09-11-2026

Man, the things this machine has seen. It was made in May of 1940, a year and a half before Pearl Harbor. It’s hard to believe it is still swinging its arms and striking the paper with enough force to print its letters. I wish I could see what all it has written over the years. It was made for students, although I would assume anyone could have used it. I wonder if it wrote letters to a soldier fighting overseas—letters that might not have had a recipient when the paper it had written on finally got to where it was going. Oh, the sadness that could have come across these keys. Or maybe joy, like a letter about the new addition to the family or about years spent in college. Maybe it has lived a boring life locked away in a case, bought for dreams of writing that never came to fruition. But I doubt that. The rubber platen shows so much when it is examined. This particular one has craters all the way across it from heavy use and also from these powerful, fast typebars slamming the black rubber beneath the paper. This machine was probably loved, or at least appreciated.

It’s not a fancy typewriter by any means. It isn’t even equipped with a bell. It came from the factory that way. One just has to pay attention to what’s being written so as not to stack letters atop one another at the end of the line. It also isn’t one for typing very quickly, or so it seems. Thus why many of my words typed have a funny space and letters joined at the hip when I get too excited with my typing. So, in many ways, it’s a primitive, simple machine, almost 87 years old and yet still willing to do what it was created for.

That’s one of the reasons I appreciate these typewriters that I’ve had the privilege to use. The good ones—not expensive by any means, but the ones still able to put word to paper—mean a lot to me. I’ve also enjoyed bringing broken ones back to life to have another chance at being useful to the world again. It gives me a good feeling to know that the repair brought new life back to a lonely, sad, decommissioned machine.

So it is: this particular unit has gotten to speak the words of its master once again. Does it miss the ones who came before? Does it sometimes think about where its owners went the last time they closed the case, never to be seen again?

I got this one for Christmas several years ago. I wonder how many times it has been wrapped with paper and a bow, how many smiles it’s seen as a new person loads their first sheet of paper into it. I just wish to know those things. I’ll never know, and it won’t ever tell.