Here’s another bit of old technology I pulled out of a basement closet–the typewriters (and our briefcases) that John and I used when we were university students at BYU and beyond.  When I first arrived at BYU in the fall of 1977, no one had typewriters.  We had to hand write our papers and projects.  We used erasers to make corrections and we put lined papers under the sheet we wrote on to keep things straight.

A year or two into my college years, personal typewriters were sold to normal people like students.  We lugged these heavy machines around with us.  We used correction ribbons and White Out to fix mistakes.  We counted up from the bottom to know where to start our footnotes.  We became proficient typists.

I learned to type in a Reedley High typing class taught by Bro. Neil Frandsen.  We all took typing classes back then.  It was the future.  (Although shorthand was still taught.)

It wasn’t until I lived in Nigeria (1984-87) after graduating from BYU that I really became a good typist.  We took a big heavy electric typewriter with us that we used when we had generated power 2 hours each day.  The rest of the time, we used Mary Ellen’s little portable manual typewriter.  In that day, we kept a joint journal.  I dictated, she added, and did the typing.  Here’s what it looked like:

After she got sick and returned to the States, I had to do my own typing.  I determined to type my journal every single day to practice my typing.  It wasn’t long before my fingers started to fly.  I loved being able to type fast and capture more.  I’ve never looked back.

We only had one typewriter in Nigeria and we had limited electricity.  Our little team of humanitarian workers had to take turns using it to write our reports and type our journals, signing up for time slots.

Here’s a closer look at our beloved typewriters before sending them off to Deseret Industries.  Mine:

John’s:

It was a little hard to part with them.  Many words passed through these typewriter keys.  Next I will face our two slide projectors.  I’m not sure I can send both of them away yet.