the world, I know there is at least one other person who has done pretty much the same. Millions of typewriters once kept the world going round. I’ve often wondered what became of them with the advent of computers. They were built to last a lifetime, or even two or three. And they did. Computers, though, seem to change at least every year and you have to have the latest if you’re going to keep up with the trends.

My hands don’t glide across the keys as they used to, but they still do, sometimes a bit clumsily, and I marvel at the words and ideas that flow like blood through my veins and into print. I didn’t know when I bought that 1934 Underwood that it would take decades before I came across a quote by Ernest Hemingway that summed up the magic of typewriting in a few words:
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

I now agree!

With the latest technology of noiseless keyboards, the clatter of fingers striking keys is even disappearing. That has always been part of the magic.

© 2007 DavidzWritings.blogspot.com