by Tom Hanks
“Kablooey?”
“Better you take it home and put a flower in it.” He slid the typewriter back into its carrying case, like he was wrapping a dead fish in newspaper.
She felt bad, as though she had disappointed one of her teachers with a lazy effort, handing in a poorly structured essay. If she had still been with the Knothead, he’d be standing next to her agreeing with the old man, saying, “I told you the thing was a hunk of junk. Five dollars? Gone!”
“Look here.” The old man waved his arm at the typewriters that lined the wall-mounted shelves. “These are machines. They are made of steel. They are works of engineers. They were built in factories in America, Germany, Switzerland. Do you know why they are up on that shelf right now?”
“Because they are for sale?”
“Because they were built to last forever!” The old man actually shouted. In him, she heard her father hollering, “Who left those bikes on the front lawn?…Why am I the only one dressed for church?…The father of this house is home and needs a hug!” She realized she was smiling at the old man.
“This one,” he said, moving to the shelves. He took down a black Remington 7 typewriter, a model called Noiseless. “Hand me that tablet, there.” She found a pad of blank paper on the counter and gave it to him. He ripped off two pages and rolled them into the gleaming, shining machine. “Listen.” He typed the words
The letters whispered onto the page one by one.
“America was on the move,” he said. “Work was being done in crowded offices, small apartments, on trains. Remington had sold typewriters for years and years. Someone said, ‘Let’s make a smaller, quieter machine. Bring down the racket.’ And they did! Did they use plastic parts? No! They reengineered the tension, the force of the keystroke. They made a typewriter so quiet it could be sold as noiseless. Here. Type.”
He spun the machine to face her. She pecked out
“I could hardly hear a thing,” she said. “I’m impressed.” She pointed to a two-tone machine, bone white and blue with a rounded body. “How quiet is that one?”
“Ah. A Royal.” He replaced the black Remington 7 and pulled down a gorgeous little writing machine. “A Safari portable. A decent piece of work.” He rolled in two more sheets of paper and let her go at the keys. She thought of safari-themed words to type.
The machine was louder than the Noiseless and the keys did not fly as effortlessly. But there were features on the Royal that postdated the engineering of the Remington. The number 1 with an ! A button that said MAGIC COLUMN SET. And, it was two-tone!
“Is this bit of Royalty for sale?” she asked.
The old man looked at her with a smile and a nod. “Yes. But tell me. Why?”
“Why do I want a typewriter?”
“Why do you want this typewriter?”
“You trying to talk me out of it?”
“Young lady, I will sell you any typewriter you want. I will take your money and wave you goodbye. But tell me, why this Royal Safari? Because of the color? The typeface? The white keys?”
She had to think about it. Again, she felt like she was in school, about to take a test she could fail, a pop quiz when she hadn’t done the reading.
“Because of my fickle taste,” she said. “Because I brought that toy typewriter home and got to thinking I would like to write on a typewriter rather than in pen and pencil but the dang thing is gummed up and guess what? My local typewriter shop refuses to touch it. In my mind, I see myself at my little table in my little apartment, pecking out notes and letters. I own a laptop, a printer, an iPad, and this, too.” She held up her iPhone. “I use them as much as any modern woman does, but…”
She stopped. She was thinking now, about what it was that had moved her to buy a five-dollar typewriter—one with an unreliable space bar and no bell—and why she was now in this shop more or less arguing with an old man, when just the day before she’d had no opinion whatsoever about old manual typewriters.
She continued. “I have loopy penmanship, like a little girl, so anything I write looks like a motivational poster in a health clinic. I’m not one who types between sips from a tumbler of booze and drags from a pack of smokes. I just want to set down what few truths I’ve come to know.”
She went back to the service counter and grabbed the leatherette carrying case. She yanked the plastic typewriter from inside, carried it over to the shelves, and nearly threw it beside the Royal Safari. She pointed to the sticker on the top.
“I want my yet-to-be-conceived children to someday read the meditations of my heart. I will have personally stamped them into the fibers of page upon page, real stream-of-consciousness stuff that I will keep in a shoe box until my kids are old enough to both read and ponder the human condition!” She heard herself shouting. “They will pass the pages back and forth between them and say, ‘So that’s what Mom was doing making all that noise with all that typing,’ and I am sorry! I’m yelling!”
“Ah,” he said.
“Why am I yelling?”
The old man blinked at the young lady. “You are seeking permanence.”
“I guess I am!” She paused long enough to take a deep breath, letting her lungs empty in a cheek-puffing sigh. “So, how much for this Jungleland typewriter?”
The shop was quiet for a moment. The old man held a finger to his lips, thinking, wondering what to say.
“This is not the typewriter for you.” He picked up the two-tone Royal and placed it back on the wall-mounted shelf. “This was made for a young girl going off to her first year of university, her head filled with nonsense, thinking she would soon find the man of her dreams. It was meant for book reports.”
He pulled down a compact typewriter with a body the color of green seafoam. Its keys were just a shade lighter.
“This,” he said, again rolling two sheets of paper into the carriage, “was made in Switzerland. Along with cuckoo clocks, chocolate, and fine watches, the Swiss once produced the finest typewriters in all the world. In 1959, they made this one. The Hermes 2000. The apex, the state of the art in manual typewriters, never to be bested. To call it the Mercedes-Benz of typewriters is to inflate the quality of Mercedes-Benz. Please. Type.”
She felt intimidated by the green mechanical box in front of her. What in the world could she possibly say on a sixty-year-old marvel of Swiss craftsmanship? Where would she drive a vintage Benz?
In the mountains above Geneva
The snow falls white and pure
And children eat cocoa krispies
From bowls with no milk.
“The typeface is Epoca,” he said. “Look how straight and even it is. Like a ruled line. That’s the Swiss. See these holes in the paper guide, on either side of the vibrator?”
So, that’s the vibrator.
“Watch.” The old man took a pen from his shirt pocket and put the point into one of the holes. He released the carriage, sliding it back and forth, underlining what she had written.
In the mountains above Geneva
The snow falls white and pure
“You can use different-colored inks for different emphasis. And see this knob here on the back?” There was a thimble-size knob with a softly serrated edge. “Tighten it or loosen it to adjust the action for the keys.”
She did. The keys stiffened considerably under her fingertips and she had to muscle through.
Cuckoo clocks.
“When carbon paper was needed to make three or four copies of a letter, the firm setting would strike all the way to the last page.” He chuckled. “The Swiss kept a lot of records.”
Turning the knob the opposite way made the keys feather light.
Clocks. Mercedes Hermes 2000000
“Nearly noiseless, as well,” she said.
“Indeed, yes,” he said. He showed her how easy it was to set the margins by pressing the levers on each side of the carriage. As for tabs, they were set by pressing TAB SET. “This Hermes was made the year I turned ten years old. It is indestru
ctible.”
“Like you,” she said.
The old man smiled at the young lady. “Your children will learn to type on it.”
She liked the idea of that. “How much is it?”
“Never mind,” the old man said. “I will sell it to you with one condition. That you use it.”
“Well, not to be impolite,” she said, “but duh!”
“Make the machine a part of your life. A part of your day. Do not use it a few times, then need room on the table and close it back into its case to sit on a shelf in the back of a closet. Do that and you may never write with it again.” He had opened a cupboard under the displays of old adding machines, searching through spare carrying cases. He pulled out what looked like a square green suitcase with a flap clasp. “Would you own a stereo and never listen to records? Typewriters must be used. Like a boat must sail. An airplane has to fly. What good is a piano you never play? It gathers dust and there is no music in your life.”
He placed the Hermes 2000 into the green case. “Leave the typewriter out on a table where you see it. Keep a stack of paper at the ready. Use two sheets to preserve the platen. Order envelopes and your own stationery. I will give you a dustcover—free of charge—but take it off when you are at home so the machine is ready to use.”
“Does that mean we are now discussing the price?”
“I suppose so.”
“How much?”
“Ah,” the old man said. “These typewriters are priceless. The last one I sold for three hundred dollars. But for young ladies? Fifty.”
“How about something for my trade-in?” She pointed to the toy typewriter she had brought in. She was haggling.
The old man looked at her with something akin to the Evil Eye. “What did you pay for that again?”
“Five dollars.”
“You were taken.” He pursed his lips. “Forty-five. If my wife ever finds out I made such a deal she will divorce me.”
“Let’s keep it between us, then.”
—
One thing about the Hermes 2000, it was a lot heavier than the toy. The green carrying case banged against her legs as she carried it home. She stopped twice, putting the machine down not because she needed to rest but because her palm had gotten sweaty.
In her apartment, she did as she had been instructed, as she had promised. The seafoam green typewriter went on her little kitchen table, a stack of printer paper next to it. She made herself two pieces of toast with avocado and sliced a pear into sections, her dinner. She pulled up her iTunes on her phone and hit PLAY, putting the phone into an empty coffee mug for amplification, letting Joni sing her old songs and Adele her new stuff as she nibbled at her meal.
She wiped her hands of crumbs and, finally, in the blush of ownership of one of the finest typewriters ever to come down from the Alps, she rolled two sheets into the carriage and began to type.
TO DO:
STATIONERY—ENVELOPES & LETTER PAPER.
WRITE MOM ONCE A WEEK?
Groceries: yogurt / honey/ 1/2 & 1/2 .
Juice variety
Nuts (variety)
olive oil (greek)
tomatos & Onions/scallions. CUKES!
Cheap record player/HiFi. Methodist Church?
Yoga mat.
Waxing.
Dental appointment
Piano lessons (why not?)
“Okay,” she said aloud, to herself, alone in her apartment. “I done me some typing.”
She pushed herself away from the table, from the seafoam green of the Hermes. She pulled the to-do list from the machine and put it on her refrigerator door under a magnet. She pulled the ice pop mold from the freezer and ran it under warm water in the sink, thawing free one of the pineapple pops. Knowing she would have another, she put the Tupperware into the refrigerator to remain cold until she was ready for seconds.
In her living room she opened the windows to get a bit of breeze. The sun had set, so the first fireflies of the evening would begin to flare in a bit. She sat on the windowsill and enjoyed the cold, shaped pineapple and watched as squirrels ran along the telephone wires, perfect sine waves with their bodies and tails. Sitting there, she had her second ice pop as well, until the fireflies began to float magically above the patches of grass and sidewalk.
In the kitchen, she rinsed her hands and returned the Tupperware to the freezer. Six ice pops would be hers tomorrow. She eyed the typewriter on the table.
An idea came into her head. How is it, she thought, that the standard version of a woman, single, after a breakup, has her drinking wine alone in a sad, empty apartment until she passes out on the couch with, she didn’t know, Real Housewives on the television? She didn’t own a television, and her one remaining vice was homemade ice pops. She had never passed out from wine in her life.
She sat back down at the table and rolled two more pieces of paper into the Hermes 2000. She set the margins in close, like a newspaper column, and the spacing at 1½.
She typed
then returned the carriage and started a paragraph. Her nearly noiseless typing echoed softly around her apartment and out her open window until long after midnight.
* * *
* * *
Our Town Today
with
Hank Fiset
* * *
* * *
BACK FROM BACK IN TIME
OCCASIONALLY THE TYRANTS (did I say “tyrants”? I mean “Titans”) who publish the Tri-Cities Daily News/Herald pay me for taking my wife on trips that mix business with pleasure—paid vacations to the likes of Rome (Ohio), Paris (Illinois), and the Family Compound (hers) on the shores of Lake Nixon, short trips that I then turn into a thousand words or so of A-One quality journalism, or so my staff tells me. This past week I went off on a doozy of a salaried adventure. I went back in time, you see! Not to the age of the dinosaurs, nor to witness the fall of the czars or to talk some sense into the captain of the Titanic. Rather, I time-slipped back into my own past, my hazy self-conscious, transported by a certain simple, yet magical machine…
* * *
INNOCENCE BREEDS ADVENTURE: I had set out to provide you readers with a column on the workings of the weekly swap meet at the old Empire Auto Movie Drive-In in Santa Alameda, a monster of a flea market, now in its thirty-ninth year and chockablock with sentimental debris and used hard goods. Old kitchen utensils, old clothes, old books, millions of objets d’art, both nice and rather crummy, piles of used tools and racks and racks of new ones, toys, lamps, odd chairs, and a display of hundreds of brand-new sunglasses now bring in cash where carloads of moviegoers once parked to see, say, Krakatoa, East of Java on a distant billboard of a screen. They heard the movie from toaster-size speakers that hooked onto the car’s window. Movies in mono…
* * *
IMAGINE THE LARGEST yard-attic-estate sale in the Western World combined with the Going out of Business Blowout of every Sears store in the country and you’ll have an idea of the scope of the Swap, as the regulars call it. All day, you can wander the rows of stalls, set on the hillocks between speaker posts, nibbling on chili dogs and kettle corn, wanting to buy everything the eye fancies, limited only by the cash in your pocket and the cargo space of your car. Had I wanted to, I could have paid less than two hundred dollars for a redwood burl table, a 1960s Amana refrigerator-freezer, or the front and back seats yanked out of a Mercury Montego. Luckily, I already have those things at home!
* * *
I WAS ABOUT to retire to the snack bar for a lime shave ice when I set my eyes on an old typewriter, an Underwood portable of ebony that, I kid you not, gleamed in the sun like a Springsteen hot rod. A quick inspection showed the ribbon was good once you advanced the spool a few inches, and the broken-handled case held a small supply of erasable onionskin paper. Even though a man needs a typewriter these days like he needs a timber ax, I offered the kid running the stall all of “forty dollars for this old typewriter with the broken case,” and he said, “Sounds good.” Shoul
d have offered a twenty. Or a fiver.
* * *
ONCE HOME, I set the machine out on the kitchen table and gave it the quickbrownfoxjumpedoverthelazydogs test. The D key stuck some, and the A key had a slight drop in it. The numbers all worked, and with some repetitive strikes the punctuation keys loosened up. I typed, when the bell at the end of the line sounded out clear and clean—and just like that, I was whooshed into the space-time continuum for a voyage back in time which lasted either a wink of an eye or for each moment of the last forty-nine years…
* * *
DING! First stop was the back room of my dad’s old auto parts store, which is now the site of Public Parking Lot Number 9 at Webster and Alcorn. He had a big old typewriter in there though I never saw him use it. On weekends as a kid I’d poke out my name on it with my little fingers. When I grew into a teenager I avoided the store as much as I could because if I showed my face at the shop, Dad would put me to work doing inventory for the rest of the day…
* * *
DING! I’M IN the eighth grade, the editor of the Frick Junior High School Banner (Go, Bobcats!), watching Mrs. Kaye, the journalism teacher, type out my “Welcome, Scrubs!” column on the ditto master that would become 350 copies of the school paper, a volume read by at least forty students. I was busting with pride at seeing my first ever byline in a published newspaper…
* * *
DING! I’M IN high school now, the old campus of Logan High, on the upper floor of a building that was not earthquake safe (never felt a shudder) in a room that was meant for one subject only—Typing, levels 1, 2, and 3, for kids wanting to be professional office secretaries. Nothing but desks and indestructible typewriters overseen by a teacher so disinterested in his/her charges that I don’t recall seeing our instructor. Someone put a record on a phonograph and we pecked at whatever letter was called out. One semester of Typing 1 was all I needed before volunteering for the audiovisual crew. Instead of being in a classroom, I roamed the halls of Logan, delivering movie projectors and threading up the films for teachers who didn’t know how. So I never learned the many formats of business letters or what the heck a “salutation” is. I would have made a lousy secretary. Anyhow, I’ve been typing ever since…
