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My Sophomore year, in our little farming community I took a year of typing. Most guys didn't bother because that was something a secretary needed to learn, not a farmer. Since I was neither raised on a farm, nor had any intention of going into farming I took the class. We didn't have hundreds of different classes from which to choose, and I was down to a choice between Typing or Agriculture. I knew I would never need to be able to identify a Spotted Pollen China hog, nor judge which was the superior between two seemingly identical cows, but I thought some day I might like to know how to type. Boy was that a good guess.

After that one year of classes I didn't have an opportunity to touch a typewriter for more than ten years, then a friend gave me an old typewriter he'd picked up somewhere. It was a classic. A 1901 Underwood with a metal frame and no side covers (see picture). You could look at the workings from any angle, and being a manual machine it was great for venting your frustrations on paper. You could stand up, lean forward for leverage, and just beat the hell out of the keys and it went right on typing. Of course you were punching holes through the paper when you typed a period or comma, and some times there was a circle missing out of the paper where the center of the "O" should have been, but it was built durable. It's demise came not from frustrated abuse, but from rust as the result of a leaky roof in the building where it was stored.

Typing served me well when I had my own print shop and did the typesetting, was writing for some magazines, corresponded with several people around the world, and today playing on the computer. My old Underwood had been replaced with an electric typewriter, later replaced by an electronic typewriter, then the computer about ten years ago. I still can't identify a Spotted Pollen China hog, but I can type.