Typewriter Time
The Kehlet Typewriter Company of Sacramento has finally thrown in the towel after a quarter-century in the business. It's the end of an era -- or perhaps, since this little shop opened at the tail-end of the Analog Age, the end of the end of an era.
I've walked past this storefront of jumbled office machines every morning for almost exactly a year, and until last month, the same thought inevitably drifted through my mind: "No kidding; still here?"
I haven't owned a typewriter for almost twenty years, and can think of scarcely a handful of people who even own one anymore. A twenty-something acquaintance clings to her ancient Remington as a fetish of poets past. Patrick Leigh Fermor, a favourite writer of mine just picked up a '51 Olivetti to expedite the writing of his final book of travel memoirs. He was grudgingly driven to mechanical means only by his advanced age (93) after decades of writing in longhand.
But though the rattling, banging, ink-smudging contraptions will likely retain a place in the hearts of a romantic rear-guard, the "closed" sign in the window of Kehlet's makes it official. (sigh)
