Click, clack: Typewriter's sound endures

BERKELEY -- Maybe it's the way the letters smack against paper and the ink leaves an indelible imprint.

It could be the rhythmic song of thoughts becoming words.

It might be the vintage of a manual Royal, or the allure of the age when great poets, novelists and lovers wrote on these classic machines.

Whatever it is, Herbert Permillion loves typewriters.

Always has, always will.

The 62-year-old owner and chief technician at California Typewriter on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley has devoted much of his working life to them.

Yes, typewriters. Still going even in an age when computers have made the old-style writing machines practically obsolete.

Don't bother telling Permillion and his happy crew of repairmen at California Typewriter that the machines are past their time.

They've got a secret: The typewriter is still very much alive and well to many Americans, young and old, who carry an enduring affection for it.

Permillion says he always thought typewriters were special and had a place in the toolbox of society, perhaps now more than ever, when the need for them is both nostalgic and practical.

A dapper gentleman, bespectacled, soft-spoken, and well-dressed in a dark-toned suit, Permillion has owned California Typewriter since 1982. Helearned the craft of typewriter repair through IBM in Oakland as a young man. He completed training in 1967 and has worked in the typewriter sales and service business ever since.

He recalls a time decades ago when typewriters, first the manual kind and later electric versions, became broadly available and then considered cutting-edge technology.

With the advance of the computer in American homes and offices the typewriter's place in the economy has faded. This shift is perhaps best exemplified by copies of the Oakland and East Bay Yellow Pages in archives at the Berkeley Public Library. In 1975, there were 126 shops listed under the "Typewriters" heading. In 1985, there were 107. Today, there are only eight.

California Typewriter remains one of those, a holdout against the tide of change.

Like buggy repairmen in the age of automobiles, typewriter craftsmen are indeed a dying breed. But while the computer may dominate the modern age, there are plenty of customers who still cherish typewriters and find riches at Permillion's shop.

Some come to have old models repaired. A few are even shipped in from out of state. Others come to fix keys and find ink ribbons, or to find gifts and collectors items.

But many come simply because they still consider the typewriter a practical tool in modern society, recognizing old ways of doing things are in some ways just as good if not better than new ones.

In 1996, Permillion's store made a change to acknowledge the shift away from typewriters in the workplace, adding the name California Office Machines -- but not doing away with the name California Typewriter. The old store sign, with its original name, decorated with a three-dimensional typewriter, still hangs on the front of the building.

While Permillion and his crew no longer have contracts with as many departments at the University of California, Berkeley as they once did, they continue to provide contract services to the mathematics and history departments and are regularly called to service a few machines in Berkeley city government offices.

Permillion's daughter, Carmen, 34, has been around typewriters since her father bought the business when she was 12.

Today, she runs the shop and now notices the typical typewriter buyer seems to be younger. She recalls how recently a teenager from San Francisco came in and, after some discussion with his father and store employees, decided to buy a Royal brand manual typewriter. The boy made the decision when he learned it was the model used by Ernest Hemingway. He insisted on paying for it himself.

Permillion says he believes younger typists like typewriters because they were used by great writers of the past, the exalted novelists and poets of the 20th century.

A gold-framed photo of a typewriter used by Hemingway is on the wall in the store.

At 50, typewriter repairmen Ken Alexander is a tall, slender man with a neatly trimmed mustache, baritone voice and easy laugh. He has been repairing typewriters for 30 years.

An antique typewriter is "a visual reminder of the past, a history lesson," he says. A person can sit down at an old keyboard and let his or her imagination wander. "Who typed on it, what was happening in the world at that time?" he muses.

Beyond that, typewriters have far more personality than computers, says Alexander. Computers lack the hypnotic rhythm produced by the click clack punch of the typewriter keyboard and the bang of the letters against the paper.

It is precisely this physical interplay that Permillion says draws in the younger typewriter enthusiasts of today.

The manual typewriter also requires one to think carefully before putting thought to paper. Manual typewriters are not correctable. There is no cut, paste or undo function.