We had our first Type-In of the year at another local library, this time at the
Juan Tabo Library in northeast ABQ, just a few miles from the foothills of the Sandia Mountain Wilderness. This library is the closest to my neighborhood and one I've walked to on numerous occasions; although the
Tony Hillerman Library, though further away, is the one I favored since childhood, as it is located in a quiet neighborhood off the main boulevards and the grounds of that library are tended by the
Albuquerque Rose Garden Society.
Before delving into the Type-In itself, I must digress into another of my world-famous "stories." This involves recalling that, in the early 1960s and before, Juan Tabo was not a paved street, but rather a dirt road that ran north-south, from roughly the Route 66 area on the southern edge of town northward, then angled northeasterly and continued north along the foothills of the Sandias. This dirt road was famous for its "wooptie-doos," as the road was a seemingly endless series of up-and-down hills, the thrill being to drive the family sedan (most families only had one vehicle in those days) as fast as possible over the hills and down the dales, seeing how close you could come to getting airborne.
By the early 1970s Juan Tabo was paved into a 6-lane boulevard as it is today, but there was very little city development on the southern half, and I can remember riding the yellow Schwinn Varsity ten-speed bike down the middle of Juan Tabo, over to Central Avenue (the former Route 66), and eastward to the Four Hills area, where I'd park my bike and hike the hills to gain a vantage point suitable for watching military and civilian air traffic on base, adjacent to
Manzano Base. Today, you'd be a traffic statistic if you tried riding a bicycle down any major thoroughfare in ABQ, as evidenced by the numerous
ghost bike memorials around town, set up to memorialize a bicyclist killed in traffic.
Another thing that happened when Juan Tabo was paved was that the northern part after the bend in the road became Tramway Road, a two-lane paved road popular for late-night muscle car racing in the late 1960s. Today it too is a 6-lane thoroughfare that leads to the
Sandia Peak Tram, where today you can ride up to the top of the mountain and
dine in fine style at an altitude of 10,300 feet.
Okay, that glassy look in Joe's eyes has diminished and he's returned to the present era. Enough of the story-telling.
One of the requirements for a library-based typewriter event is an adequate meeting room, and Juan Tabo has that, a spacious, modern room with plenty of tables and chairs, and a helpful staff. Due to its location adjacent to the children's reading section, we attracted a good number of families with kids, which we always like having. It's fun to instruct them on how to use a typewriter, and the parents this day were very considerate of being careful with these old machines.
We've held previous typewriter events at a number of libraries around town and we've found them to be a great venue. Most public libraries have a meeting room available, and the library staff are very helpful in putting our event on their calendar, which helps us to market the event using the library's credibility. Also, for libraries that we've frequented before, their staff are very helpful in getting graphic images of the event to new libraries having their first event.
Previously we've held several Type-Ins per year at local libraries, but this year we are expanding our activities. This is due in no small measure to the efforts of our members Woz Flint and Matthew Bouchard. Type-In events we consider to be public outreach to the community at large, helping to spread the word that typewriters are still relevant and useful in this digital age. But since Kevin Kittle and myself formed the
ABQwerty Type Writer Society a few years ago, we envisioned it to be about more than just collectors of antique machinery. The word
"Type" in our title relates to the hardware, the machinery, the collecting and restoring efforts required to keep these creative engines running; but the
"Writer" in our title was another part of our vision, to appeal to the creative community of writers, to enable them to discover these fantastic tools that might aid them in furthering their creative efforts.
This year we've begun two new kinds of events, besides public Type-Ins. First, we've maintained and grown a contact list of people interested in hearing from us about upcoming typewriter-related events. We notify this private list of what we call
Typewriter Pop-Ups, which are small events, usually at local cafes or coffee shops, where we each bring a typewriter and can either write or socialize around our common interest in typewriters. These events are mainly social, we usually get much more chatting done than writing.
But the other new kind of event that we are excited about are what we call a
Type Away. These events happen usually at library meeting rooms, and the intent is for minimal socialization and maximum writing. You bring your typewriter and some project you are working on, then get an entire hour to work on your project, undistracted by domestic considerations, accompanied by the symphony of other typewriters clacking away in harmony with yours. We usually have a 15 minute period before and after the writing session to chat and discuss our projects.
Along with
Pop-Up and
Type Away events, we hope this year to also start getting involved in street typewriter poetry.
Woz Flint, our Communications Director and
published author, is experienced at public poetry and will be starting us getting involved in these kinds of public typewriter activities. We also hope to host some writing workshops too. Also, in May we will be having a month-long display case in the Cherry Hills Library with typewriters and related ephemera, which we are also excited about.
We've also spread our inky fingers into the world of social media, via
Substack and
Facebook, assisted by Matthew our resident social media guru. We've found it important to keep touch within various siloed social circles, to spread the news of typewriters as far as we can.
I want to thank the members of the ABQwerty Type Writer Society for all their efforts in making this Type-In the success that it was, and especially Matthew and my dear wife Andrea for helping to haul typewriters for this event, as I'm recuperating from hip replacement surgery. Yes, I'm on the mend and things are going well.
If you are curious as to the origin of the name Juan Tabo,
here's a bit more on that.
In the meanwhile, here are the remainder of the images I took during this event. I found it helpful, due to the large number of children present, to only photograph their hands on keyboards, in keeping with the practice of ensuring their privacy.
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Underwood Portable
Olympia SM
