Between the ages of about eight to ten years old I stayed with my grandparents during the summers while Mother took graduate Spanish courses in Mexico.  Farm life was quieter since Granddad had retired. He had a large aluminum sided garage/barn full of interesting old equipment and an assortment of previously important items.  While rummaging there I discovered an old, very large typewriter.  Sitting on a back shelf, it was obvious it had not been used in many years. I was intrigued.  

I also found an old copy of a touch typing instruction manual.  It was hard backed and the pages flipped from bottom to top so that it could stand upright on the desk, beside the typewriter. I began using the keyboard page to learn the proper finger placement.  There were drills in the book to practice moving your fingers about the board in a systematic manner, such as d-e-d, k-i-k, f-v-f, and so on.  Over the summer I practiced and practiced those drills on the picture, even stretching my long fingers up to the number row.  At some point my grandfather let me try out the old typewriter.

After my mother returned from Mexico, she allowed me to use her more "modern" portable Royal typewriter to practice.  It was made to lock securely into a black hard covered case.  The machine could be unlocked and lifted out of the case bottom to be set on a desk or table. The Royal ribbon invention was quite practical.  There was a special knob that allowed you to switch from the upper level of ribbon to the lower level - the whole width of which was about 1/2".  Being able to type on both rows of ribbon meant you didn't have to change ribbons as often.   I was thrilled to use this typewriter, especially when we had ribbon that was half black ink and half red ink. I became quite good at touch typing and my speed picked up. Sometimes I practiced with my eyes closed, as the instruction manual suggested.  Mother had me repeat typing, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" and the pangram (all 26 letters of the alphabet) "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

When electives were available in junior high school, my mother encouraged me to take typing.  She felt it would be invaluable for college.  Our typewriters were newer than Mother's Royal, but they were still manual, requiring you to sweep the return bar from right to left when you finished a line of typing.  As you typed near to the end of a line, a bell tinkled to let you know you were running out of space.  Since I was already familiar with typing, I won many of the speed drills.  The teacher would have us turn to a specific page in the manual.  She would start a 1 or 2 minute timer.  We typed from the book as fast as we could, trying not to make mistakes because at the end we had to deduct the mistakes from our overall time.  

My first paying job was as a clerk over the summer break in my Junior year.  I was able to work at State Farm Insurance in their Employee Child Program, thanks to my dad. I had my own desk and files were routed to me for proofing and sorting.  It was a great experience that helped me get my foot in the door for a job after high school. I had to take a speed test to be placed as a typist, and did well. Those new employees that could not type worked as file clerks. I was a dictaphone typist using an electric typewriter, working for one year to save money for college.  Transcribing from a dictaphone took a little practice.  The underwriters would dictate letters into their machines which recorded on bright blue plastic "dictabelts." They dropped the belts off at my desk, and I listened to the recordings with headphones. Using foot pedal controls, I could go forward, backwards, slow, or fast to complete the typing.  Most were letters to policy holders, making multiple copies on thin carbon-ready paper.  If you made a mistake, you had to correct the top white copy (we had Correction Paper) AND erase all the carbon copies.  Note: we did not have much access to xeroxing at this time which is why all the carbon copies were required. Sometimes it was easier to just start over if there were several mistakes but it seemed a terrible thing to waste all those layers of paper and carbon.  There was one underwriter who had a thick Southern accent and he spoke really fast.  It was quite difficult to understand him, and on more than one occasion I would have a letter completely painstakingly done and at the end of the recording he would say, "cancel this letter!"

In high school I also took Shorthand.  We learned Gregg shorthand which was a combination of commas and straight lines, each stroke representing an English sound or word.  There were timed drills just as in typing class.  The teacher would dictate a letter and afterwards we would have to type out what we had sketched.  There were many blank spaces for those symbols we couldn't read or for words we missed.  I never really used shorthand in college or in any of my secretarial jobs. But it was fun to learn, like knowing a secret code.

On summer breaks from college I returned home and worked as an office Temp travelling to fill in at various businesses for short periods of time.  It was a challenge to step into an office without knowing the people or routine, only to just about get it figured out when I would have to move on to another place.  Three longer term positions were at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Maxwell House Coffee Plant, and Avis Rent-A-Car at the airport.  All the jobs required some typing, so I was grateful to have that skill. 

Typing did prove to be necessary during college, especially grad school, for the many research papers my husband and I had to complete.  I had purchased an old Royal typewriter in a hard cover case because it reminded me of Mother's first machine.  I still have it, and let my children play with it when they were young. Later we upgraded to an electric typewriter with built in correction tape. But really, imagine having to complete a 30 page or so paper without a computer or Word program!  If you wanted to change the order of your paragraphs or make edits or additions, you would have to start typing all over.  We had to plan ahead for the space required at the bottom of the pages for footnotes as well. Many late nights were spent getting those papers done, beginning with hand written drafts.  Those two old typewriters haven't been used in over 10 years and are stacked away in the garage.  Just can't part with them yet.

On a sad note, Mother's old machine was stolen by a drifter. She and Daddy had taken him in and set him up in my grandmother's older vacant home, feeling they were doing a good deed finding odd jobs for him.  The drifter soon vanished taking several items, including the typewriter. That old model had served my mother well for her own college papers, letters, forms, and church programs and lessons.  In her later years she was able to adapt to a computer fairly easily because of her excellent typing skills.  

Do you have typing or shorthand memories?

                                     "Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works."  Titus 2:7

My first memory of a washing machine was the round wringer tub on my grandparents' porch. My grandfather had set up a cold water connection for the machine and made an opening from the porch to the back yard for the drainage tube.  Grandmother had to boil water and add it to the tub along with Ivory Snow soap flakes or Tide detergent. This "modern" electric machine then swished and swirled the clothes, drained the water, and filled with cold rinse water.  I loved being able to help roll the clothes between the two wooden rolling pins to squeeze out the excess water.  This was necessary because the washer did not have a spin cycle (notice the open top.) If you put items in all bunched up or you didn't adjust the space between the rollers, you could break a button or two.  We would carry the wet clothes to hang on the outdoor line in the hot Florida sunshine. The clothes smelled so fresh when we brought them in several hours later, but the towels and sheets seemed a bit stiff. We didn't have laundry softeners then and perhaps we didn't get all the soap out.  Laundry took a whole days work from the washing, to waiting for the drying, to the ironing. We ironed everything including the all-cotton sheets, linen tablecloths, men's handkerchiefs (my job), and sometimes underwear.

I was often responsible to hang and bring in the clothes.  Daddy cut slots in one end of long bamboo fishing poles in a way that the clotheslines could slip in.  This allowed us to adjust the height of the poles, lowering the line for hanging and raising the line for drying. Sheets and long pants would drag the ground if we didn't use the poles.  There were a few little hints or understood rules when hanging clothes: if you pinned the corners of two items together you could use less clothespins, but thick items needed to be hung singly or the overlapped areas would not dry as fast; sheets could be hung to dry more easily by using two lines with one side of the sheet on each line; unmentionables like underwear and bras were hung in the middle of our four lines so that the neighbors wouldn't see them.  

We had a cute little clothespin bag like this that hooked over the line.  It looked just like a little girls dress but there was a pouch behind the skirt.  We used wooden clip pins and because they were left out in the weather they sometimes got mildew and had to be replaced.

If it rained on wash day we had to cart all the wet clothes to the laundromat to dry them.  It was many years before we got a dryer that was placed on the back porch.  

Our irons were not steam irons so getting the wrinkles out required brute strength.  We sprinkled the clothes with water as we ironed them using a little spray spout that was attached to an old vinegar jar.  My mother hired a housekeeper for a few years, Palma Lee. She rode the bus from downtown to our house and worked on Saturdays doing the laundry and mopping the floors.  I used to enjoy following her around trying to help and especially liked to be around her when she ironed.  She always put a horizontal crease in the upper back of my dad's dress shirts, but I'm not sure why.

My dad wore dark green cotton uniforms to work that he liked to have ironed stiff with starch. Mother found a nifty invention called a Pant Stretcher that made ironing the pants easier.  You adjusted the long rectangular wire pieces to make the frames narrower and slipped them into the wet pants, twisting and adjusting until the metal sides were where you wanted the creases, down the center front of the pants. Then you pulled the frames out to stretch the pants until they were tight as a drum and hung the whole contraption on the line.  You had to do each pant leg separately.  It took some time, but they did work.

When I was young my mother washed my hair in our kitchen sink.  We cleared off the counter and I would lay down on towels with my head hanging over the sink.  Sometimes she used rainwater that we had collected in a big tin tub, to make my hair extra soft.  Mother liked to use lemon juice as a rinse because she said it kept my hair pale blonde.  Most of the time she had my hair cut as short as possible so that there wasn't much hair care involved.  My annual school pictures prove that the Pixie cut, made famous at the time by Audrey Hepburn from her movie debut in "Roman Holiday", was popular even in suburban Florida.   

One year when I was about nine my mother decided to have my hair permed at the downtown salon she visited.  My hair was short already, so the final outcome was almost like pin curls.  Just in case we might forget this special hairstyle, she took me to a professional photographer right afterwards for portraits.  Looking at those pictures now I just think, poor me. It was a cross between a little old lady and a poodle!  My baby doll and I almost had matching hair.

As I got older and cared for my hair myself, I was allowed to let it grow longer.  I tried bangs for awhile, but they were a constant annoyance.  In the late '50s and early '60s the flip was the rage. Everyone wanted to have the perfect flip similar to Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas or Jackie Kennedy. This required lots of preparation for most of us.  I chose various curlers to use, usually opting for the ones with clinging brushes inside.  They were held in with plastic picks that left dents in your scalp.  To get the flip to stay, there was green Dippity-Do styling goop which was applied on the wet hair ends before rolling.  My hair was thin and limp so the curl didn't last long.   I wasn't successful with teasing and didn't like the feel hairspray gave. This meant that if I wanted the flip every day, I had to roll it every night.   My hair dryer was the bonnet type which I often fell asleep wearing.  Later I had the portable hood dryer.  When my hair got really long in high school, I often used empty frozen orange juice cans for curling.