The Royal Typewriter
By Mike Marino
The curio known as the modern day computer keyboard is a sassy little sissy. It's a prissy plastic keypad made of cheap modern materials, not classy modern materials, or moderne either. It is no where in close architectural proximity to the look of sleek highly polished 1930's aluminum and steel and iron that make up the composition of the skyscraper masterpiece, the Chrysler Building, or even radios and watches and chairs made of artful deco Bakelite products found around the home and office that come in multi hues and uses that are multi too.
The keys have a click and not a clack. In fact, it is all click without the clack, without the steroids...the keyboard of the computer is merely tiny electrical circuits opening and closing as silently as a serial killer stalks its prey. A 90 pound underfed weakling on the literary beach, delete buttons, always at the ready, the new White Out of the digital generation...don't have to wait for "delete" to dry, no fumes to try to get you high. The scroll button...opens the Gates of Pixel, as words flow downward, southward, sinking below the horizon of the computer screen into a purgatory of words waiting, pleading piously to be released as visible and viable parts of the whole of the paragraph.
The kingdom of the keyboard creates a sense of key-boredom akin to the keyless entry of a motel room. One swipe down and the green light comes on. The entire system is wired for wireless if such a wiring can be done or is even the correct terminology to use when discussing these units. These Computers. Wireless plasticity, means throw away disposability. Name your landfill, name your garbage dump...give us your poor electronic refuse..and we will not refuse it, but recycle it so we can re-use it.
It is a function of the times...but retro returns riding tall in the saddle in the oddest places. The bottom shelf of a Goodwill Store. The store where they have faded old field jackets and Aloha shirts on the rack, and old soggy stuffed animals in a bin that kids have drooled on. In the back, an eclectic assortment of electronics in an electroid graveyard. Lamps without shades, shades without lamps, RCA plugs and discordant lost cords, turntables without needles, old toasters, old Singer Sewing Machines, walkie talkies, waffle makers, VCR machines, DVD machines, CD machines, and other machines with similar designations.
There is a large and select eclectic selection of Selectrics, the kind you plug into a wall, but without electricity they too are dead in the water. But there stashed in the back like a bag of hidden treasure sat a beauty...built like a Buick it was truly a beastie of the best kind...a Sixties era Royal Typewriter. Solid as a Motor City muscle mo'sheen, with that hard to describe heavy metallic brown, maroon, purplish, or as some say, grey, with the Royal placard pasted on front...a hood ornament on the writers muscle car...the authors Dodge Charger...the typewriter.
Now this one has panache. The keys pound down hard, leaving its inky imprint onto the surface of paper. Unlike the ticky ticky sound of the plastic computer keyboard, the typewriter keys have the thunderous impact of John Henrys hammer coming down with a roar on spikes to lay miles and miles of railroad rails.The keys, are guided to imprint the impressionable pages through it's guide. The letters fill the page with the accuracy of a smart bomb fired from a US Naval ship 50 miles away smack dab dead on into the school yard of a small village in Afghanistan.
The typewriter ribbon is also a curious oddity. Without it, there is no imprint, no matter how powerful the crashing waves are on the shores of creativity. It slips and moves through its guides silently, a submarine underwater maintaining radio silence. It moves up and down with a gliding motion depending on whether the letter to be implanted, as a bas relief release of the keys, is to be a capitalization of a letter or not. Lower case, upper case, just in case...the ribbon is locked and loaded.
The carriage leaves in its wake the rooster tail carnage of a writer’s vocabulary. It's wounded diction and walking dead zombie apostrophe's...it's comma's in a coma, it's gritty little grammatical nuances which to a writer, can be a nuisance when on a stream of consciousness flow propelled by the thumping of the space bar, the bang of the keys, and when the carriage reaches the marginal ends...the bell...the bing! for whom the carriage bell tolls...it tolls for me. Then the writer gives the carriage return a smack and the paper, carriage, in unison, choreographed, moves down a line so the words can reposition themselves for repository on the next line of the same page. The silver lever is a gear shift with an invisible suicide knob. The words come faster, the carriage moves swifter, the keys work furiously and soon it crosses the finish line of the quarter mile and the paragraph, the article, the book is finished, and it's ready to go again.
Not once will your Royal machine proclaim..."Battery Low" as it has no battery to batter your flow of words or dam them up, like Hoover and stopping them dead in their tracks until the Japanese Tea Ceremony of the Recharge takes place high on some mountain top in some way above sea level forbidden temple full of monks with vows of silence. That is if you even have electricity to draw juice from.
The computer can be a royal pain in the ass...but the Royal typewriter is a wonderful wordsmithing machine that has never heard of Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Email, Google or Yahoo. That in itself is worth praising! The best part? No Batteries Required. Pull the plug...proclaim your freedom....write on!
The Roadhead Chronicles Book
By Mike Marino
Limited Signed Editons - $19.95!!
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To Order Email theroadhead@yahoo.com
Welcome Aboard and hope you enjoy the rock and roll ride and read in The Roadhead Blog...
Mike Marino - Pop Culture Dumpster Diver
Fifties & Sixties Pop Culture!
Classic Cars, Rock n' Roll, Elvis, Route 66, Drive in Movies, Route 66, Roadside Culture, Kerouac & The Beats, Haight Ashbury, Easy Rider & Vietnam
Pop Culture guru Mike Marino looks at the '60s and beyond through his own kaleidoscope, where rock met revolution. Spewing quips like a psychedelic lawn mower run amok, he drags us, more than likely kicking and screaming, through a past few of us knew and even fewer would admit. This is Truth barred from the history books--- or as Marino would put it, the Red, White and Screwed. Could cause nausea, night sweats and loss of appetite. Void where prohibited.
Frank Gutch, Jr.
Available in US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Netherlands & Japan
BBQH BABY BOOMERS HEADQUARTERS MAGAZINE
This is the epitome of a boomer roadie book for the boomer roadie. It's funny, it's nostalgic, it's interesting. Route 66, fins, fuzzy dice, carhops. It's all there. This would be a great gift for the roadhead in your life.
