Revisiting an Old Friend

Post-Script: I again typed the first draft of this article out on the front patio in the warm noonday winter sun, onto children's manuscript paper. This Royal offers 1-1/2 line spacing, wide enough spacing for edits to be handwritten yet narrow enough to get a significant amount onto each page. The first draft went two pages, which is usually sufficient to permit the finished product to be fit, single-spaced, onto one sheet but, in this case, I had to edit out a few paragraphs, including some colorful descriptions of the old Senior Chief's rather carnal pastimes; that in retrospect were best left out.

One detail left out was an additional source of inspiration for acquiring a manual typewriter, after ridding myself of the Royal from the 1980s, was from an old pal who worked with me in the TV repair business, who himself had a fondness for manual portables and used them to handcraft books of his personal life stories. As I recall, he purchased several portables over the years from Brown & Smith; who, as I mentioned in a recent article, are now out of business.

Between typing the first draft and this finished version I did a bit of cleaning, lubing and adjusting to the Merc, including fixing the vertical position of the capitals, and resurfacing the pressure rollers such that the paper no longer slips near the bottom of the page. It remains an old friend indeed.