The end of my typewriter era

As some of you know, for about four years I became quite obsessed with old typewriters, and in a mad frenzy acquired more than 50 of these wonderful old machines. A couple even dated back to the 19th Century.

In my enthusiasm, I put on displays of typewriters at three local colleges. The displays featured the same models that several famous authors used to write well-known books. After I'd install the displays, I'd stand at a distance and wait for throngs of students to crowd around.

It never happened. The typewriters barely drew a glance although a few teachers remarked on the displays. "I had one of those once," one old prof observed. Another said that he wrote his dissertation on an IBM Selectric like the one I had on display. He was impressed that Hunter Thompson had used the same model to write about Fear and Loathing.

So, after my displays flunked out on campuses, the typewriters stayed in my basement. I'd pull out a couple of the more interesting ones if a visitor showed so much as a glimmer of interest. The glimmer flickered out after the first three or four minutes of my basic typewriter dissertation.

On-line there's a pretty enthusiastic typewriter collecting community. They share advice about jammed keys, frayed ribbons and swap stories and occasionally typewriter.

A few months back the New York Times featured a story about young people getting interested in the machines. It didn't match my experience although I did heft a typewriter to an on-line organized "Meet up" group. Two of us showed up, had coffee and left never to meet again.

Mostly I became a neighborhood repository for unwanted and abandoned typewriters. "Hey, I hear you collect typewriters. I have this old one that belonged to my Mom. Are you interested?" I would follow a series of probing questions about model year, brand, condition etc. Silly me. In return I'd get: "Well, you know, it's just an old typewriter."

I'd take in a few of these orphans but then I started running out of space, so I'd donate the better ones to charity auctions until I pared back my collection to 45 or so. Selling them on-line had two drawbacks. One was the hassle of shipping them. The other was that jewelers were known to buy them to harvest their keys for bracelets. Kind of like poaching elephants for their tusks.

Then one day I noticed at Powell's Technical Bookstore downtown that someone had stashed some old typewriters and adding machines (I had three or four of those too) up on the tops of prominent book shelves. The clerk told me that the owner, Michael Powell, collected typewriters. I happen to have an ex-wife who knows Powell and through her I got a phone number and an introduction.

I figured that it was better that my typewriters be on display at Powell's than stashed away in my basement. On the phone Powell and I talked vaguely about compensation (book credit at the store) but I mostly wanted the reading public to see the assortment of Royals, Underwoods, Remingtons, Olivers, Hermes and Olympias (to name a few brands).

It took a while (Powell is mostly retired now and travels a lot) but finally, last month, a panel truck from Powell's backed into the driveway and the driver and I loaded up 40 typewriters, three adding machines and various typewriter paraphernalia.

I kept three typewriters back, just for old time's sake. They are shown here. The Olivetti Lettera 22 was the machine that got me started collecting in the first place. It as a nostalgia thing. I'd had one in the Peace Corps in Kenya 45 years ago. It was a balky little typer but I loved the way it looked. Very Italian. It is commonly found in teal. My tan one with its red shift key is pretty rare. Or at least I like to think so. Don't get me started....

There was no way I was going to let go of my folding Corona in its leather, velvet-lined traveling case. Besides, Agatha Christie and Ernie Pyle both hammered away on these little machines.

Finally, I kept an Underwood Universal mostly because I had two of them. I figured Powell's could get by on one. I particularly like the ribbon spool covers with their cut-out logos.

I also saved back my collection of ribbon tins. Some of them bear masterpieces of Art Deco graphics.

In the two weeks the typewriters have been gone, I haven't missed them. I figure they are in good hands At some point I'll call Michael Powell just to make sure, to see whether he's been to see them and whether he'd like me to tell him about what he has a treasure trove of typing history he has.

Oh, and I might ask about that credit at the bookstore.

Inside Ace Typewriter

Tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 10, “The History Detectives” will present an episode that takes them to Ace Typewriter on Portland’s N. Lombard Street.
Floating around in my computer, I have eight chapters of a book about my passion for old typewriters. Today, I dug out my chapter about Ace and its owners, Matt and Dennis McCormack. I’ve shortened it to share with you here.

[The photo on the right was taken at “Typewriter Day” 2005, which I organized at the Hillsdale Branch Library. These old machines do turn heads…and work out fingers.]

The small storefront next to a tire dealership gave every appearance of being open, but the door was locked. A dozen old typewriters filled the display window. Each had its own story, as I was to learn.

I could see a light in the back of the otherwise darkened shop, and I thought I detected movement. I knocked, waited, knocked again and finally the stooped figure of Dennis McCormack came to the door. His son, Matt, who now runs the place, would be back in a few minutes, Dennis said as he invited me to wait inside.

Dennis, who is in his 80s, has serious sight problems and less serious hearing ones. As I waited, he told me how he had started Ace Typewriter in 1961 and how his long affair with the typewriter began. After graduating from the University of Portland, Dennis served in the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II. On ship, he was recruited away from a gunners’ crew when a first mate learned he could type. After that he was responsible for typing the ship’s daily log.

After the war, he worked for a while at the service desk at United Airlines before he launched Ace Typewriter with the help of an acquaintance who ran a typewriter shop on Market Street in San Francisco.

Dennis sold typewriters to students at his old alma mater, the University of Portland, which is a mile or so from his shop. For two decades, he had the repair contract for the university’s legions of typewriters.

He had a good run at the shop, before typewriters were phased out and replaced by computers.
As Dennis ended his story, Matt returned. and Dennis retreated to his office space behind a low partition. There he reads through a large mounted magnifying glass. He has pinned postcards of the Virgin Mary, assorted saints and faraway places on the wall behind his desk.

Matt, who wears one a trademark Ben Hogan golf cap from the Thirties, readily answered questions about the typewriters parked on ceiling-high shelves. One wall is incongruously reserved for vintage RC Allen calculators.

Serene, seemingly dispassionate, Matt is matter -of-fact about the typewriters, pointing out their flaws as well as their strengths. He can address the qualities of a particular machine or make sweeping assessments about whole models and brands. He will let you know whether a model is common or rare. An Oliver #9, for instance, is common. Look for #3s, he advises. He has one and it, like several others on display, isn’t for sale but part of his 130-machine collection.

When I told him about my new typewriter adventures buying on-line, he revealed just a glimmer of distain. He allowed he had never so much as put as a finger on a computer keyboard. Matt and Dennis make no compromise with the present. They are loyal to the typewriter era, which ended three decades ago.

As I stood there with them and their machines—Remingtons, Royals, Olivettis, Underwoods, a few of which were more than a century old—I felt I was part of an episode from the Twilight Zone.

Two typewriters got my attention that first day at Ace typewriter. One was a workhorse standard Olympia. A brute of a machine, it had all the rock-solid qualities of the Olympia portables and then some. A lever advanced a sheet of paper not merely three or four lines, but half the depth of the sheet. All it took was a pull on a massive T-shaped handle on the carriage. On e-Bay the cost of shipping this behemoth would have easily been $50.

As it happened that is exactly the amount I paid Matt for it.

The other was an Olivetti Studio 44, a large portable, which would fill in a gap in my small Olivetti collection. Yes, the new collection already had gaps in need of filling.

In the coming weeks, I would spend nearly as much at Ace on repairs as on typewriters.
As I came to know Matt and Dennis, I learned about their clientele. They were collectors mostly, but also people who just couldn’t part with typewriters from their youths. Or they wanted to honor those who had handed down machines to them.

I referred many of them to Ace in the course of my typewriter wanderings.

On each visit, Matt taught me more. I really wanted to watch him at work, taking a case off a machine to get at the bone and muscle beneath the skin. But that would have been asking too much. Still, he taught me why carriages go off their tracks, sliding wildly out of control. The problem is a chipped gear tooth. I learned that a cleaning means submersing the typewriter in a cleaning solvent. Trying this at home means turning the bathtub into a typewriter-dunking vat.

I took to sharing my latest purchases with Matt, whether they needed repair or not.
On-line, I bought a 1912 Corona #3 folding portable, paying three times what I was accustomed to—$175 including shipping. It came housed in a tan leather carrying case with purple felt lining and a built-in drawer for paper.

Many machines I have bought on-line have fallen far short of my expectations or, worse, the sellers’ descriptions. Keys stick or simply don’t work. Carriages run amok. Back spaces don’t. All are candidates for Matt’s repair shop.

But the old Corona soared above my imaginings. [Note: The folding Corona is also the model featured on “The History Detectives” episode] I lauded it to Matt when I saw him to drop off another typewriter in need of repair. He insisted on seeing my purchase. But on my next visit a week later, I forgot to put the Corona in my car, perhaps subconsciously fearing Matt would find some hidden flaw.

“Where’s the Number 3?” he inquired in anticipation. I admitted I had forgotten it. As I left, his last words were: “When you come back, don’t forget the Corona.”

So I was duty-bound. A week later, I delivered the leather case and its precious contents to the shop’s counter for inspection.

Matt tested the levers and keys, peered into the workings, poked at the platen and ran his fingers over the leather case and inspected the lock mechanism.
Then he delivered his verdict.

“It’s museum quality; it really is. You just don’t see ’em as good as this…. Whatever you do, don’t sell it.”

Then he paid the Corona the ultimate compliment. He turned to the office space where Dennis was hunched over some typewriter minutia, inspecting it with his magnifying glass.
“Dad, come here. You have to see this!”

By dumb luck I had come up a winner.

It wouldn’t be the last time.