Pretty

Sir Butch Dalisay blogs about his latest find, A 1922 Corona typewriter, in "Tribute To A Typewriter". You know how enamored I am myself with these machines, so I can truly appreciate Sir Butch's purchase. An excerpt:

This one in San Francisco was truly special, both in its design and its condition. It was a Corona portable, still in its open carrying case, which also contained the original manual and cleaning accessories. It had been well used, as the indentations of thousands of keystrokes on the platen or hard rubber roller testified, but it had also been very well kept. The black enamel gleamed on the machine; its stainless steel ribs and ligaments were bright and fragrant with oil; a perfect decal marked the paper table behind the platen, the roseate glow behind the white dove still intense despite its age.

I was smitten, but like a young man stricken by but slightly dubious of overwhelming pulchritude, I had to move and look away for a while, and I spent the next hour reconnoitering the stalls and shelves, trying to interest myself in this old leather bag and that old book, my restlessness mounting by the minute. I found and picked up a Parker 51 Vacumatic pen in near-mint condition, a steal at $10, but even that failed to stop the quickening that I felt every time I glanced in the direction of the Corona, just to make sure it was still there, and still no one else’s.

Finally I could resist no longer and returned to the manager’s counter. I asked him if I could handle the machine. “This just came in,” he said, smelling a sale. “You’re only the second one to ask.” He fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter; I pecked out some letters: “The quick brown fox….” They all came out crisply, and something in me groaned. Perhaps I had been hoping that something would go horribly wrong—like the letters would come out broken, like buck teeth, or not register at all. This one even had a fresh ribbon—and the ribbon reverse worked. I sighed in surrender and asked, hoarse with hopelessness, “How much?”