Random Thoughts #1

I’m giving myself permission to type out some random thoughts this time around, as opposed to every entry sticking to a single focused theme. Although these thoughts are still all tied together by typewriters in one way or another. So with that in mind…

I recently reached the point where I had acquired enough typewriters that storage space for all of them was becoming an issue. So I began to entertain thoughts of giving away a typewriter to a friend or maybe a family member. I finally hit upon the perfect candidate in my mind — a buddy of mine that lives in Colorado. This friend was one of the few that I had who was good about writing letters back in the days before we were all so thoroughly interconnected by technology. In fact, my friend Bill crafted perhaps the most creative letter that I’ve ever received.

Back in the 1980’s, Bill was one of the few people that I knew who also really liked craft beer, which wasn’t nearly as popular at the time. He and a friend had fishing jobs lined up for the summer out in Alaska during this point in time. So as they made their way from Texas to Alaska, they stopped at a variety of small breweries and brewpubs along the way. Not long after they had made their way to Kodiak Island, a very thick envelope arrived in the mail from Bill. It detailed their trip to Alaska and was written upon coasters that had been picked up in the establishments that they had stopped to visit along the way. In short, lt was awesome and quite an achievement in terms of information design.

Well yesterday I put together my letter to Bill that was to accompany the typewriter to be sent off as a surprise. As it turns out, I was the one who was surprlsed when I received a text message from Bill just today. That message contained an image of the typewriter that he had recently found. It seems that he had beaten me to the punch, his timing was impeccable. Great minds and all that. I couldn’t help but laugh and am looking forward to receiving letters from my buddy in the future, which will more than likely be typed.

A couple of entries ago, I was noting the fact that I still didn’t consider myself to be a typewriter collector, despite having amassed a small collection of typewriters. I finally passed into the realm of the collector in my mind this past weekend when I purchased a second 5-Series Smith-Corona machine. This one features the same typeface as the Alpine Blue typewriter that I bought last year. All of my previous machines at least featured different typefaces. Aside from a few small details like the size of the stripes and the appearance of the Smith-Corona type treatment on the ribbon cover, this 1957 machine is just the same as the 1956 typewriter that I bought last year. The only real difference is that instead of blue, this one features the “Desert Sand” paint scheme. The only benefit was to my collection overall rather than to me as the user of these typewriters.

All of the other typewriters that I had purchased to date had featured different typefaces, at a minimum. That was what attracted me to them, the functional differences between them that could be detected either in the typed output, or in the experience of creating that typed output. This was the first time that I bought a typewriter just to “fill out” the assembly of machines that I had already put together oh well, so be it. Here I sit now typing away on this Desert Sand 5-Series machine and it is awesome. Good stuff.

Finally, my wife was returning home yesterday when she stopped by an estate sale. It turns out that they had a couple of typewriters for sale among those items that were left. She called me to let me know and as she was inquiring about them, someone purchased one of the two that were there. The person that was brought in to carry out this estate sale was speaking with my wife when she noted this to him. “What’s Up with the typewriters?” he asked her. She wasn’t sure what he meant and asked him to explain. That’s when he went on to tell her that he had been in the business of conducting estate sales for quite some time. For years lt seems that they hardly ever received much in the way of interest when it came to typewriters. But apparently the last couple of years, and this past year in particular the typewriters had gained massive amounts of interest in his experience.

I don’t know if my wife went on to tell him that her husband had been binging on typewriters for a while now, or if she herself had sat through all of “California Typewriter” with me last year and enjoyed it. Nor do I know if she told him that she herself also has come to appreciate these machines for her own reasons. But I ‘m guessing that based on his recent experiences he wasn’t too surprised when she herself bought the lone remaining typewriter that he had out for sale.