Remember (you who related to my post last week about my mom’s old Royal) how it felt to snug the sheet of typing paper into its place between the guides, to turn the carriage until the top of the page came around? If it was off-kilter, you pushed and held a release button while straightening the page.
Remember that you could only make an exclamation point by typing an apostrophe (they were straight) and then backspacing to type a period beneath it?
My son asked, first time he tried the Royal, “Where’s the 1?”
You need to use lower-case L. I’d completely forgotten that until I answered him.
Tuesday morning, before we left for Theophany, I checked my email and found a Google Alert for my name on a site that links to mentions of Royal typewriters. Just down the page was a link to a recent interview with Virginia Aste, Richard Brautigan’s first wife. She tells about an Idaho camping trip she and Richard took. She says: “Richard was always writing. He sat at a card table with his Royal typewriter during the trip. I didn’t know what he was writing until later.”
His pages became Trout Fishing in America.
I love typewriters. I also love that I just learned about google alerts. What will they think of next!?
Pretty amazing stuff, Marianne. These machines that start with so many moving parts and become instruments of astonishing information. Where will they go from here? Probably as far as they can.
Great bit of info.
and thank you so much for honouring me with your words again, Deanna.
Coming from you, they mean a lot. I’m sure I’ve said that before. But it’s obvious you are a writer. I just write. Finally. Forever.
The writer’s way. Write. :o)