I GAVE MY LAST TYPEWRITER AWAY TODAY - NO REGRETS…..WELL, MAYBE ONE OR TWO
THE TECHNOLOGY I DIDN'T WANT TO PART WITH…..BUT THE BOSS MISSUS WANTS HER HOUSE BACK
THE DAUGHTER OF ONE OF OUR REGULAR CUSTOMERS, AT THE NEWLY EXPANDED ANTIQUE WING, IN THE WEE LADS' MAIN STREET VINTAGE MUSIC SHOP, PROUDLY CARRIED OUT MY LAST MANUAL TYPEWRITER TODAY. IT WAS ONE THAT HAD SOME GLARING WAR WOUNDS BUT WAS ALWAYS A GOOD DISPLAY PIECE HERE AT BIRCH HOLLOW, WHERE IT REMINDED ME OF PRINTER'S INK AND ALL THE DEADLINES PUTTING THE "PAPER TO BED." EVEN IF IT'S DESTINED TO COLLECT DUST, AS IT DID HERE, FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES, IT MAY INSPIRE THIS YOUNG LADY ABOUT THE JOYS OF AUTHORDOM. I PROBABLY USED THIS PARTICULAR UNIT, A REMINGTON, I THINK, FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS BACK AT THE FORMER HERALD-GAZETTE, WHERE I WORKED AS A REPORTER / EDITOR FROM THE LATE 1970'S UNTIL THE LATE 1980'S. I DID USE THIS PORTABLE AT HOME AS WELL, UNTIL ONE DAY, IT SORT OF BLEW UP, AND THE CORD THAT KEEPS THE CARRIAGE MOVING, WAS SPINNING AROUND ITS CYLINDER LIKE A WEED WHACKER. THAT WAS THE FIRST TIME FOR THIS KIND OF MALFUNCTION. THE MOST COMMON FOR ME, WAS THE JAMMED RETURN SWITCH FOR THE RIBBON, AND IF I WAS FORCED TO TAKE THE DAMN THING OFF, AND SWITCH THE REELS, CHANCES ARE SOME KIND SECRETARY WOULD HAVE TO RESCUE ME FROM THE ENTANGLEMENT, AND TEND MY CUTS AND BRUISES. THAT WAS FROM GETTING MAD, NOT JUST FROM CHANGING A RIBBON.
WHEN WE OPENED THE EXTENSION TO THE BOYS' SHOP THIS PAST SUMMER SEASON, SUZANNE ASKED ME WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO WITH THE OLD MANUALS CLUTTERING THE HOUSE. AS WE WERE HAPPY TO REMOVE THE BURDEN OF ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES FROM OUR RESIDENCE, SUCH THAT WE MIGHT PROFIT FROM THEM EVENTUALLY, SHE ANTICIPATED I WOULD PULL SOME SENTIMENTAL BALONEY, ABOUT NEEDING THE FIVE PORTABLES STACKED IN MY ARCHIVES. EACH ONE HAD A STORY, YOU SEE, AND I RECOGNIZED EACH ONE, FROM A PERIOD IN MY WRITING CAREER. SUCH AS THE "STARVING ARTIST," UNIT, AND THE "I'M FAILING AS A NOVELIST," TYPEWRITER, THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN THROWN AGAINST THE WALL DURING ONE NASTY CREATIVE HIATUS. THESE HANDY DANDY PORTABLES, DURING USE, WERE AN EXTENSION OF MY MORTALITY. I CAN'T IMAGINE THE VOLUME OF CREATIVE JUICES THAT FLOWED THROUGH THOSE KEYS OVER THOSE WILD DECADES, WHEN ALL US LOCAL WRITERS WERE STARVING, BROKE, LIVING TOO HARD, SLEEPING TOO LITTLE, AND DREAMING OF THE PULITZER, THAT ALWAYS SEEMED JUST BEYOND OUR REACH.
THIS COMPUTER KEYBOARD JUST ISN'T THE SAME
If you're not a writer, then I can appreciate why you might find it hard to believe, that a typewriter can hold a spirit. Even after all our years of marriage (all wonderful of course), Suzanne appreciates that if I was ever to pass (she suspects I'm unearthly anyway)……which will likely follow the precise moment I get the call to pick up my Pulitzer, any keyboard I happened, in life, to work on, will start tapping a farewell tribute to the old man, quite by themselves……possibly sounding like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," (my favorite song) but without Judy Garland. Suzanne knows how intense I can be, while working on any writing project, and it's not uncommon for her to interrupt me after about three hours, insisting I have a cup of tea. I used to ask for a beaker of booze. No ice. To say that for those few hours, the writer becomes one with the portable, isn't far fetched or a stretched-out link to the paranormal. The transference of emotion, anger, sadness, joy and ecstasy, via the human electrical grid, goes right through those keys, and imprints the paper…….my soul coursing about like a whirling dervish. She claims to have stood one day, for about a half hour, watching the way I was typing, noticing all my subtle shades of "Zombie" at work. The reason she was watching me, is that I have a miserable affliction, called Temporal Mandibular Joint Dysfunction……..TMJ if you want to look it up……..caused by life-long clenching of the jaw, and grinding of the teeth…..proportional to the stresses in one's life and how the individual handles them. For me? Not so good! I started clenching my jaw as a back-up goalie in hockey; especially tense when I was about to be put in a game, after the starter hauled out on a stretcher due to rough play. They had to unclench my hands from the boards, and haul me over to the net. As for working at a keyboard, Suzanne wanted to see if I was doing both, (grinding and clenching) while working at the typewriter. My team of chiropractors wanted this information, because in my mind, I didn't grind my teeth or clench my jaw……ever, except when my bosses stood behind me while I was typing an editorial seconds before deadline. Then I clenched. God did I clench. If I hadn't done this, and internalized my anger, I'd have stuffed the son-of-a-bitch into my typewriter, and made him the editorial for the week. Don't piss-off the editor.
By the way, I do want to write a little piece soon, on TMJ, and maybe help some folk identify why they can't turn their heads, open their mouth more than a few centimeters, and explain why they see elephants in pink pajamas, while angrily standing in the grocery store queue. As a trial, if you put fingers in both of your ears, and you move your jaw up and down, and feel a less than smooth movement, (like having a flat side on a dial), it's entirely possible you have a degree of condial damage. The symptoms. You wouldn't believe them, if I told you. I'll have to explain this later. As a point in question, my medical friends believe I've damaged myself by professional misconduct. Not that I did anything discreditable, except to my body…….my jaw specifically. Suzanne suffers from the same dysfunction, and when we're having bad days, here at Birch Hollow, watch out. It's like the forewarning of the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It's that bad. We call them our "owlie" days……but we're not a hoot.
It is assumed by those studying me, that I was so intense at my creative enterprise, over those old portables, with such horrible posture, that I beat myself up from the outside inwards. So not only have I ruined a lot of heavy duty typewriters, made by some of the best known companies in the world, I also have pretty much ruined what God gave me. I blame God a little bit, because he also made me a writer, but there was no warning label, about the damage writing can cause a body over thirty-five years of typing. I just never figured it would be my jaw that failed. My back should have gone a long time ago, and my legs, where I took a hundred thousand slap-shots, wearing thin goalie pads. Here is this tiny little condial, surrounded by all kinds of nerves and blood vessels, that for me now, looks more like a triangle than a disc……and when it injures the nerves in its vicinity, with all its clacking and grinding, it hurts part of my body that never met a puck, a football tackle, or a sliced golf ball.
As I watched my new friend, walking out of the shop, with my old typewriter under her arm, I felt some mild relief, that at least I won't have to pound down on those keys anymore, to write a column or blog, and never again have to face a tangle of ribbon, and the ink it leaves in all kinds of places……like Suzanne's newly upholstered parlor chairs……which I find uncomfortable by the way. It was the last of the five manual typewriters of my first thirty-five years as a writer. I sold the first four, and planned to give the last one away as a household decoration. It was the one typewriter I worked on the longest at The Herald-Gazette, and probably the one that had most front pagers written on it………and a couple of failed novels that just didn't cut it with publishers. So I wrote four non-fiction books instead.
I hope the new owner feels the electricity that still curls around those silent keys, and manifests in good, positive energy long into the future. I laughed over that typewriter, when I was writing my weekly columns, like "Cold Coffee," and "From the Bleachers," and I likely cried over it as well, when I was forced to write a memorial for one of my colleagues, or acquaintances in town. It is a fine memory to me now, how I started as a cub reporter from the Muskoka Lakes - Georgian Bay Beacon, and how I slaved for my art, over so many late night coffees, half buried by crumpled up pages that were discarded because of crappy opening paragraphs. No, I didn't want to chase down the hall, to pull it back, or feel any real sadness, that this part of the writing mechanics is over…..finally replaced by the computer keyboard, that, by the way, sounds nothing at all like a fine old Remington, clacking against inked ribbon, and imprinting onto those whiter that white pages in the carriage. My salvation, I suppose, is that I still happily handwrite at least half of my blogs and columns, before arriving at this infernal contraption, that hums like a barber shop quartet while I'm trying to work. No one else can hear it, but I can. The Remington didn't talk back.
I have moved on, as they say. Now apparently, I have stepped up the "clench and grind," according to Suzanne, still spying on me after all these years. Not because I'm having an affair, but because she's trying to save me from my creative excesses. I'm doing it more now, than I ever did as a young writer. No, not having affairs. Hurting my jaw. I'm down to just a two lip kiss, because that's as much as I can open my mouth. My conversations are, what she calls, a dull roar and gurgling.
I never had a typewriter I didn't come to love, embrace, and then beg forgiveness, after I'd spill coffee all over it, or on occasion, messed up their neat black and red ribbons. They were all good luck to me, and as a superstitious chap, I must admit, it was a little tough to look at my typewriter stack…..all five of them, and admit to myself, the physical days of pounding those big fat keys were over. I don't have the strength anymore. It was hard work punching out that copy, day in, day out. Now these tiny, almost invisible keys, don't take more than a heavy whisper to imprint on this wavering screen, and sometimes, with my chunky fingertips, I get many more letters than I was intending……and my family laughs and laughs, and well……so they should. I am a dinosaur learning how to ride a bike. Not a pretty picture.
Thanks so much for tuning in today, and I hope you'll come back again for a visit. Early next week, I'll write a little bit more about the frustrations of a TMJ sufferer……who is now more of a whisperer than a shouter.
No comments:
Post a Comment