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.

Consumer by the Sea

Strange what you can get for less than a $20 bill especially if you find yourself at the beach for a few days with time to browse. In Manzanita and Nehalem, where the ion-charged ocean air does strange things to the brain, my consumer choices were measured, modest and bizarre.

At a cavernous, jumbled recycling center, Manzanita hearties have set up an eclectic recycling barn (left) for life’s cast-off flotsam and jetsam. In my frenzied typewriter collecting days the place was always good for a bargain. (You mean that you are selling that Olympia SM3 for $15?) On recent visits to the big corrugated building, I’ve found the typewriter section barren. Discovered perhaps.

Just as well. My life and basement, packed with 50 of the old bangers, has no room for another typewriter.

But there are always the practical knick-knacks from the “office supply” section. On this trip, I snapped up a file card holder for 50 cents and one of those magnetic paper clip dispensers for another half dollar. I was tempted by a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle but realized that the real price wouldn’t be one dollar but at least 12 hours hunched over its parts. Not worth it.

On up the road at the community thrift shop, there was the matter of the circa ‘60s Olivetti adding machine. I have one of these already, purchased for its crisp Italian design. The thing doesn’t compute; it just looks great, very Italian. It now resides in the depths of my closet. So here was another one. $3.50. Gorgeous. Perhaps it worked although Olivettis are notorious for function not following form, or anything else for that matter. The calculator was missing the axle for its paper roll. Not a good sign. I could have asked the chatty gray-haired woman behind the counter to plug it in on the hope that it might add 2 and 2 and come up 4. But if it did, I would be tempted to buy it, and for what?

Instead I popped for a sturdy $2.50 work shirt marked down from $5.

Down the road in Nehalem, I found an 1898 edition of The Oregonian in the antique mall, which, alas, is going out of business. The mall folk wanted $10 for the yellowed, sealed-in-plastic Oregonian. Tempting, but I had already scored an 1884 edition at a garage sale a few years back for a lot less. I use it to show my students that way back then, before Fox and CNN, the news was crafted story telling of the kind that produced a Charles Dickens, a Stephen Crane and a Mark Twain. I left the paper and its old, old news to age some more in the mall.

The next morning, a Sunday, I went into serious NEW news withdrawal and set out to find the New York Times at the local espresso bar. Stacks awaited vacationing urban customers. They were waiting in line to buy "All the News that's Fit to Print." Because Manzanita is considered a “remote” outlet, the paper cost $7, nearly as much as the ancient Oregonian. Measured in dollars, the great monetary yardstick, the respective values begged comparison. Past versus present, Oregon versus New York, 19th Century versus 21st.

I chose New York and the 21st Century present, plus a 12-ounce cup of coffee and a lemon zest scone for $4.50. In less than the time it took to wander through the thrift shop rejecting the Olivetti and buying the shirt, I had devoured the coffee and the scone and the Book Review section.

I was out $11.50 plus tip for a nourished brain and body.

Thinking back on it, I could have bought the old Oregonian and the Olivetti adding machine for about the same amount.

I have no regrets, but I do wonder (don't you?) what will happen to them there, exposed to human and other elements drawn to the sea.

A Royal Fair Trade

I picked up the typewriter you see here, an Olivetti, from Matt McCormack at Ace Typewriter the other day.

It was part of a spur-of-the-moment trade that took all of two minutes to negotiate. Matt and I are easy.

I proposed a two-for-one deal. I would give Matt a black, crinkle-finished, Depression-era Royal portable in pristine condition along with a gray Remington Model 5 portable. In exchange I would get the Olivetti, a Linea 88, which I admired for its lyrical bulk and Italian pedigree.

Matt rejected the Remington saying that it would only end up in his basement, a kind of typewriter bone yard. He has never liked Remington 5s. The escapements go bad, he said, usually because of chipped teeth. I won’t go into the significance of chipped teeth along a typewriter's escapement bar except to say that letters, to say nothing of words, do not follow in orderly fashion when escapement mechanisms fail.

As it turned out, the Remington 5 I was offering for trade was just fine. Matt still didn’t want it. But, never mind, he offered a simple straight trade — the Royal for the Olivetti.

So what did I get in this Olivetti?

As you can see, it’s a standard, not a portable, but because much of it is plastic, it’s remarkably light. It has a clean Italian crispness to its design. Olivetti got that down cold, witness its Lettera machines, universally hailed for their simple elegance.

What Olivetti didn’t get was ergonomics — ever. You have to attack, nay, pounce on, the keys to produce even the most mundane phrase. The pinkie stretch to the shift key is at human anatomical limits, and returning the carriage requires the heft I reserve for the weight machines at the community center.

But I’m not complaining. The typeface is a modified Courier with a Euro-design edge to it. I can’t quite place it, but it lends a cool Italian flair to whatever you write.

As I snooped around to the back of the machine here in my office warren, I discovered that while the machine's design was Italian (circa 1966), its manufacture was British. In the words on a label, “Made in Great Britain.” The label doesn’t say where in Great Britain but because of my inherited affinity for Wales, I like to think of its being assembled in Llandudno, Conwy or Llangollen — however unlikely that may be.

On the very same label announcing the Olivetti’s British manufacturer as “British Olivetti Ltd.,” is fine print. I fetched my magnifying glass, Holmes like, to decipher it. To the right of an honest-to-God Royal Crest are the words “By appointment to H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh Office Equipment Manufacturers.”

Imagine, an aristocratic typewriter, right here in Portland, Oregon, right here in this commoner's cluttered office. Astonishingly, I had traded Matt a Royal for a Royal.

I call that a fair trade.

Lettera 32 Down Under

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A few posts back I mentioned Christina Wall, a Michigan graduate student, who has discovered the joys of using an Olivetti Lettera 32.

Now comes news via one of my typewriter forums that Matthew Smeal, a photo-journalist in Sidney, Australia, is similarly smitten.

Enjoy his photos as well. Be sure to make the connection between excellent photography and an eye for elegant design.