Well, I write on June 23, otherwise known as National Typewriter Day. Even though I count myself among the Typewriter Tribe, until today I never knew that a holiday dedicated to one of my quirks existed.
Then again, for years — I mean years and years and YEARS, I won’t even embarrass myself and admit how many — I thought “qwerty” was a little secret gibberish word I had once noticed on the top line of the keyboard, the first five letters of the line.
At one point I considered gifting myself a necklace with a “qwerty” pendant.
Every time I would approach the keyboard, there it was, me and “qwerty.”
Until one day, not all that long ago, when I noticed an article about whether qwerty counted as a scrabble word or not?? Whhhhat? Qwerty was a “”thing?” Others knew about it? What a betrayal. Yet also, what a comfort. So qwerty was a thing. I felt an instant kinship with all these unknown qwerty people.
I gathered that qwerty people must be like me, not just keyboard people but typewriter people. Because for me, when I first noticed qwerty, it went back to my typewriter days.
Long before I learned how to type myself, I had fallen in love with the musical dings of the typewriter.
So many times my father would scoot off with his tiny portable aqua Hermes typewriter he’d had since college to write in a cool, air conditioned hotel lobby in Jerusalem — me at his side. Don’t ask me what I did while he was click clacking and dinging away on the typewriter, but these adventures were precious. And the typing was music to my ears.
When you hear that storm of noise rattling and clattering and see the paper being switched, sometimes scrunched up and tossed, other times carefully put aside, when you see all that busy-ness of bells ringing, and hear the speed of the keys being pressed, the text filling up the fresh crisp paper, you internalize: something very important is taking place. It’s like the words on the paper have a melody. A melody of clattered typing.
Much later when I was in my twenties as a teacher, sitting in on a music class with one of my students, the activity of the day followed Leroy Anderson’s musical piece, “The Typewriter.” I was ecstatic! Why of course a typewriter is like a musical instrument! The keys might as well be like the piano ivories, the peals of tchuk tchuk and click clang, the occasional ringing of a bell as the typewriter carriage slides to the next line, combined with the ever subtle wind from the paper — it all makes for absolute instrument-level reverberations.
In this quirky, playful and creative piece of music, there’s such a magical fusion in listening to it because you can almost see invisible letters floating from the typewriter and weaving words and sentences, maybe even a poem or a story, as the orchestra’s music unfolds, accompanied by the rhythm of the typing typewriter.
These days, the classic typing text holds such a special retro vintage kind of vibe. Computer fonts just don’t compare. First of all, there’s that lower case g. The old-school one was made up of two closed loops, the lower one flattened and oblong — it’s art. Second, the text looks more raw, the letters are never the exact shade of the ink. Some letters come out a bit scratchier than others. The line may not be perfectly straight, depending whether you aligned the paper right or not. You know, it’s just not sterile looking. In short, typewriter text has charm.
I’ve collected a few knick knacks here and there, like a set of fabric napkins overlaid with typewriter text quotes printed on it. Yeah, I know it’s corny. Yet to me, it’s sentimental.
A few years ago I alighted upon a cafe in Larimer Square in Denver. I was walking past, when something caught my eye, beckoning me to take a second look. Lo, what had lured me were 25 typewriters hanging on the entrance wall! There were niche-like bookcases too that, it turned out, had secret doors behind them.
Then strolling on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan one day, in front of The Met, I happened upon a gentleman sitting by a typewriter. Typing up custom written poems for a couple bucks after passers-by shared information about the subjects of the poem he could write about. Somehow, from an apple computer, it just wouldn’t have been the same. People lined up, you could see the anticipation on people’s faces, as they awaited to receive their personal poem, the clattering typewriter, the clicks and the clacks filling the air, suggestive of something special in process, coming together, before the gentleman would slide the paper from the typewriter with a whoosh and hand it with a flourish to his customer.
By now the typewriter has transcended its exclusively utilitarian purpose and morphed into an aesthetic of sorts, a piece of nostalgia that is still very much available to experience, the pleasure of holding it, typing on it, hearing its unique composition of sounds that it belts out depending on what words are being created.
For millennials, it’s probably just another curiosity from the past. For me, even before I became a writer, the typewriter held an enigmatic and spellbinding mystery and joy.
Watching my father all those years ago in Jerusalem churn paper after paper out of his typewriter, I never thought that one day I would have letters, words and sentences of my own to type at that speed, weaving them into my own column.
I’m excited to learn there is an official holiday celebrating the typewriter, even if I still haven’t had that qwerty jewelry made up yet. I will say, though, one of the COVID masks in my collection is of cream fabric with little red typewriters and unfurled paper all set for it to be written on (meanwhile, I never used anything other than blue surgical masks).
Since I had just learned about this off-the-grid holiday, I figured I would share it with any fellow qwerty-ites or typewriter aficionados, just in case you too lnever knew there was an actual day dedicated to our wackiness. Normally I might roll my eyes at dedicating holidays to every little niche cause, but in this case, I’m all aboard! Thank you Christopher Latham Sholes and Happy National Typewriter Day!
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
