My wife and I went to Atlanta to meet the newest addition to the family, baby Violet. While we were there, we stopped by to see our brother-in-law, and he gave us an old Underwood portable typewriter that had belonged to my wife’s dad. It had been in his basement for years, protected by a sturdy leather case that could withstand a hit from an artillery shell. He referred to it as “an old piece of junk,” although he had never opened it up to take a look. Not to hurt his feelings, we left with it.
When I opened the case, I found a fully functional four-bank Underwood Standard Portable. I looked up the serial number in the typewriter database (yes, such a thing exists), and it was manufactured in 1929. It looks like it was made yesterday. My wife thinks this typewriter may be her father’s from when he went off to college.
I gave the Underwood a try. The action was stiff, but no stiffer than the Sears portable I used when I was a student. The type size was elite, and aside from the slugs needing a cleaning, none were damaged. The fact that the ribbon was usable meant someone, perhaps my sister-in-law, had replaced it more recently. Whether that is the case, we do not know. I was surprised to find I could still bang along at 35-40 words a minute. The action of the keys, so much stiffer than on a computer, gave a satisfying physicality to writing, though the little finger on my left hand wasn’t strong enough to adequately strike the ‘a’.
I started to extemporize a story about cowboys watching and worrying about their herd as a storm approached (yup, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’). What I wrote was, of course, garbage. What interested me was how, even in that short time, I felt more emotionally linked to the words as they appeared on the page. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was the novelty. I don’t know. Still, it was an interesting experience. Am I going to dump my computer and go back to 1929, embracing the world of Ernest and F. Scott? Nope. Not on your life. But it was nice to visit.