Kids always have a favorite toy, something that they played with and enjoyed for hours on end. Me, I had a series of them: Tinkertoys at age 2, Roy Rogers jeep at age 4, a ventriloquist dummy at age 5, etc., with various Etch-a-Sketches and Slinkys along the way.
My favorite toy, though, was something a bit unorthodox for your average American kid, at least in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was an antique, and I learned to care for it and appreciate it. In fact, I was way ahead of my time.
My toy was a No. 5 Underwood Standard typewriter, circa 1927. Housed in cast iron, the Underwood was hefty and built to last. In fact, it was one of the first mass-produced modern typewriters, which is why they are so cheap on eBay.
My mother, Lois, who worked as a secretary for years, realized early on that her youngest was not a normal child, God bless her. She would come home from work in the afternoons to fix dinner and endure several hours of nothing but the clattering of keys from my bedroom, as I slaved over the Great American Novel. (That novel was eventually finished and was just dreadful. Never speak to me of it.)
Those who write on computers today — as I am right now — can little know what it was like to bang away on a typewriter. Keys on a typewriter, especially one as burdensome and clunky as an Underwood, had to be whacked down with one’s finger, as if playing honky-tonk piano. The sound could be deafening. Ask any newspaper veteran over the age of 50.
One was required to keep an ear open for the “ding” of the bell, which meant the carriage of the machine was reaching the end of a line. One then had to reach up, most often out of muscle memory, and slide the carriage back to the beginning of the next line.
And all keystrokes were permanent, so mistakes were corrected early on by typing a series of X’s all the way through the offending word and retyping next to it. It would not be for years that such miracles as erasable bond and Liquid Paper would revolutionize our existence.
Yet the effect of seeing one’s words on paper, in printed lettering, was intoxicating. It was, in fact, one of the reasons I was drawn to becoming a writer. So don’t blame me.
The building in which I am writing this was, oddly enough, the place where I got my very first job, drafting witless drivel as a correspondent for the Accent on Youth page of The Anderson Herald in 1973.
If it weren’t for the sheer tonnage of the thing, I probably would’ve hung onto that machine. Not to write on, of course. That way lies madness. I’m perfectly content to tap my fingertips across my laptop computer, an innovation that was science fiction in those early days, when I worked at a little desk in my room. Back then, I was satisfied if I could fashion a complete sentence.
Yet the Underwood would be a nice keepsake, to help me remember, not only my origins as a writer, but also who helped me get here.
Contact Rodney Richey, 640-4861, rodney.richey@heraldbulletin.com. And spelling counts.
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Rodney Richey: One toy was just his type
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