It’s been a rough year, hasn’t it? It’s got the feels in spades, and chaos reigns. The future looms full of change that is shaped by rough uncertainty – the road ahead enveloped in a dark thundercloud, forks of lightning striking potholes into the many forks in the road itself. Like Jonah heading for the whale, I retreat into my machines in the face of the oncoming storm. They are a comfort to a troubled soul…
I was working on the Antique Indexes at TWDB, trying to figure out if the Sjoberg Pearl was the same machine as the People’s Typewriter (I think maybe yes, but grrrr), when the news came that a friend had died. I’m getting to the age where that occasionally happens, but this one was rough. She was one of those friends who was actually interested in my weird little typewriter hobby, liked to write and was willing to adopt – so of course I had gifted her with a few machines that had caught her fancy over the years.
A 1941 Royal Companion I bought at a thrift store in 2012 and gifted to my friend.
Those machines have come back to roost, along with a few others she had collected, and one, a Valentine that she had apparently intended to gift to us. Thus, the collection has grown with machines heavily invested with memories of my good friend, and it is fortunate that a typewriter is a good thing to tinker with when one is thinking a lot about heavy things. You just try not to get your tears in the segment.
The collection was also swelled by the passing by of mercurial comet Linus Kafka, a Typospherian from Tucson, who came through town twice in a whirlwind of dropping off machines to be adopted and touring MTE and meeting Bill and Key Snap. I managed to get Key Snap to adopt the Adler Special and a matched set of baby Adler Tippas in need of TLC, and culled almost a dozen more from my collection to send to MTE’s stock. I came away from that only adopting a single 1946 Royal QDL from Kafka needing only minor fixes. With the herd cull and the other influx, I am at 51 machines, and can see getting back down to 40 after Christmas. Almost hit 70 this week, so close call.
And speaking of Royals, Kafka also showed off this sweet little ’41 QDL with Vogue:
Yeah, check out the Pilcrow key!
And since I’m on the subject of Royals, I have plans to take another stab at the Royal page at TWDB. The series of posts I did on the Royal A model last year needs updates now that we have some few dozen more machines in the database to examine, and the timeline between 1970 and 1984 needs to be outlined and uncovered. There’s a whole mess of brand inbreeding there, designs from Holland, Portugal, Japan and a few other places need to be sorted and properly placed on the Royal timeline. The information exists, and can be found, and that’s a fine distraction from the woes of the year.
Of course, that’s after I finish the Indexes I started working on, and I promised someone I’d update the Helios-Klimax page if he uploaded his machine. So, busy, busy. We snatch joy and meaning where it can be found, and we dodge the raw, red madness on our heels.
Selah, RRTM
Lovin’ me that typeface.