July 11, 2024 Northfield, MN

It started, like many good/bad ideas, with falling down an internet rabbit hole. Early last school year, we misplaced one of Everett’s favorite toys, a basket of magnet tiles. Shortly before returning to the US for the summer, I started researching buying replacements. New, they are quite expensive. David suggested I check out the Goodwill website. Lo and behold, Goodwill has two websites: one with auctions, like Ebay, and one where you can buy things outright. It became clear to me that when Goodwill got especially nice items donated, rather than putting them in that store, they put them up online to catch some niche buyers. I found the magnet tiles on the auction site and put in my bid.

This is when a question popped into my head: what other stuff is for sale on this Goodwill site? I’m not sure if I saw it listed or the idea just occurred to me, but there it was: typewriters.

As you may have guessed, the site was in fact full of typewriters. Now began the problem of not really knowing what I was looking for. Enter YouTube and Reddit. I discovered a couple of great accounts that highlighted features of different typewriters and showed how to clean and repair them. A spreadsheet began, because of course it did. I was finding it hard to keep all the different makes and models in my head. One YouTuber I especially liked, Just My Typewriter, had a few suggestions for your first typewriter. She suggested getting a Smith Corona from the 50s or 60s. Other sites and many YouTubers agreed that the Olivetti Lettera 32 is one is of the best. Those were running between $200 and $300 online and there were none available on Goodwill.  The Hermes 3000 is a darling of many writers, but on Etsy or Ebay, those were often selling for $400 or $500, and when they appeared on Goodwill, they were around that price as well or with significant damage. 

I decided to put in a bid on an Olympia B12 typewriter from the 70s. I soon realized that online auctions are complicated. The serious bidders wait until the last few minutes and seconds of the auction to sneak a final bid in at the end that beats the high bidder by a dollar, without time for that previous high bidder having a chance to counterbid.  At first, I was perplexed by these maneuvers. Why not just bid early, and put in the max bid at the most you would be willing to spend? That’s what I did, but someone waited until the final minutes and bid 50 cents more than me to win. (Your max bid is secret, but other bidders put in $1 increments until they find your maximum and exceed it by $1.)

Unless I somehow made a max bid that was ridiculous, I didn’t really have a chance of winning. I’d have to set an alarm for the last 5 minutes of the auction and play their outbidding game. 

I turned to the other Goodwill site. No competition, no alarms set for the final minutes. I could browse and research. I narrowed it down to a Smith Corona and a Sears Malibu. The Smith Corona was a Silent model from the 1950s. The photos looked good. The keys looked good, the body didn’t have any visible damage.

The Sears Malibu was a quirky choice. The Sears Malibu is a late 60s early 70s machine made in two shades of blue. It had some plastic body elements which many people online pooh poohed. I didn’t really have an opposition to the plastic. Sears also made a green and orange model that were similar but with different model names, Chevron and Newport. A redditor referred to them as being like Pokemon cards–collect them all! The Sears Malibu didn’t have as much of a presence on YouTube or the internet as a whole. There was one pretty scathing review on a typewriter website, but it felt like a personal vendetta, if such a thing is possible against a typewriter, lol.  TypewriterMinutes had a review of the green Sears Chevron model and it looked interesting to me.

The Smith Corona was $99, which felt reasonable based on my research, but the Goodwill listing didn’t have much info about its condition or functionality. I could maybe try to win an auction for one and pay less, but that was no guarantee, and I could use up a lot of time trying to do that. The Malibu was only $55, and was on sale. I am such a sucker for a sale, even 5% off on a Goodwill typewriter. I left both typewriters in my cart for a day to ponder which to buy. 

Reader, I bought them both.

Listen, it was the end of the school year. I was stressed. I was tired. I have no regrets.

I had both machines sent to my sister in law in Minnesota. But I still had 2 weeks until we flew back. I will admit that I got antsy. I continued to watch videos and read articles. Again and again the Lettera 32 was mentioned. Cormac McCarthy apparently wrote his novels on a Lettera 32. In the process of my research, I learned that the Italian designed typewriter was made in a variety of countries, and quite popular in many Latin American countries, including, drum roll, Brazil. One person even mentioned that the Mexico- and Brazil-made machines were desirable because they could make all of the diacritics and accent marks.

I hopped on over to Mercado Livre, a website in Brazil that bears some resemblance to Amazon, but with more independent sellers. More of the products you might expect on Ebay, but without the auctions. Whoo boy, there were a lot of Olivetti Lettera 32s for sale. Whereas many Lettere 32s will sell for $200-300 in the US, I found ones in pretty good condition for about $60-75. I looked at lots of pictures, and I specifically looked for the little screws that affix the ribbon spools on Lettera 32, which can easily get lost. I also wanted to see if I could find a seller with a bunch of typewriters, which could indicate that they knew the product they were selling. I found a seller who appeared to be the online platform for an antiques shop. I found a Lettera 32 that looked undamaged and I sent the seller a message: Does it type? Does the carriage advance? Do all the keys work?

The seller replied yes and I placed my order. It arrived a few days later. (Based on the serial number checked against the Typewriter Database, it was made in 1965 in Mexico.)

I loaded up the paper and started clacking away. The ribbon was totally dry, which wasn’t a surprise, but the keys all worked and the carriage advanced. 

The one thing that wasn’t working wes the bell. Tragedy!

The charm of a typewriter lies in (among other things) the bell. I went back to YouTube and watched tutorials about how to fix a bell. I ordered mineral spirits and sewing machine oil. These, along with the compressed air cans we already had, were the main tools for cleaning, degreasing and then oiling a typewriter. I watched videos on how to disassemble the typewriter  and I got to work. I blew out all the dust and used a paintbrush to help. Then I used the mineral spirits to clean out the inside.

I found the bell in the back of the innards. I played around with it and realized that the dinger arm was resting on the bell. When the machine raised and dropped the dinger, it was dampening the sound.

It wasn’t a problem of gunk or goo, which the mineral spirits would have fixed, so I realized it was a mechanical problem. I needed to bend the arm so that after striking the bell, it was hovering above the bell, not resting against it. Going slowly and carefully, I bent the dinger arm upwards. Very quickly, the bell began to ding! 

The feeling of victory that accompanied fixing that bell was euphoric.

I ordered a new Olivetti ribbon. Olivetti uses a proprietary ribbon spool, but I was easily able to buy an Olivetti branded set of spools with fresh ribbon. After installing the ribbon, I realized that when I wrote, the spools weren’t spinning the way they were supposed to. I found that the screws on the spools were too high and were touching the cover and getting stuck. Even though they were Olivetti spools, they appeared to be too tall. With no other buying options, I would have to wait for the US. If I popped the ribbon cover open a little while I typed, they moved perfectly.

When I landed in the US, I bought  my mineral spirits and sewing machine oil. I started on the Sears Malibu. (The Typewriter Database is not as fleshed out with these machines, but it is probably 1969 or 1970, but it could be later in the 70s.)

I rewatched the TypewriterMinutes video about the green Sears Newport, and learned how to disassemble it. I took it apart and followed the steps: blow out the dirt and dust with the compressed air and a paintbrush, squirt mineral spirits on the interior metal parts, using Q-tips and paper towels to remove the old gunk and grease, then small drops of machine oil on the moving parts.

When I put the whole thing back together, it was working nicely except for the ribbon reverse system. To try to explain what this is, the ribbon is on two spools.  As you type, the ribbon inches from one spool to the other.  Many machines have an automatic system for switching the ribbon from winding in one direction to winding in the other direction.  On my Malibu, both of the spools were pulling simultaneously in opposite directions, rather than one side disengaging and the other spool pulling. I worked and worked on it, even enlisting the help of my 11 year old niece. I couldn’t get it to work.

Then camp and a beach trip came, so I put the typewriter under the bed and tried not to think about it. Once back from our trips, I went to work on the Smith Corona. (Based on its serial number, it was made in 1951.)

Before the cleaning, it had been skipping and adding in extra spaces in the middle of words. (Matilda tried to write a letter to her friend and cried real tears when it kept skipping and adding spaces) The mechanism that advances forward, called the escapement, may have had some junk or debris stuck in it. This typewriter was in good shape, but the eraser bits all in the machine led me to believe it was well loved and frequently used. Extra mineral spirits and air did the trick.

With another successful repair under my belt, I decided maybe it was time to take another look at the Malibu. I watched a couple of videos by Joe Van Cleave, focusing on the different types of ribbon reverse systems. It appeared that no matter the system, there was some kind of click when the ribbon reversed and the system would be the latched. My Malibu did not have any click, it just sort of flopped back and forth. On this second look, I leaned closer and saw a little metal arm pulled away from the ribbon reverse system. When l pressed it down, it landed perfectly on the ribbon reverse mechanism. When I flipped the ribbon forks back and forth, there was the click! I took off the left side of the body and pushed the arm down until it held the ribbon system steady. It worked. Again, I felt so triumphant. What a thrill.

Here’s where I get a little philosophical. As a teacher, change can be slow in my students. There’s not always an easy fix, and learning takes time to get into our long term memory. That’s not a complaint, but it means that frustration is a normal part of my day to day. Maybe that is why fixing a typewriter feels so good. I also love that mechanical typewriters can be fixed mechanically.  Then again, maybe my satisfaction in working on those machines has nothing to do with being a teacher, and it is human to like that feeling.

Last night, I said to David that I wanted to buy another typewriter. He responded, “First, you have to type something.”

Touché, my friend. So here I am. I sat down after breakfast and composed the first draft of this blog post on my Smith Corona Silent.

Some initial reflections on writing long form on a typewriter: it’s a very physical thing to type on a typewriter, akin to playing an instrument. You really have to work your fingers. Because of this, you have to go a bit slower, which I like. You also can’t delete, obviously. But is it so obvious? We spend our whole day with backspace and autocorrect and, in some cases, Al to fix and enhance our writing. On this machine, my mistakes are immediate and visible. So, I have to make some decisions.  Will I go back and x out the mistakes and rewrite the intended word? Will I just keep going and fix it later? I’ve also started using a pen to make corrections and additions above the line. (This is why I decided to type with 1.5 line spacing.) I’m not a perfectionist, but it is still a good exercise in deciding what to sweat and what to let go.

There is also the benefit of being disconnected from not only the Internet but electricity. I can’t click away and see what’s happening on a celebrity gossip site or the New York Times . I’m not an incredibly distractible person, but I’m human. I would definitely say that I am more immersed in the writing when I am composing on the typewriter.

I’m learning, however, that there are some words I don’t know how to spell! Occurred. I think that’s right, but maybe it is only 1 r? Distractable? Distractible? Destractable? Destractible? I really can’t tell. I might seriously make myself a little spelling list on a notecard to set next to the typewriter.

I also find myself wanting to go back and make revisions. I knew as I was writing about the repair process that I was getting too long winded and that my audience wouldn’t sustain their engagement for that long. But what can I do? I guess I could just stop mid-sentence and make a note to myself. I opted to just commit, knowing that I will shorten and condense those parts later.

Mabe you, like my son Calvin, are wondering how I got the blog post off the paper and onto the World Wide Web. David used the Android Google Drive app to scan the pages and then convert them to a PDF. I downloaded the PDF and then used Preview on my laptop to highlight and copy and paste the text into a Google Doc.  One problem is that the formatting was a bit odd.  All of my line breaks were maintained.  That means that my paragraphs looked weird on the Doc.  I installed an extension aptly called Remove Line Breaks.  I learned that I should use a blank line between paragraphs rather than an indention.  Once the formatting was okay, I revised and proofread. 

Was this whole process more work? Yes. But I am starting to think it is less overall. How much time do I lose to internet time wasting? What’s the mental cost of flicking back and forth between windows and tabs and devices? There’s slow food, why not slow writing?

And here I will end. Perhaps I will come up with a snappier, more satisfying ending in “post”. My fingers definitely need a rest and I think I’ve earned to spend a few minutes browsing the Goodwill site for a new typewriter 😉

(Curious what the original types pages look like? Here’s a PDF of the original.)