True to Type

I've been reading H.L. Mencken's A Choice of Days, selections from his autobiography that deal with his early adult life, culminating with his work as reporter and later city editor of the Baltimore Sun. Engaging, clever, sometimes painfully casually racist, but all in all a good read. But what I am most taken by at the moment is the cover photo of him as a young man, at a desk, corncob pipe in one hand, a stack of typed paper to one side of an old-fashioned typewriter, with his other hand poised above the keys.
Reminds me of a chapter of my own days, when I was briefly the general news reporter for a small but venerable weekly newspaper out in western Nebraska. I had a desk with a manual typewriter, and I used it for all my stories. Crank the paper in, start typing, try to keep the keys from locking up, sometimes X-ing out errors and so on, slogging and writing. It never occurred to me that there might be an easier way. I'd turn my stories in to the editor, he'd read them, make some changes in writing, let me look it over, then we'd send it back to the typesetter. At least she did not do the old-fashioned actual lead type-setting, she did have a sort of massive word-processing machine. But the chief printer was also the typesetter for ads, and he did do manual typesetting.
Then on Wednesday evening into the late hours he would run the presses, and we would help load the raw paper and stack the output, every once in awhile the head printer reviewing a random copy to be sure the ink was still dark enough. Then we'd drive around town and fill the newspaper boxes, and the outstate copies would go to the post office.
How long ago that was, though it must seem even longer ago to Millennials and beyond.
I left that job because I couldn't live on $125 a week, with no benefits. But I still miss it, manual typewriter and all.
Flash forward a few years, after I graduated from law school and had my first job, as law clerk to a federal judge. He was in his late 80s, a senior judge with a reduced docket, and a secretary not a whole lot younger who had been with him throughout his legal career. When I showed up all spiffed and ready to go, she looked askance at me. She pointed to my office and said, "I don't do typing for law clerks. And your typewriter is broken." So my first month or so, until she warmed to me, I spent writing out my memos and draft opinions by hand on yellow legal pads. Bottom line: I sure missed that old manual typewriter out west.
Eventually all the judge's offices and clerks got word processors (nascent computers, but then there was no internet) and I became adept with that. And I moved on and up the digital ladder, so these days I am quite nimble with my Microsoft word.
But at least I have a memory of that old manual typewriter, and I miss it. Or maybe I just miss the me I was back then, in the technological dark ages.