Tag Archives: typewriters

Devilish and Sweet Typewriter Tales

by Woody

Although it will go widely unrecognized, today is an important date in history for it was on June 23, 1868, that Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for the typewriter.           

Three years later, Mark Twain saw one of these newfangled machines in a store window, in Boston; in he walked and out he came having paid a whopping $125 – equivalent to about $3,000 today – for a Remington model.

It proved to be a love-hate relationship for at one point Twain insisted Remington, which originated the QWERTY keyboard layout, cease and desist mentioning him in its advertisements, writing: “Please do not use my name in any way. I don’t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.”

Mr. Twain on my Olivetti Lettera 32 model favored by Cormac McCarthy.

Twain also claimed these new typing machines were “full of caprices, full of defects – devilish ones.”

And yet, according to literary scholars, Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript – “Life on the Mississippi” – to a publisher in 1883.

In honor of today being National Typewriter Day, I would like to share the story of another QWERTY machine, this one bought not brand new for a princely sum, but secondhand at a pawnshop for $50. Even back in 1963 that was bargain for a top-of-the-line Olivetti Lettera 32 portable model.

The purchaser was Cormac McCarthy, legendary author of “The Road” and “All The Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian” and a long shelf of other best-seller page-turners, who died earlier this month at age 89.

McCarthy banged away on the black keys of that blue-bodied typewriter for nearly a half-century until the Italian-made machine wore out beyond repair. No small wonder it finally became roadkill considering the Pulitzer Prize-winner estimated he had put about 5 million words on its odometer.

Here is where McCarthy’s typewriter story gets even better, in three ways.

One. Whereas Twain surely would have tried out the caprices, defects and devilishness of a computer, McCarthy remained true to Christopher Latham Sholes’ invention.

Two. McCarthy, despite his fame and riches, did not buy a typewriter restored to mint condition for the burgeoning collector’s market that now sees machines priced as high as MacBooks. Rather, a friend gave him a replacement, another blue Olivetti Lettera 32, for which he paid all of $11 and which McCarthy used for his next million words.

Three. In 2009, McCarthy, who wrote in an authentication letter, “I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published,” put his original Olivetti up for auction.

The pre-bid estimate of $20,000 proved wildly wrong as an anonymous collector paid an eye-popping $254,500 with the proceeds, in a rare happy ending for a McCarthy tale, going to a non-profit organization.

I am happy to say that the entire handful of typewriters I have accumulated cost well below $254,500. This includes a blue Olivetti Lettera 32 identical to McCarthy’s, albeit a 1969 model with about four million fewer words of wear on its typebars and no New York Times Best Sellers to its credit.

Like McCarthy’s replacement Lettera 32, mine was a gift, not from a friend but from my little sister a couple years ago. For writing notes and letters it has the most pleasant touch and action of all my typing machines.

Even so, I dare say it is not the sweetest typewriter I own. That honor goes to another one My Li’l Sis gave me last month for my birthday, a replica of a Hermes Baby used by John Steinbeck, or so it seems, as it is quite small…

…and made of gourmet chocolate.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Part 2: Hemingway’s “Last Red Cent”

by Woody

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Part 2: Hemingway’s

“Last Red Cent”

The stairway to heaven has 19 steps.

Before climbing the outdoor flight leading to Ernest Hemingway’s second-floor writing studio in the backyard, spitting distance away I toured the main house at 907 Whitehead Street in Key West’s Old Town. It is a mansion masterpiece.

The Spanish antiques and African artwork throughout, much collected by Hemingway himself, are stunning. However, I was more captivated by the wordsmith’s seven typewriters – three Underwood models; one Remington portable; two Corona machines, one black and the other forest green; and one Royal – displayed in various rooms.

Hanging out with Hemingway in his Key West home.

The black Royal portable, Hemingway’s favorite, naturally resides in his next-door upstairs studio. The spacious room has robin-egg blue walls and red terra cotta tile floor. Sun pours through ample windows, one of which affords a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to bookcases fully filled, the décor features taxidermic hunting trophies plus a mounted fish – albeit greatly smaller than Santiago’s great marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea.”

The showpiece of the room, however, is a modest round table the master used as a desk paired with a lone wooden chair. Upon the well-worn tabletop sits Hemingway’s prized typewriter as well as a notebook with a pen resting on its open pages.

When I came through, an orange six-toed cat was also resting on the table-turned-desk. One could imagine the tabby was waiting for its master to return because a sheet of typing paper was in the Royal, as if Papa had just stepped out for a moment.

“There is nothing to writing,” Hemingway famously said. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Hemingway bled profusely in this den from 1931 to 1939, writing nine books. The prolific period began with “Death in the Afternoon”, included “The Green Hills of Africa” and “For Whom the Bells Toll”, and ended with “Under Kilimanjaro.” His process was to rise at dawn and hunch over his Royal until early afternoon, always quitting while still in the flow so it would be easier start anew the following morning.

The magic one feels standing before the Mona Lisa or the marble David, I experienced here. Oh, how I would have loved to give the Pulitzer Prize winner’s antique Royal a whirl for a sentence or three!

Too, I would have liked to dive into the magnificent swimming pool some two dozen strides from the writing studio and directly below the master bedroom in the main house. Dug into solid coral ground, it took two years to complete and was the only swimming pool within 100 miles.

Measuring 60 feet by 24 feet and 10 feet deep at the south end, half that at the opposite point on the compass, the rectangular pool cost a staggering $20,000 in 1938. Understand, less than a decade earlier the entire home and acre of land was purchased for $8,000.

Hemingway was exasperated at the pool’s final cost and at his second wife who oversaw its construction while he was away as a correspondent for the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return, he is said to have flung down a penny and complained: “Pauline, you’ve spent all but my last red cent, so you might as well have that!”

Offered as evidence that the story is true and not apocryphal, Pauline had a penny embedded heads-up in the cement on the shallow-end deck. Superstitiously, I left a shiny penny behind on top of that famous red cent.

Soon thereafter, I left a few dollars behind in the gift shop for a leather bookmark with the image of a lucky six-toed cat.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

 

Steinbeck’s (Like) Typewriter

by Woody

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#TBT stands also for

Throwback Typing

            Throwback Thursday, more often designated simply with the hashtag #TBT, is popular on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter when social media users post nostalgic photos once a week.

In that same spirit, this is a #TBT column. Instead of a photograph from yesteryear, the nostalgia involved is that I wrote the first draft of this column on a typewriter instead of my laptop computer. #TBT is for Throwback Typing.

This old-school exercise came about because I recently received a truly glorious gift for my birthday – a 1949 Hermes Baby portable typewriter in mint condition.

John Steinbeck’s Hermes Baby at San Jose State University.

Gray, black and silver with a single fire-engine red racing stripe, it is the same model John Steinbeck took on his famous road trip around America while writing “Travels with Charley.” His Baby, etched with “The Beast Within” on the back, is on display in the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. Ever since seeing it a handful of years ago, I have been smitten.

“Suisse”-made, the Hermes Baby made its debut in 1924 and was anything but beastly. In fact, it was the first true mini-typewriter with a four-row keyboard. Indeed, the Baby is a marvel in sleek compactness, almost exactly the rectangular size of my Apple Notebook, albeit nearly three inches in height instead of less than an inch thick.

My Hermes Baby on display … at home in Ventura.

Compared to the 1912 Underwood No. 5 that I inherited from my grandfather, which is about as heavy as an anvil, the Baby is featherlight. Too, its keystrokes require only a light touch rather than finger pounding.

All the same, the keyboard forces me to slow down. This is not because the type bars stick together if they simultaneously cross paths, but rather because my specific Baby has an odd Italian layout with the customary QWERTY keyboard arranged instead QZERTY. Hence, one must turn off the autopilot when typing W’s and Z’s that have traded places.

As a result, it is easy to misspell zords – rather, words – containing Z’s and W’s. In notes to friends, I simply let these transposed misstrikes go as is because I think they add charm. With this column draft, however, I edited misstrikes and mistakes the old-fashioned way, in pencil using copyediting symbols. Doing so was enjoyably nostalgic.

The funky W and Z keys added to my nostalgia. You see, at my first newspaper job nearly four decades past, the ancient battleship-sized Remington typewriter I was assigned had a broken “K” key. Actually, half-broken – it would type a capital but not lowercase. Thus, one had to painstakingly hit “Shift” and “K” to write “broKen” or “quarterbacK” and then correct it afterward with a copyediting slash.

Being forced to slow the fingers down perhaps has its advantages by also making one think in less of a rush. Indeed, this first draft seemed more polished than when I compose on a speedy laptop where rewriting is clean and easy. It’s the difference between walking a high wire without a safety net below versus with one.

Despite the added step of retyping my words into a laptop document file, perhaps I will write more columns on my Baby – or my 1953 Underwood portable or 1962 Hermes 3000 Curvy, a beautiful sea-foam green semi-portable that rounds out my small collection to date.

An old song goes, “Don’t throw the past away / You might need it some rainy day . . . When everything old is new again.”

That’s how I, and a growing number of QWERTY – and QZERTY – aficionados, feel about Throwback Typewriters. My Hermes Baby is a seven-decades-old fossil, but it also seems good as new again.

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FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

An ‘Uncommon Type’ Love Story

by Woody

An ‘Uncommon Type’ Love Story

On the back of his 1950s Hermes Baby portable typewriter, which he took along on his “Travels with Charley” road trip around America, author John Steinbeck etched: “The Beast Within.”

Michael Mariani, a Venturan I wrote about here last week, has his own Beast Within – a newfound typewriter addiction. In addition to a vintage Hermes Baby, he owns nine other portables. His collection dates to 1926 and has at last one representative model from each ensuing decade through the ’70s.

Reading Tom Hanks’ book “Uncommon Type,” a collection of wonderful short stories featuring typewriters, Michael was inspired to get one of his own. In February, in Oxnard off Craigslist, he bought a handsome black-and-gold 1936 L.C. Smith & Corona Standard for about the cost of a tank of gas.

MichaelM_Typewriters

Three of Michael Mariani’s restored vintage typewriters.

Michael wasted no time adding No. 2 the next day, a 1948 Royal Arrow, again locally off Craigslist, and again for a price he considered a song. In the bargain, he learned of an old pro who repairs and cleans these mechanical dinosaurs.

After perusing websites on the subject and reading more books, including “The Typewriter Revolution,” Michael joined the analog insurgency with enthusiasm. More than once, he went to check out one typewriter and returned home with two. By April, he reached double digits.

“I got hooked on the chase,” Michael explains. “These machines are cool. And I can’t believe how inexpensive they are – only two of my typewriters were more than a hundred bucks.

“It actually wasn’t love at first type,” Michael adds, smiling. “After using a computer for 35 years, I quickly learned you really have to push the keys HARD!”

The added effort soon charmed him.

“A typewriter is the opposite of a computer,” Michael allows. “It’s slower. It slows you slow. There’s no delete key. I like that concept – slow down. I’m not a writer, but I use them to write letters and thank-you notes.”

Michael’s home has become a typewriter museum of sorts. Entering the living room, guests are greeted by three beautifully restored portables on display side by side by side: 1936 L.C. Smith & Corona Standard, 1948 Royal Arrow, 1926 Remington No. 1.

In a bedroom now empty of his and Kay’s two grown sons, a table is filled with more portable typewriters: 1958 Smith-Corona Clipper, a favored model by Tom Hanks by the way; 1951 Royal Quiet De Luxe; 1965 Olympia SM8; 1971 Brother Echelon; 1955 Remington Quiet-Riter; 1971 Smith-Corona Super Sterling; and, Michael’s most costly machine at $110, a Steinbeck-favored 1943 Hermes Baby.

“Typing-wise, feel-wise, my favorite so far is the 1965 Olympia,” Michael notes. “I also find it interesting that it was made in Western Germany, not that long after the Berlin Wall went up (in 1961). Typing on it just feels goooood.

“Typewriters, I’ve found, are a bit like dating,” Michael continues. “It’s different for everyone and you just have to see what you like, what you love.”

This is a QWERTY love story, so it is only fittingly that the very first thing Michael typed on his first old-school acquisition was to his wife of 32 years.

“I left it in the typewriter on the counter,” Michael shares. Included in that sweet note was the fact that he could not find the exclamation point – in fact, the 1926 Corona Standard does not have such a key.

Kay typed back: “I love you!” She also added an exclamation explanation – that she used the apostrophe, backspace, and period to make the mark.

Unlike mythological Hermes, the speedy messenger of the Greek gods, Kay had wonderfully slowed down to deliver her message.

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

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400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

 

Old Type Way to Slow Down

by Woody

Old Type Way to Slow Down and Smell Roses

My dear friend Michael Mariani recently texted – ironically, it seems to me – asking if I had a manual typewriter he could borrow. He was considering buying one, but wanted first to do a test drive.

I replied that while my circa 1910 Underwood No. 5 had been restored to fine working order, it still offered a fairly clunky experience.

Only days later, I received an old-fashioned typed letter. It was folded and tucked inside a card with a photograph of the gorgeous black-and-gold 1936 L.C. Smith & Corona Standard portable typewriter of which Michael had impulsively become the proud owner.TypewriterKeys_Screen shot

Unlike perfectly uniform lettering spit out by a computer printer, typed keystrokes create various shades of black which in turn create a kind of mosaic artwork beyond the words themselves.

Moreover, I believe the x’d out mistakes and typos – after all, a typewriter has no “delete” key or spell-check – in Michael’s letter add warmth and beauty.

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“Dear Woody,

“You are holding in your hand my third typewritten note.

“What is my fascination with the typewriter?

“I like the idea that it forces me to slow down. Like millions of people, (oh my, the sound of the bell!) I am in search of ways to slow down in my life. I have spent the past 35 years looking for ways to speed up and always striving to increase efficiencies. Now, i (sic) long for the opposite.

“I love to see my errors. No big bother waiting to correct my spelling or grammar. When I make an x (an “a” has been struck over with an “x”) error, it is there for all to see.

“I love the nostalgia of these machines. I x (an “o” has been x’d out) also was not aware of the very (there is that beuatiful (sic) ding again!) large following. It seems I am not alone in my quest to honor these wonderful machines. I am now the proud owner of not one, but three typewriters.TypewriterHands

“I imagine the people that first used these to write important documents or love letters or mundane business docments (sic). I am reading a book about this revolution, no surprisxe (sic), and it appears there are other books on the subject that I plan to read.

“I have alwasys (sic) wanted to write and the typewriter gives me an excuse and allows me to dream (an “a” is covered by a hard-struck “m”) and pretend I am writing some great work, even if it is only a simple letter.

“I love the sound of the keys hitting the paper. I love the history of them. I love that I can collect three of these special machines for about $200.

“I look forward to finding ways to share my joy with others in the future.

“Sincerely,

(Handwritten signature)

“Michael”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …