The culprit is the 2 foot power cord. This is Caputo.
Then, an opportunity arose to write a column for the Union Democratic Party on October 11th. Because that charging cord powered my old laptop for years. I’ve been writing a lot of copy on that laptop.
Without the code, there was little recourse. Immediately my old Mac turned off. The screen flashed and then went black. So what’s next?
Replacement power cords were not in stock at Staples or Walmart. So I ordered by mail, started waiting, and then weighed the remaining options.
1. Do you type copy on iPhone? I don’t think so. My fingers are too big and my phone is too small.
2. Do you type your stories on a typewriter?I have two classic Royals in my house, one of which is the “Chris Bateman Memorial Typewriter.” But none worked. More on that later.
3. Do it the old-fashioned way with a pen? At one point in my long life, my handwriting was legible and, dare I say, neat. No more: Over the years, my writing became indecipherable hieroglyphics, legible only to me, and sometimes even to myself.
My inability in all of the various strategies listed above can be traced back to elementary school.
My education began at St. Norbert’s, a Catholic elementary school in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Illinois, where I spent kindergarten, first, and second grade. Thanks to all the teachers and nuns, I have become good at printmaking.
However, in third grade, my parents transferred me to Greenbrier Elementary School, a public school much closer to home. I was happy with the move since virtually all of my friends had gone there.
The problem was that Mr. Greenbrier taught cursive in second grade, so I forgot about it and continued with printmaking. In junior high school, I was also able to take an elective class on typing. However, since I was planning to become a railway engineer, I didn’t feel the need and continued to block print term papers and homework assignments.
In college, almost all of my classmates owned and used typewriters. However, for reasons I’m not sure about, I stuck to printing. My English major’s term papers were as high-tech as medieval manuscripts. However, it was far less interesting than those manuscripts.
Inside an ancient three-hole binder are pages and pages of block-written essays dissecting Shakespeare, John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, Cotton Mather, Mark Twain, John Baldwin, and others. still remains. I look at them and think, “What was I thinking?”
But at the time, I didn’t care about that. Well, halfway through college, I gave up on my ambition to operate the throttle of a locomotive. Still, I had no idea what kind of adult I would become. But I was almost certain it didn’t use a typewriter.
Instead, I imagined that I was getting paid in a comfortable office in a high-rise building in a big city…well, I wasn’t sure about that at all.
Fast forward to graduating college with a bachelor’s degree in English, but that didn’t qualify me. So I joined the Peace Corps and was deployed to Afghanistan, where I taught English as a foreign language.
That’s how I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. This narrowed my very limited options for an English major to one: journalism. So in March 1973, I took a job at the Union-Democrat, even though I had little experience or knowledge as a newspaper reporter.
At 84 S. Washington St., I got my first typewriter. I believe it was a Royal Upright dating back to the early 1950s. I had to look at the keyboard to type and still made mistakes. Furthermore, when the story was completed, I used the pen to erase content, move sentences, add expressions in parentheses, and insert quotes and comments.
The typed copy I gave editor-in-chief Sally Scott was a mess. But Sally made some merciful deletions and corrections that made it half readable.
Occasionally, people outside of the journalism world would ask me how fast I could type. My constant answer is, “Only as fast as I can think, and not that fast.”
Within five years, I had become a slightly better typist and developed a fondness for the old Royal. That was when the Democratic Party moved to primitive computers.
I was like a stagecoach driver facing a Model T. I didn’t want to deal with a new computer with a dark screen and flickering green text. And back then, technology glitches were commonplace.
“It’s only a matter of time,” I told myself. “Management will see the light and we will get back to the typewriter.”
That didn’t happen. But my publisher, Harvey McGee, was aware of my decrepit proclivities, and a few years later he affixed a brass plaque to my old Royal that read “Christopher Bateman Memorial Typewriter.” Ta. “Dedicated June 12, 1981 in Sonora, California.”
Then you can take it home, Harvey said.
I hesitated and remained skeptical that the Democratic Party’s computer system, while improving, was still unstable. Instead, I suggested keeping an old, still-functioning typewriter in a strategic location with the instructions, “In case of emergency, break the glass.”
Harvey declined and our computers began to improve.
In the meantime, I saved my second typewriter. This was from the newspaper’s Washington Street basement. It was the green, much newer Royal of retired editor-in-chief Scott. One night, as she was raving about it in her Skyline Place apartment, I interrupted her.
“I know where that typewriter is,” I told her. “do you want?”
Yes, Scott answered. So I smuggled it out of the UD basement and brought it to her. She was so grateful, but I don’t think she typed a single word until she passed away in 2022. Her surviving family had no interest in Surrey Royal, so I took it home.
So I now have two ancient royals here on Yankee Hill. I soon discovered that neither of them worked: jammed keys, missing ribbons, and other glitches.
And who repairs typewriters these days? And how much??
Furthermore, even if I could find a repairman, I am not at all confident that I would be able to hammer out the pillars. And even if I had somehow done so, I’m sure editor-in-chief Alex MacLean wouldn’t have welcomed a typewritten article full of typos, strikethroughs, speech bubbles, and arrows. .
My other option is to print the columns manually.
I’ve done the same thing before. When my former college roommate and I traveled around the world in 1981 and 1982, we painstakingly hand-printed and shipped shipping invoices from Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Burma, Australia, and more. They returned to the Federal Democratic Party with rolls of black and white film that had not yet been developed.
Back in Sonora, my scribblings were entered into computers, the photographs developed, and my stories became “Our Man of Zambia,” “Our Man of Singapore,” “Our Man of New Zealand,” etc. It was published in the newspaper with the title. ” and “Our Man of Tahiti.”
I still don’t know how they pulled this off. Because in addition to my UD deployment, I was writing regularly to my parents, brother, and many friends during the expedition. And, at least for less than half my life, my handwriting was still legible.
No more. Like everyone else, I text and email now. Signing checks is all I still actually do by hand. And even my signature has become much more difficult to read over the years.
So, over 2,000 words typed out on an old Mac with a brand new power cord, this is the story of the column I missed.
Chris Bateman worked as a reporter, editor and columnist for the Union-Democrat for nearly 40 years. Although now semi-retired, he still writes columns on a variety of topics. Some of his past work can be viewed on The Union Democrat’s website, www.uniondemocrat.com. Contact him at chrisbateman1908@gmail.com.
