It was a heavy black cast-iron thing, the typewriter. The outside texture of it was rough on the skin. The keys, tiny metal saucers perched on thin metal legs, wiggled back and forth under the pressure of the finger before being forcefully plunged down to create a character on the paper in "the return" as the rolling pin type device was called. The mark left on the paper was not just the ink impression of the metal letter against the ribbon, but often an indentation of the letter itself. The period key gave the paper the appearance of having been poked by a dull sewing needle. Held up to the light, a microscopic hole could be seen at the end of every sentence. And the ribbons! What an unholy mess they created on the fingertips (and from the fingertips to the paper itself!)! We would rewind the ribbon way too many times rather than replace it. Eventually the type would become unreadable but for the indentations left by the hard metal keys, more like miniature hieroglyphics, and just as understandable. And mistakes! Mistakes could mean starting all over if it was an important document. Imagine making a mistake in the last sentence of a page-long treatise!
Eventually, electric typewriters came along. They had the tiniest little hum and you could feel the power vibrating the machine. You didn't need to bang on the keys of an electric model, the slightest touch would set them off. Consequently, the type on the page seemed smoother and no tiny pinhole-periods. We never had an electric model at home, but at the office the ribbons were never part of my particular job description. They eventually even had a correcting ribbon that put white ink over the mistaken letters. It was practically a miracle, as was "white-out" the thick white fluid used to cover up mistakes. Dispensed with the tiniest brush ever, I felt like an artist touching up the canvas of my literary masterpieces.
Still, when I was younger, it was more common to correspond with family and friends with hand written letters. My cursive was much neater then. It was always a delight to receive a letter in the mail and I admit that I kept many of the letters I have received over the years. In the summers of my 16th and 17th year I took a job in Colorado. I would receive mail from my mom and grandma and a few friends. They were treasures from home. My mom always ended her letters, "Love, Mom" and then she would draw a quick star inside a circle (okay, a pentagram, weird, I know, but I don't think it was intended as such) which was like her personal logo.
My grandmother, a short little Italian woman, loved to talk about what was happening in her garden. She once wrote "I picked a zucchini today, it was THIS big!" She didn't say how big it was in the letter itself but in my mind's eye I saw her holding out her hands and I knew exactly how big it was! And I wrote letters back. They were short but newsy things, what I had seen, what I had done, they started in the typical how-are-you-I-am-fine kind of way.
I think part of the value of getting a letter and letter-writing was that it took a week or more to send a letter and get one back between California and Colorado. Calling on the telephone was much too costly back then. Calling "long distance" was about the equivalent of calling the moon, it would be reserved for emergencies only. All other news, happy, sad or indifferent, could be written down and be served up by the U.S. Postal Service, all in good time. Consequently, news from home came ONLY in letter form and so each was relished for what it was, a small, scribbled, slice of home.
Even though I miss the intimacy of the handwritten letter, I don't mind one bit the technological changes that allow us to communicate more directly and at lightning fast speeds. When my oldest son was in China, it was comforting to know that we could communicate instantly by texting or instant messaging. And I have saved his descriptive emails as though they were handwritten letters. I am as much in touch with him now that he lives only 400 miles away as I am with my youngest son who lives just 10 miles away. But one drawback to these electronically charged communications is that we no longer see the distinctive scrawl of our loved ones. I can't (yet) electronically sketch a pentagram-type personal logo like my mom once did (each one different yet each one the same) on any email I send out. The emails may seem hand written, just, minus the hand. But whether they were hand written, or banged out on an old cast iron typewriter, tapped out on a plastic keyboard or deftly touched on a hand-held screen I really think it is the words we crave from the people we love and miss and would sit and talk with, if they were right in front of us.
Tim Bulone is an ardent observer of life on the swirling blue marble. He works at Davis Group Consulting and creates fine art and canvas prints which he likes to sell from time to time at http://www.MyFamilyArt.com He is an early morning pedestrian in Belmont Shore, where he resides with his wife and a variety of mostly imaginary pets.