One opportunity lost, but another appeared!

I’m still lamenting the loss of that small Royal Model P to the key-chopper lady. I really can’t be angry with the shop owner, since he’s in business to turn over merchandise and earn a profit. He was indifferent to the fate of the Royal, thinking a sale is a sale, and I really do understand that. I did get him to promise that he would call me first when he got typewriters in the store. Whether he will or not remains to be seen. It isn’t as if I have a “collection” of machines or even that I know a lot about typewriters. I only own three so far. The two ancient Remingtons, a Model 10 and a Model 17, that came from great-grandparent’s attic and my little Brother Charger 11 that I bought on eBay for under twenty Dollars. The Charger is the one I have here at college.  It took a lot of cleaning to get the Brother looking nice. It was filled with white greasy dust from the correction ribbon. I installed a standard black/red one instead.

It’s very strange how these pieces of old technology can get under your skin. Perhaps I’m over-imaginative, but sometimes I find myself wondering about the previous owners, or where the machines were and how they might have been used. I know from whence came the two Remingtons, and the offices from which they came, and how they were used since they were and always have been, family machines.  

With Mother’s Day approaching, Wayne and I decided to check out the local antique, thrift, “fynne junque,” and plain junk shops. Wayne’s mom collects things called nanny pins which are broaches that have small cylinders as part of the design, and these cylinders contain pins, needles and small amounts of thread. Apparently, in the days when people had nannies, the nannies sometimes needed to make flying repairs on the clothing of their small charges. Had I a nanny, she would have been a busy woman indeed. We didn’t find a nanny pin but I did find two pieces of silver flatware in our family pattern that I know my Mom will appreciate.

Then, in a shop I would least expect to see one, there was an old Royal sitting on the floor! Wayne looked at my face and said, “Dude, you look like Lucas Till just asked you out on a date! Buy the thing!” So I did. For forty Dollars. I’m not experienced enough to know if that was too much or not. But as Oscar Wilde said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”

The lady in the shop was very honest and told me “It doesn’t work at all. None of the keys work except the spacer thing.” I borrowed her small shop vacuum and got the major dirt and dust and cobwebs off the machine, and tested everything I could think to test, and with the exception of the keys, everything seemed to operate. The “bongo tops” were still there, although the right one is missing it’s lip catch, and it still has original Royal metal ribbon spools. The ribbon is toast. Literally. It’s crispy! The sector is grungy looking but not rusty, and I’m thinking the key problem is that the machine may have been over-lubricated and is just gummy. I can lift the key heads and the keys depress with the movement, but the heads won’t fall back into place, and everything is very stiff.  I smell denatured alcohol in my future.

The really cool thing is, the lady knew the provenance of the machine! It came from the estate sale of a lady in the area, and her husband had worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a switch tower operator. I got the phone number of the daughter who liquidated the estate and she told me her dad bought the machine from the railroad company when “CTC” was installed and switch tower functions were made obsolete. She had used the machine in high school and then it had been “in the shed for thirty years at least.”  I did the math and I’m betting the Royal has been out of service for closer to fifty years.

So here are some pictures, pre-amateur-restoration. Just dusted off and blown out. My fourth typewriter!

ROYAL MODEL KHM
Serial number KHM2163670
1937








 

Last edited by The Cabin Boy (21-4-2015 09:16:48)