With two auditors peering over
my shoulder—watching every move—I should have been nervous. Instead, I was laughing. That wasn’t the
first time it’s happened. Some millennials
aren’t sure what that electric thing is, the one sitting on the small oak table,
clicking and clacking.
The puzzled
look on their faces was a clue that they were clueless. It has a keyboard but no
flat screen. When the young CPAs stopped
snickering, I said, “This is one of my prized possessions. I dreamed about owning one for years. In 1988, I finally splurged and bought a
top-of-the-line IBM typewriter.”
One of the
auditors reached over and touched the tan plastic cover of the IBM 6781 with its
“personal wheelwriter.”
“Careful,” I
warned. “This has to last for the rest
of my career, and I don’t plan to work a day past 90.”
The
numbers-crunching duo snickered, again.
While my world
is filled with high-tech gadgets—with keyboards and screens large and small—I
like sitting down at the tiny typing desk to address envelopes. And every time I do, I am back in Peachy
Aspinwall’s 10th-grade typing class at Jesup High School.
“Class,” I can
hear her saying, “start warming up, and I’ll give today’s assignment in a few
minutes.” With that you heard a flurry
of keys tap tap tapping and the click
of her high heels on the tile floor, as she moved among the rows of
students. I started on a manual Royal,
but I will never forget the thrill and the pride when she promoted me to an
electric typewriter.
Don’t
snicker.
That was a coveted
honor in her class, down the second hall and on the right.
Years later,
after I started at the Wayne County Press,
I couldn’t wait until I could afford to retire my Smith-Corona typewriter and
trade up to the ultimate typing machine—an IBM.
Today, I like to shift into the bold
mode on the keyboard. It makes rapid-fire
staccato sounds, as if I am typing twice as fast.
Don’t
laugh.
Old guys need
to have fun, too.
So how’s this
for funny?
In October 1988,
we started negotiating to buy Community Newspapers Inc. Hubert Howard was the attorney for my
partners and me. Michael Jacobs, the
C&S investment banker in Atlanta, offered to fax the documents to
Jesup. “What’s your fax number?” Michael
asked.
“Uhhh,” I said,
“we don’t have a fax machine.”
He was nice and
didn’t laugh. Instead, he asked, “Do you
know your attorney’s fax number?” “I
will call you back,” I said.
Hubert didn’t
have a fax, either. However, his ever-efficient
and loyal assistant, Winifred Thrift, did have the latest magnetic-tape-fed-and-memory
IBM word processor, a whiz-bang typewriter.
With a company credit card, The Press-Sentinel’s ever-efficient and
loyal business manager, Lynn Rice, raced to Savannah to purchase two newfangled
facsimile machines—one for 252 W. Walnut St. and the other for Hubert’s office
on Brunswick Street.
Today, our fax
machines mostly gather dust. With the
internet, word documents and PDFs, our computers do most of the heavy lifting
of sending and receiving. Yeah, I know
my computer will address those envelopes, too.
But just when super-smart
millennials think they know everything
about everything, my 30-year-old typewriter
proves that they don’t. So, don’t expect
me to give up showing off my prized IBM any time soon.
Old guys need a
chance to snicker, too.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
