On typewriters and cat-eating coyotes

It’s tempting to continue following “The History Detectives’” bungled story about the typewriter suspected of having belonged to Ernie Pyle.

The subject has attracted record traffic to the Red Electric.

And just think, I had hoped — if that’s the right word — to write about coyotes’ devouring neighborhood cats.

It’s a challenge, but I’m going to try both … and hope an elegant transition between the two emerges.

Alan Hale of the on-line Portable Typewriter Forum suggests that the History Detectives may have come up with the right conclusion about the typewriter — but for the wrong reasons.

The PBS sleuths, you recall, were trying to determine whether a Corona #3 portable, which now belongs to Eric Warlick of Portland, had once belonged to Pyle, the famed World War II correspondent.

The detectives concluded that Warlick’s typewriter was at least not the one used to write one of Pyle’s last letters from Okinawa before the WWII correspondent was killed by a sniper’s bullet. Their conclusion was based on a difference in the numeral “1” as it appeared in the letter and in the way the typewriter produced it. Their “expert” was ignorant of the fact that Pyle simply may have used the lower case “L” to make a “1,” and that Warlick’s typewriter was fully capable of doing just that as well as producing a real “1” by using a shift key. For the full discussion, go to my earlier post.

(At this point you may be looking forward to hearing about the coyotes and the demise of the neighbors’ cats, but bear with me .... )

Hale says the program’s “document expert” could have pointed to other evidence showing the typewriter’s typing didn’t match up with the typing on the letter. Hale offers some qualifications for his judgment, but here is his analysis.

“… The overall lengths of the samples were different,” which, he admits, could be attributed to variations in reproducing up the samples for display.

But, he continues, “Regardless, both the shapes and the internal proportions of the characters (both letters and numerals), and the typefaces as a whole, are distinctly different … the letter bows were much taller and fuller in proportion to the overall height on the Pyle (letter) sample.

“Besides the differences in shape, the Corona's typeface seems to be both shorter and narrower within a given character's Pica space and with generally shorter serifs, leaving more apparent space between characters — assuming, of course, that it wasn't a paste-up (distortion).”

I’d only add that if I were Ernie Pyle and dependent on a functioning typewriter in the battlefield, I’d have a back-up under my cot back at the base camp. Eric Warlick may have one; the letter may have been typed on the other.

Let’s see. An artful transition to coyotes and cats.

How about “There’s a war zone of a different sort closer to home and it is taking its toll on the neighborhood cats.”

Oh, never mind. Let’s cut to the chase, which happens to be coyotes’ chasing down and devouring neighborhood cats.

I fear that Marlin and Taco many be the latest feline victims.

According to missing notices places around our neighborhood Marlin is “lost” and Taco is “on the lam.”

Let’s hope so.

But Mike Sallee, who lives near Robert Gray Middle School, has seen families of coyotes emerging from the forested ravine behind the school. It happens that the missing cat postings define the area around the ravine. And recently, Sallee reports, a horrified group neighbors discovered the remains of a half eaten cat near the ravine.

Moreover, a few months back, I reported here that I spotted a coyote crossing our street around 11 p.m. at a place that happens to be an extension of the draw that feeds the ravine.

Portlanders pride themselves on this city’s being “weird,” but Portland is both weird and wild. Forest Park and its adjacent natural parks provide a corridor of more than 10 miles of wilderness. Elk have been spotted in our neighborhood. Eagles soar above us. Raccoons, of course, scuttle about in the night. I recently saw one disappear into a concrete road culvert fifty yards from my house.

Marlin and Taco may have placed themselves at the dangerous intersection between their laid-back domestication and the wilderness that surrounds us.

And I must confess, as I write this, our own cat, Izzy, persists in (no, insists on) exploring the same wilderness. Fortunately we live at some distance from the ravine. But is it a safe distance?

We bring Iz in before dusk and let him out after dawn. So far he has not gone “lost” or “on the lam.”

So far ….

I’d rather write about typewriters.

Failed forensics on "The History Detectives"

The History Detectives may turn out to be the Inspector Clouseaus of typewriter sleuthing.

On last night’s episode of “The History Detectives,” one of their gumshoes set out to find out whether a typewriter, a Corona #3 to be exact, had in fact belonged to famed World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle just prior to his being killed by a Japanese sniper on an island near Okinawa.

A “writing forensics” expert’s compared typed impressions of a date in a letter written by Pyle just before he died, with those on the same date as typed on the Corona said to be his last typewriter. The typewriter is owned by Eric Warlick of Portland, whose grandfather won it in a poker game from a man who claimed to have been with Pyle when he died.

Based on the comparison, the expert concluded that the typewriter was not the one used to write Pyle’s letter.

The evidence: the number “1” looked different in the two dates.

Closed case.

Not so fast, say several members of the Portable Typewriter Forum, to which I happen to belong.

While the Corona has a number “1,” it is rather awkward to use. You have to depress a figure key, similar to the “CAP” key below it. With the “FIG” key depressed, the typist hits what is normally the “Q,” to get a “1.”

To avoid that typing anomaly, many typists simply used the lower case letter “L.” Indeed, many early typewriters had no number “1” so the typists were accustomed to using the lower case “L” as a substitute for the number "1."

That may be what Pyle did on his Corona, out of habit or convenience or both. But when the "history detective" typed the date on the typewriter, he used the FIG key to get the number “1,” and the forensics expert mistakenly concluded that Pyle’s letter was written on a different typewriter.

The fact is that the jury is still out.

I happen to have a Corona #3 (see photos) and indeed the number “1” and the lower case “L” are strikingly (no pun intended) different (see below). But both dates were written on the SAME typewriter.

And yes, if I had used several brands of typewriter, as Pyle did, I’d find shifting with the FIG key a pain and simply resort to using the “L” as a "1." (Note, in the photo above, the “FIG” keys – one on each side – and the “Q/1” key.)

Even if the episode on Pyle’s typewriter got viewers to a questionable “destination,” the trip was fun, including a stop at Ace Typewriter in North Portland where Matt McCormack had the chance to show off his typewriter chops.

The program will be rebroadcast tomorrow, Wednesday, July 18, at 11 p.m. on Channel 10.

Typewriter Love

Several of you know that I’m an avid collector of old manual typewriters. Of course there are list-serves for people like me.

The lively exchanges reveal that we share traits that extend beyond a love of typewriters. High on the list of traits are the loves of writing, history and things mechanical and tactile.

I don’t recall any of us acknowledging these traits. We are too into the minutiae of typewriters. For instance, this weekend’s chat on the Portable Typewriter Forum has been about the differences between Olympia SM3s and SM4s, revered, rock-solid Teutonic (West Germany, actually) models from the ‘60s. The amorous discussion ranged from tab set mechanisms, to sleek fiberboard carrying cases (versus the box variety) to favorite color combinations. One reader expressed a particular fondness for the burgundy over cream version shown here on an SM3.

To give you a sense of the utter devotion, even rapture, these machines evoke, here’s a sample response to one member post that he had scored an SM4 for less than the price of a small latté:

Great find on the SM4. $2.50 WOW! I've always liked the colors of the SM3s and 4s. The best I've done was $6.50 for an Olympia SF. Got it yesterday. It's my official Fathers Day present…. I had to drive about 100 miles both ways to get it but considering it would have been destroyed by Goodwill had they shipped it, the drive was worth it. I'll report when I get a chance to play with it.

See what I mean?

As I’ve reported before, my own crazed involvement has recently extended to persuading local colleges and universities to display typewriters from my collection. The exhibited machines are identical to typewriters used by several famous authors. If they were the actual typewriters used by the likes of Hemingway, George Orwell, E.B. White and Agatha Christie, they would be worth thousands. As is, they are beautiful, quirky curiosities — or at least that’s my hope.

Last week I installed eight machines at Mount Hood Community College where they will be on display for two months in the library’s foyer.

So here’s my walk-off question: Will the computer models used by today’s writers ever be equally cherished?

I think not, for reasons I will explore on another occasion.