by Dick Loftin.
I love writing on vintage typewriters. The snap of the keys against the platen, the movement of the carriage, the ring of the bell, the fact you are actually making something on a piece of paper. The words are right there—on the page.
Typewriters are making a comeback. More and more people are showing interest in them, and they are younger and younger. We are surrounded by so much technology, that some of us, myself included, are beginning to suffer from overload. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone and the computer I am using right now, but I have noticed more people wanting to use and own something that doesn’t travel through a network and needs to be downloaded. They want something to hold in their hand—something that was made by someone else. Something to own.
I think people want to go back and experience the past. This is not a trip down memory lane. People like these things, this old technology, because it worked. And still works. My Royal #10 typewriter is 85 years old, and after a good bath and a couple of new rubber parts, it worked, after sitting in a garage for thirty years. It worked perfectly. This is what fascinates me about these old machines. They work as good today as they did when they were made decades and decades ago.
Vinyl records are popular again, as are fountain pens. Taking the record out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, gently resting the stylus on the groove and hearing music begin, is a highly personal experience. I use a fountain pen to make notes. The exercise of twisting the barrel, taking the bladder cap off, pumping the ink into the pen from a bottle, recapping and writing with it is just grand. The ink flowing out of the nib of the pen is a beautiful thing. Elegant is the word.
We want to go faster. We need things in a hurry. Now—isn’t fast enough. You don’t have to go back too many generations to hear stories about telephones being tethered to the wall by a never-long-enough cord. Placing a phone call took a little bit of effort; it had to be “dialed.” Sometimes there would be no answer, and there were no answering machines or voicemail. There was simply no one home. You hung up and tried again later. What will amaze everyone under 40, is that the world kept turning. If you wanted to send a message to someone, you sat down at a desk, thought about what you wanted to say and wrote a letter. You thought about what you wanted to say—imagine that. When you were done, you addressed an envelope, put a stamp on it, put the letter in the envelope and dropped it in the mail. In a couple of weeks, you would get a reply. Simple as that. And it worked.
Even the old-fashioned letterpress is making a comeback. Here, in Oklahoma, we have Letterpress of Tulsa. In their shop is a massive letterpress, named Bernice, which after more than a century is turning out invitations, business cards, bookmarkers, and just about any printed product imaginable. And that is the appeal of their business: these products are printed on this wonderful machine, over a hundred years old, and it still works. Could you possibly imagine a computer being useful after 100 years? No.
And this brings me back to something I just can’t live without: Books. I will often search around in flea markets, antique shops and vintage bookstores for great used books. The joy of the search is finding one that has been signed or inscribed to someone. A father buying his daughter or son a book that was important to him, something that should be read again and again. Signed, always with love, Dad. I have a few of these and they are a treasure. I look in the margins of books for the notes people wrote there, perhaps while reading the book late at night, alone with their thoughts. These books are hard for me to resist. I nearly always buy them. Time alone with a book is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Hard as I try, I just don’t get the same feeling, or pleasure, with my Nook. I like feeling and turning the pages, flipping to the index. I like the idea of looking at a book, after owning it over thirty years and thinking about who I was when I bought it, not having it vanish into the computer ether of a forgotten, deleted file. The book is mine, it’s on my shelf, to stay. It’s like an old photograph, a frozen history of my life. I can go to it, open it up, and there it is. The same as it was decades ago, with the impressions of a much younger me. I may change over time, but the typewriter, the pen, the printing press, records, and these wonderful books stay where they belong.
Sources: Visit Letterpress of Tulsa Here. Read “Why Are Fountain Pen Sales Rising?” by Steven Brocklehurst, from BBC News Magazine [Online] Here.
