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I have never been one to make a lot of money and when I was growing up there was an understanding that things would stay this way for a while unless there was a drastic change in my life. In 2015, I left my job of 14 years realizing things would never improve in the profession I was in. I found a new job that didn’t pay any better than my old one and I started to look at my life in a different way.
I always had a fascination with old technology and my girlfriend introduced me to typewriters the first Christmas we were together. As a writer, I was almost ashamed to admit I had never worked on one thinking that computers were the standard tool of the trade. I picked up an old Smith Corona desktop for a few dollars, built during WWII, that needed a bit of work. Once I had it running I learned two things, I knew how to fix them and they were better to write on. The technology, even with hundreds of moving parts, was fairly simple and the parts rarely broke. Dust, age, and mishandling were the issues many of these faithful machines saw and easy to take care of. As for the writing, I noticed that when you couldn’t question your previous words the writer was forced to continue and eventually rewrite his thoughts in a later draft.
Coming across more typewriters, I picked them up for a few dollars apiece and sold them to other people interested in this old writing tool. This led me to question what else was missing from my life because of modern technology?
As a younger man, I always enjoyed smoking a pipe. The calming act of taking a few minutes for self-reflection reduced my stress and gave me a few moments to ponder things in my life or projects I was working on. With pipe smoking becoming a dying art, it was easy to find pipes in good condition at estate sales and antique shops for no more than $5. Thanks to YouTube I quickly learned how to repair and refurbish pipes for my own use and for others that were thinking of taking up the hobby.
Living in a disposable world I was surprised at all the items made decades ago that still functioned as if they had just come from the factory. The world used to be a relaxing place, one where a man could sit down and enjoying the days of his life without constantly being distracted by his television or cell phone.
During a visit to an estate sale warehouse, I picking up an old stereo with a turn table, cassette player, and radio for $12. Every month I receive a catalog from the Great Courses and flip through it wishing I had the money to learn something new in my own time. In our disposable world, I found several dozen of these classes being sold at a local shop for a few dollars because they were on cassette tape or VHS. Yes, I still own a VCR.
At thirty-seven years of age I started taking this hobby of repairing old technology seriously and while the rest of world was moving to digital I was surprised to find how much of it was still the same it has been for the last hundred years. There isn’t much difference in building maintenance, plumbing hasn’t changed, everyday tools are made of the same components except for plastic parts covering the body, and most people are too afraid to take them apart in order to fix them.
While I was content in my new job, my girlfriend knew I wasn’t really happy with it. She came across a posting for a maintenance position and noticed almost everything listed in the description were things I knew how to do. I applied for it and the manager was impressed with my side hobbies. A few weeks later I was offered the position and took it. Along with the new job was a substantial pay increase, great benefits, and a sense of security realizing that fewer people these days knew how to complete these older tasks. I haven’t fixed a typewriter at work, yet, but those skills of troubleshooting a problem and looking at the big picture came in handy figuring out why a light fixture was no longer working or what part of a sink was malfunctioning. What had been a hobby translated into a new job and a sense of job security I did not have before.
While the world pushes forward with new technology and faster pace of living it relies on an old foundation to keep things running and it needs people who know how to fix that foundation to keep moving ahead. People replace their laptops every couple of years, but I have met people that worked on the same manual typewriter for 50 years and only had to oil a few gears and change out the ribbon. While we can wonder at the things an iPad can do I have to question the quality of the items people are spending their money on. I own a pocket watch that was built in 1873 and keeps time just as well as my phone. I don’t have to worry about my current writing project being lost if my computer decides to die on me in the middle of writing it. As for my pipes, finding a new one and fixing it up cost less than a pack of cigarettes (which I never tried or enjoyed) and the tobacco smells better than those weird electronic vapor whatchamacallits. I don’t have to worry about losing a hard drive of music or lectures I had been listening to. When my internet goes down I can take a record out and place it on the turntable. I know all of this might sound corny and the term hipster will likely pop up in the comments and that is okay. Slowing down, enjoying my day, and creating something of quality, I find, has a better appeal to it than buying the latest gadget or doohickey.
There was a time in our country when we took pride in what we were doing and how we did it. Perhaps, if we sat down, lit a pipe, considered what we really enjoyed doing with the short time we have on this planet, the world over all could be a better place. I admit there are some benefits to the fast-paced world we are quickly moving into. It would appear that we can do more and feel like we can have a more fulfilling life moving all the time. Sitting at my typewriter, I have been learning that doing a few things to the best of my ability feels more fulfilling than pumping out a large amount of mediocre crap. There was a time when a man’s craft was his art and everything in his life was an artform. These days I learn how to pack my pipe, the best way to form a sentence, applying to right amount of oil to a gear, or wiping the dust from a record. Everything has its way and while all of this can be found on google there doesn’t appear to be much interest in learning how to live. When you find what you enjoy doing everything else starts to fall into place.
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Photo: Provided by Author