Bearing Witness

About 20 years ago, I bought a Remington Deluxe Model 5 at a flea market for $6. I have long considered it an object of beauty, and it has been on display in my living room, but I never tried to type with it, as the 80-year old ribbon had long given up the ghost.

In these strange times that we find ourselves in, I woke up one morning and decided that I wanted to be able to use my typewriter. While you can no longer buy ribbons that fit this particular model, further digging suggested that I could buy any standard 1/2″ ribbon, and then just rewind the ribbon on my existing spools. It warned that it could be a messy process, and they were not wrong. I ended up looking like someone who had just given his inky fingerprints, in order to be eliminated from a police enquiry.

Once I started typing, I very quickly learned that all was not well with my typewriter. Although in pretty good condition over all, the type for the letter “u” was missing, and if I tried to use it, I’d get a smudged ‘|’ from the type bar.

Undeterred by this set back, I determined to be creative in avoiding the letter ‘u’ in anything I wrote. Repeat after me, everyone – ‘synonyms are your friends’. After I’d posted a n image of my writings typings on Instagram, my daughter informed me what I’d posted was a lipogram, which according to Wikipedia is ‘a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided’.

So, as we countdown to the 2020 US presidential election, when hopefully we’ll see dignity, decorum and decency restored to the White House, here is a little something that I penned keyed about the current incumbent.

© 2020 Robert Ford