Ancient Machine Haunt My Memories

By Tom Morrow

  If there's one thing I can definitely say I learned in high school it was typing. Being able to type got me out of all sorts of nasty, boring details in the Navy, and it has provided me an exciting, mostly pleasant profession and decent living.
  I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't taken a semester of typing my junior year in high school. And, I had to talk my way into the class.
  "Typing is for girls who are planning on going into secretarial work," the teacher told me, with a certain edge to his voice. He thought I was trying to get out of something. Yes, I was -- Algebra. I cinched the entrance to the class by pointing that he knew how to type and he was a male. Someone way back when had to have given him the opportunity to learn how to type. He reluctantly admitted me, but restricted me to only one semester. That's all I needed..
  To give  you some idea of how long ago this was, our school had one (1) electric typewriter in the classroom room. All of the others were mechanical with no letters on the keys. You had to learn the keyboard -- no "hunt 'n' peck." And, to add insult to injury, no boy was allowed to use the electric machine -- only the very top of the class girls could use it.
  Had I known at the time that I would be going into journalism, I would have tried to talk my way into a short-hand class. Of course, anyone perusing my notes from interviews and news events would surmise that I used short-hand. If I waited more than one or two days even I had a hard time reading my chicken scratches.
  I had been in the newspaper business 10 years before I ever had the chance to use an electric typewriter. It was an IBM Selectric. It took me the better part of a month to learn that barely touching the keys would set off a bevy of letters onto the paper. This was at the old (now-defunct) Escondido Times-Advocate. The entire newsroom was equipped with these "modern" day tools -- almost exactly like the one in our high school typing room some 20 years earlier. After I had been there about a year, a strange-looking device was set at the editor's desk. It was a computer with a 12-inch screen. What was the world coming to? Newspapers will never be the same.
  Well, you know the rest -- today nearly every American and most people in the modern world use a keyboard. The educated one (those who took typing) can fly using the keys as they were meant, the greater population, however, just "hunts 'n' pecks" their way through Facebook, E-Mail, Twitter, and an occasional Blog.
  I'll leave you with one story from my ancient days of journalism.
  In 1977, I was bureau chief at the courthouse for a daily Orange County newspaper. There was a big fraud trial involving one of the County Supervisors, which drew a lot of attention from Los Angeles and Long Beach newspapers. One of the attending reporters was an old pro from the LA Herald-Examiner.
  I don't remember his name, but he must have been in his mid- to late-seventies. I was intrigued watching how he worked. He took very few notes. After the trial recessed for that first day, I asked him if he'd like to go to my office and use a typewriter. I had an extra one.
  "No," he replied. "I just need to use a telephone."
  Okay, now you know what's coming -- he dialed the phone and, (I swear he said it), "Give me re-write!" Pat O'Brien probably stole that line for "The Front Page."
  He started dictating his story in veteran fashion. It took him about seven or eight minutes, then he hung up and thanked me. "I'll see ya tomorrow," he said as he left.
  Curious, the next day I picked up a copy of the Herald-Examiner. As near as I can remember, the story read almost word-for-word as this old fella reported it. Later that day, I complimented him and thanked him for allowing me to witness, what, indeed, was a process of a by-gone era.
  "Heck, I ain't no writer," he scoffed. "I'm a reporter -- I report, I don't write!"

Stay tuned...