ASDF ;LKJ

A couple of letters on my laptop keyboard are obliterated, worn through. B. S. M. No surprise that S is a goner. It's no E. It's no A. It's no T. But it's still used more frequently than most letters. And M? It's no R, but it is the first letter of my first name, so I likely end up using it a lot. But B? B! Why would B wear out?

Anyway, it's a good thing I learned touch typing on a qwerty keyboard back in the day, so I know where all the letters are on the keyboard without even having to look!

I learned to type the summer after my freshman year in high school. My school didn't offer typing, so for six weeks, I took the bus downcity to take touch typing at Classical High School. You had to take two courses, so I also took Civics/Political Science with some old grouch named Mr. Smith.

We learned - typing, not Civics/Political Science - on manual typewriters, which was a good thing because that's what we had at home: a heavy duty, clunky Royal.

Other than for typing papers, which began when my sister Kathleen started high school two years before I did, I don't know what my parents had a typewriter for. Make that my mother. Using the typewriter was definitely her jam, not his. (Although she'd won a scholarship to a Catholic liberal arts college - the now defunct Mundelein College in Chicago - my grandparents had forced my mother to go to secretarial school instead, where she learned short hand, stenography, and - of course - touch typing. A source of endless childhood fascination was my mother's steno machine, stowed away in our cellar storage closet along with her unused violin and her Nelson Eddy scrapbook.)

Anyway, I don't remember her using that clunky old Royal. (I can imagine her using the typewriter for formal corresponence like a complaint letter or something.) But I remember Kath and I using it.

For starters, I used it to practice my homework. The first exercise was familiarizing yourself wiht the central row of keys on the keyboard. ASDF ;LKJ. Gradually, I grew into r-u-g j-u-g r-u-g j-u-g. And, finally, the pinnacle. A sentence that used every letter in the alphabet. The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. 

Not only was I able to type my own papers, but knowing how to type opened up all sorts of swell job opportunities. Like the Christmas vacation temp job I got working in an insurance company where all I did all day long was type the letter B on forms. 

When I graduated from high school, I was given a Royal Portable in a spiffy blue carrying case, to bring to college - the same typewriter that I'm guessing 95% of my classmates had.

Manual typewriters were slow. The key arms that swung the type slugs onto the ribbon jammed all the time. Correcting - even when you used those fancy black and white ribbons and corrasable paper - was painful. And who can forget whisking away eraser crumbs with the tiny green whisk-er end of your typewriter eraser. Wite-Out, when it came around, was a revelation. But you had to have the patience to wait for it to dry. And you had to be able to line your paper up precisely to the right spot so you could evenly type in your fix.

When electric typewriters became more common, my mother got an IBM Selectric which she used - among other purposes - to type papers for my brothers, a service that was never provided to me and my sisters. 

Me? I stuck with my Royal Portable to get me through business school, at which point personal computers, word processors, and home printers were becoming a thing.

Although I still know how the rollers and the carriage return works, although I bet I could still unstick the key arms if they got all jammed up, I haven't used a typewriter in years. (It goes without saying that I can touch type to beat the band.)

But there are still folks around who actually prefer using typewriters. 

For them, alas, the last typewriter shop in the Boston area is slated to go out of business. Cambridge Typewriter (which repaired and sold typewriters and supplies) is closing on March 31st, and Tom Furrier, the store's proprietor, is retiring. Tom recently posted the news on his Facebook page:

“We are no longer accepting any new repairs but are still selling typewriters up until the end. I’ll be giving updates over the next couple of months as to how we are going to close it out. We will have a big party towards the end of March. It will be a Type-In disguised as a retirement party.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Tom Furrier had had a succession plan in place, but the apprentice he'd mentored backed out a couple of months before he'd planned to retire last year. So he tried to sell the shop, but even at the low, low price of $35K, he couldn't find the right buyer. So now it's everything must go, then close the doors. 

I'm in the getting-old process of de-accumulating. Sure, I still make occasional acquisitions - most recently from the fabulous things that my sister Kath is de-accumulating. (Thanks so much for the cherry breakfront, the painting of the three decker. They look great in my living room.) But mostly I'm thinning the herd of stuff that a) I don't want or need; b) no one I know wants or needs. Every couple of months, I find myself Ubering over to Goodwill to hand off a couple of shopping bags full of perfectly usable items that someone else will be happy to pick up for a buck or two in their store. Honestly, how many clear glass flower vases does one woman neeed?

Yet I still wouldn't mind having a vintage typewriter around, just to look at. 

No, I won't give into the impulse to acquire one. A vintage typewriter (accompanied, in my mind, by an ancient Victrola with listening horn, another item I have long had a hankering for) would be swell to have, but what would I do with it? Where would I put it? 

This doesn't, of course, stop me from feeling a bit weepy about the end of Cambridge Typewriter.

Not that I ever stepped toe in the place, but I'm missing this little gem of a shop already. 

ASDF ;LKJ...