Today the power was out for a few hours due to a fierce ice storm. School was cancelled, so the girls were home all day with me. Armed with nothing better to do, my older daughter Morgan started looking through my closet. There she found a 1930’s Smith –
Every time I see that typewriter, I think of my grandmother and what she must have been like in the 30’s and 40’s. I knew her as a sassy, sharp-tongued, murder-mystery reading, Golden Girls-watching alcoholic who totally adored me and my brother. I have seen newspaper clippings of her in theatrical productions and as a WAVE in the U.S. Navy. I wonder what she used this typewriter for? Did everyone have one back then, or were they only for aspiring writers and secretaries?
Anyway, we took out the typewriter, dusted it off, and rolled in a piece of paper. The red ribbon still had a good amount of ink in it, so there sat Morgan for most of the day, typing letters to imaginary people. The clicking of the letters hitting the paper gave a nice, vintage sound that reminded me of an old detective movie.
It’s funny to think of the typewriter now, and how cumbersome it is to use. If you make a mistake and you’ve run out of corrective ribbon, you have to start typing the entire page all over again. The force with which you have to hit they keys seems ridiculous compared to the light touch needed for a computer keyboard, and I can’t even imagine a writer completing an entire novel on a contraption like this.
Still, I’m sure my grandmother would be happy to know that her typewriter is in good working order and that her great-granddaughter is completely enjoying its novelty just as much as I did when I used to take it out of her closet, typing away as I ate my pizza and watched The Golden Girls.
