A Type of Love Lost

If you ever used a typewriter, you know what I'm talking about.

Once a useful tool of secretaries (old fashioned word for office manager or admin), crime novelists and newspaper reporters, the typewriter has become an antique of the analog age. BD, before digital.

Besides pounding out sentences, the typewriter made beautiful music --- tap-tap-tap-ring, throw carriage back to left margin with a bang, continue typing next line. The typist operated the desk-top machine through pure hand and finger power. No batteries required. A beautiful relay of mind to fingers to paper.

Remember paper?

The typewriter served as printer, too. Known has “hard copy” to wordsmiths of lore.

Esther Walker, who ran the Women's Pages for the San Jose Mercury News from 1958-1984, typed her notes on 3 x 5 file cards, single-spaced, filling the entire white-colored cards with correctly spelled words summarizing next Saturday’s Women’s section.

As a wide-eyed novice placed in my first "career" employment at said newspaper, I was hired to write promotions about upcoming sections and stories and further plug our ginormous classified section, the largest in the U.S., or so I was informed. The classifieds contained as many pages as the big fat phone book. These ads were the newspaper's bread and butter during a period of rapid growth in Santa Clara Valley.

Esther was typically in her cups by the time I caught up with her, following the midday, after-deadline break during the era of the three-martini lunch. A peek around the newsroom revealed many a glassy-eyed reporter and several red, bulbous-nosed editors. They were consummate professionals performing the worthy task of informing the public of the news of the day. And they took their work seriously.

Face to face with Esther was like looking into a crystal ball whose depth was far beyond me. Her hair perfectly coiffed in a wavy bubble. She remained precise in every aspect. And I feared her. I imagined all the women writers in her department did, too. A man wouldn't have stood a chance. 

I would hustle back to my typewriter and compose three paragraphs plugging her pages. This short promo appeared at the bottom corner of the front page. I had my own front page box.

Women’s Pages have gone the way of the typewriter, archaic, as well as mysoginist. That section of today’s newspaper (mostly read online) is called Style, Living, or if you’re reading the Wall Street Journal, Off Duty, which would be an insult to the women who worked so hard to put the pages together. They were on duty, especially under Esther, who won accolades for her informative section.

Esther's editorial extravaganza was covering Paris Fashion Week, the famed semiannual expo, on the publisher's dime, bringing the very latest styles and trends to the metropolitan readers of greater San Jose when it was still considered an agrarian region of prune-pickers. Here is where she shone and won awards for her exceptional fashion coverage.

Across the clattering newsroom of reporters, copyeditors and illustrators sat metro reporter Jim Choate, a formidable Hemingway-esque fellow, loud and hirsute. A natural spinner of yarns, Jim was particularly known for his impersonation of actor Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan.  

It was the classic heartfelt scene in which he tells his brother, played by Rod Steiger, how he could have been a contender in the boxing ring, but instead took a fall for the man, "It was you, Charlie..."

Choate had memorized every word which he delivered with poetic drama. I'd seen him do it at the bar over on Taylor Street in Japan Town by the railroad tracks where the guys liked to go for lunch. Martinis were served in milk-shake glasses. 

When the computer monitor was introduced to the newsroom to replace the typewriter (circa 1975), Choate grabbed the ugly smooth-coated machine, lifted and hurled it across the floor, creating a hush that nearly stopped the presses. This is according to reliable sources. I was not there.

I view the replacement of the typewriter by the computer as the line of demarcation, and Jim Choate's irreverent reaction the last hurrah.

I hung on to the manual typewriter as long as I could. I left the Mercury News in September of 1972 with Tom Graham, because we refused to cut our hair. As a promotion writers, we were considered tools of management, which was still operating according to a dated conservative ma-and-pa posture. I took a position as Information Officer for the San Jose Unified School District under supervision of Jerry Weltzin. We got along swell.  By then I had a full beard as well shoulder length hair. 

In that role I edited the district's monthly newsletter, a four-page publication for which I wrote stories about special teachers and classrooms and other district news. I reported summaries of public school board meetings for distribution throughout the district. I enjoyed composing the newsletter but not sitting through tedious board meetings. I discovered I would not make a good city-beat reporter.

I was given a Minolta SLR camera for shooting photographs. A Selectric Typewriter became my writing tool, a plug-in electric machine. I loved the camera but hated the Selectric. Writing with it didn't feel right. It lacked the tactile connection of hitting one key for each impression on paper. The music was gone. Despite my expressed reluctance, I was urged to go electric.

Skipping ahead, when I was introduced to a computer monitor in 1979 as editor for Santa Cruz Publishing, I balked, but never threw it on the floor. 

Under publisher Lee May, we produced two periodicals — a weekly newspaper for the senior community (Santa Cruz was an affordable retirement enclave) and the Visitor’s Guide, a colorful account of local doings and culture. We created specialty issues -- soup to nuts -- including Bay Monthly, the Christmas Guide and Diner. Our young staff had fun doing what we loved. Our offices were located in a house on Porter Street in Soquel.

As writing gigs became ever more scarce due to changing times and buyouts, I hit the freelance market.  I wrote stories for the Mercury News Adventure Section, edited by Jody Meacham, an easy man to work with. I stopped by the plant one afternoon hoping to meet him, since our correspondence had only been by snail mail and telephone. It was the same building where I had been employed years before, yet once inside I was faced with cubicles and deafening silence.

The music of clacking typewriters and vocal chatter had vanished. The lighting was dark, cave-like. Jody wasn't in that day. It was pretty much of a bust all the way around. Today that same building, once a modern newspaper plant built in the late Sixties, houses a Silicon Valley company from China called Super Micro. 

Silicon chips had officially replaced the typewriter and the alfalfa field across the street had been plowed under for one of many cube farms that had sprouted throughout the valley.

Note: While composing this piece, I Googled "Esther Walker San Jose Mercury News." I was curious about what I might find, and I did locate a page devoted to her. Esther is no longer with us, but a trove of her stories, notes, expense reports, etc. are available through an archival portal. I was amazed by her diligence to save everything, but not surprised. Due to my lack of wanting to produce a password, etc. etc. I chose not to go any further, preferring to simply recall through memory her precisely typed, single-spaced 3 x 5 cards with everything I needed to know.

I write this blog on a MacBook Air laptop, which I appreciate for its portability. I can write just about anywhere without disturbing anyone. I have a world of digital images and dictionary at my fingertips. The price we pay for this convenience is that everything we write, say or do is surveilled by our phones and computers and can be used for or against us*.

I get a warm cozy feeling when I recall my noisy Smith-Corona.

*Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley copyright 2023.