Recent events have proved that it's useless to try to keep up with current events, so I hope that you'll forgive me for not trying to do so. I'm sure that someone will text me if time is of the essence.
This week I took delivery of a new old typewriter: a Sears Achiever that was the former typewriter of the former husband of a friend of my mother. (They're still friends.) This is kind of how it can go after people find out that you're willing to give these little machines a home. Things just show up, and you accept them.
I'll clean it up and test it out, then see if it needs any repairs or maintenance. At that point, I can help it find its forever home where it can produce poems or novels or recipes or address labels. And don't worry about the Sears brand — this little guy is a Japanese-manufactured Brother typewriter with a Sears label so it could be sold in the Sears "Wish Book" catalog from 1977 to 1984. If it looks vaguely familiar to you, that might be why. I must admit that, during that timespan, if I looked through the Wish Book it wasn't for typewriters.
What I usually do by way of testing is to roll in a piece of paper and type the uppercase alphabet (and special characters), then the lowercase alphabet (and special characters). That will show me if any keys are sticking and let me know if the ribbon is in good condition. I also look for the serial number, add it to my records, and look it up in the Typewriter Serial Number Database (yes, there is such a thing) to find out its approximate date of manufacture.
The typewriter-collecting community is full of wonderful and generous people, but sometimes it's sad to find out how much people don't know. Many, many times they simply don't understand how to search for a specific number (their typewriter's serial number) within a range of numbers. Their minds have become accustomed to a digital world in which you simply type in the number and receive the manufacturing information and anything else you might possibly have wanted to know about the machine.
Last week I watched a lovely YouTube video in which the content creator wordlessly disassembled a Smith-Corona Sterling very similar to one I recently acquired. The whole demonstration was then accessible to collectors of any language. He pointed at specific screws before he removed them from the machine, then he let the camera linger on each different type of screw for a couple of seconds so we would be able to remember which screw went where, when we tried to put our own machines back together again.
I found another video from the same person, in which he did the initial typing test of the same typewriter. In the comments to the video, he mentioned that he had gotten a typewriter eraser with the typewriter; he had not known that such a thing existed. #facepalm
Historical artifact!
If I had known that these would sell for $10 apiece on eBay someday, I would have bought and saved cartons of them back in the day. Of course, back then there was not an Internet, let alone an eBay or much of a market for typewriters. Time to resume my work on the Delorean, I suppose....
"Where we're going, we don't need roads! However, we will be looking for a well-stocked office supply store."
"You mean like Staples, Doc?"
"Of course they'll have staples, Marty! What kind of an office supply store would they be if they didn't have staples? But we'll be looking for... typewriter erasers!"
"That's heavy, Doc."
"No, Marty, but the typewriters are."
If I'm now classified as old because I need to explain the things that were around when I was growing up... well, I'm definitely old.
In other news, I have been doing research this week for both of my writing projects. Right now I'm focusing on "Marginal Mystery," looking at the copies of Development of Mathematics (second edition, 1945) held by other university libraries to see if other readers were as compelled to write back to the author in the margins as the readers of UW-Whitewater have been.
This is the first phase of checking many, many copies for their possible annotations. So the most important thing is to get in the habit of looking at the books closely and being consistent with keeping my own records of any annotations. (I did warn you last week that this work would not be particularly exciting.)
My research for "Black Walnut" included driving through the locations I use in my story, while driving to and from my site for research for "Marginal Mystery."
Knitwise, I'm still cranking away on the owl wrist warmers. Photos to come....
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