Who still owns a typewriter?

[Phenix]

The ability to type made my boot camp a breeze. I spent all of my time in the Batallion office while my buddies were marching in the Orlando sun. Our Bat commander was a WO taking classes to advance. One day he gave me some of his homework to type up. This guy was even worse in English than I was. When I got the papers, I timidly knocked on his door and asked if he wanted me to correct the grammar and spelling. He bowed up at first, then, on reflection, he gave me his school work to do, not just type. I was pretty much relieved of all of the normal boot camp experience.

Hell, I was probably promoted to to Ensign before I got out of boot camp!

That's a great story.
When I was in Army Officer Candidate School ( which was a mostly miserable high-stress sleep deprived harassment program) with a 60% washout rate my hut mates noticed early on that I was somewhat of a whiz at cleaning M-16 rifles so quickly and thoroughly that the Cadre could find nothing to gig me on during the almost daily inspections like they did on everyone's rifles and all our other stuff. When they found anything wrong ( and they almost always did) what followed was screaming, yelling, cursing, and ripping our beds and uniform displays apart and throwing our stuff on the floor, out the windows, and up in the rafters. Then we only got an hour or less to make everything right again for a remedial inspection, which was basically impossible due to the short timeo allowed; followed by more yelling and other unpleasantness.
Often these fun and games were still going on until midnight.
After a couple of weeks my squad mates offered me a deal-if I would clean all their rifles, they would pitch in and keep my boots and shoes polished, sweep the floor in my area, make up my bunk and press my uniforms to the highest standards as required by the TAC Officers who ruled over us. I took them up on it and it all worked out great.
I believe I got the better part of the deal.
And I graduated.

 

[Turn4811]

I have a Blickensderfer portable typewriter with a 1943 manufacture date. Blickensdefer had one client, the US Navy. Back in the late 80's I worked as a typewriter repair tech. A lady dropped it by the shop where it needed a good cleaning and lube as keys were starting to lock up. I had about 6 hours of labor and we had quoted a flat rate. She never came to pick it up. After 6 months I gave my boss $20 for it. If I ink it up it still works.

 

[65-2x2]

That's a great story.
When I was in Army Officer Candidate School ( which was a mostly miserable high-stress sleep deprived harassment program) with a 60% washout rate my hut mates noticed early on that I was somewhat of a whiz at cleaning M-16 rifles so quickly and thoroughly that the Cadre could find nothing to gig me on during the almost daily inspections like they did on everyone's rifles and all our other stuff. When they found anything wrong ( and they almost always did) what followed was screaming, yelling, cursing, and ripping our beds and uniform displays apart and throwing our stuff on the floor, out the windows, and up in the rafters. Then we only got an hour or less to make everything right again for a remedial inspection, which was basically impossible due to the short timeo allowed; followed by more yelling and other unpleasantness.
Often these fun and games were still going on until midnight.
After a couple of weeks my squad mates offered me a deal-if I would clean all their rifles, they would pitch in and keep my boots and shoes polished, sweep the floor in my area, make up my bunk and press my uniforms to the highest standards as required by the TAC Officers who ruled over us. I took them up on it and it all worked out great.
I believe I got the better part of the deal.
And I graduated.

That was similar to my situation. They offered me OCS but it came with a six year enlistment so I turned them down. Then they offered Nuclear Power School, which I also turned down for the same reason. I just wanted to do my time, avoid the war in Vietnam, and start my life as an adult.

In our boot camp, we were restricted to going to the exchange as a group and only allowed to buy stuff like tooth brushes or shaving cream, shoe polish, etc. The bat commander would send me to buy him cigarettes and I would load up on candy, newspaper and magazines, things that just weren't available to the rest of my company and stash it in the Bat office. After the regular officers and enlisted men went home for the evening, I would take the stuff up stairs to my company and give it away. The other guys kept my locker tip-top. It was not a pay to play, but a general spirit of cooperation against the "man." I was caught laughing at one of my company mates who was doing some punishment routine in front of the batallion and they told me to go get my piece (rifle) and I didn't know which one was mine. I came out of boot camp not knowing a damn thing that I should have learned.

 

[DWalt]

I have a portable manual, two color ribbon. I forget the make. Still works. Haven't needed it lately. Fits in a little case to lug around. Maybe I'll grow a man-bun, buy some skinny jeans, and a pork pie hat, park myself in front of a coffee shop and offer to write people poems.

Nah…

I could do 40wpm on what we called a "mill". A manual typewriter on 3 carbon copies and damn it, it better look good. Typing was an immediately endearing skill in police work.

I can still hear the sound of a typing pool of about 50 Seelectrics sounding like machine gun fire when the elevator doors opened.

Back in the early 1980s I was working for an unnamed federal agency. We had one of the earlý dedicated word processors with a large impact printer. Talk about sounding like a machine gun, that printer did. It had to be mounted inside a sound insulated cabinet because it was so loud. We had one clerk who was the only one authorized to use that word processor, and the only one who knew how. I remember document storage was on huge floppy discs, about 8".

 

[YeshuaIsa53]

No typewriter, but my Father was a typesetter until they stop using the printers.

Isn't a keyboard and a screen, combined with a printer, similar to a typewriter?

 

[rockquarry]

My wife still has a manual (can't remember the make) that her daddy gave her when she was a senior in high school (1966). I think it works fine, but finding replacement ribbons might be tough today.