This is a picture, found on the internet, of the Underwood portable that was my dear companion for many years. I bought it for $20 in the summer of 1956 at a second-hand shop on Flatbush Avenue and I brought it with me to college. I even transported it to Vermont for many summers and depended on it until the 1980s when it was superseded by the word processor. In my mind's ear, the clickety-clack of all those letters home as well as undergraduate and graduate-school essays, and later, typed and re-typed manuscripts, still resonate. My fingertips remember the cupped, pseudo-ivory keys.
It was a sturdy machine, only needing repair once, when, in a moment of compositional enthusiasm, I hit the return bar so hard that I snapped i off. Many were the ribbons that I wore to a frazzle.
I had enrolled in a course in "touch typing" at Erasmus Hall HS -- asa, ada, afa, sdf, for twenty weeks. I took only the first semester of a two-semester sequence because I was interested in the letters and not the numbers. My typing has always been distinguished more by rapidity than by accuracy. I once claimed that I typed so fast that my ribbon would break into flame -- a slight hyperbole (but I admit that have always been a trifle vain about the speed of my fingers). I am a noisy power typist and to this day I bang the keyboard of my computer many times harder than is advisable or necessary. But heck, I learned my craft on an imperfectly lubricated old monster of typewriter, probably purchased by the NYC school district in the 1920s.
Where is that old Underwood now? Most likely buried in a landfill somewhere. I should have reverenced it for all the hours we spent together. Given it an honorable retirement.
Rest in peace, partner.
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