They Don’t Sell Much Liquid Paper Anymore, Do They?

David J Walker
Stored away in a closet at my office I have a tool of a recently by gone day that was at one time considered “top of the line”. The IBM Selectric III…the “” Cadillac of all typewriters …classic beige with a 15 inch carriage and correction tape. Wow…what a machine! What I would have given for that kind of tool of the trade back when.

As one who pounded, and I mean pounded out scripts on a daily basis, the Selectric III was something of an unattainable luxury. For at least half of my career as a TV reporter I had an Olympia …an indestructible, cast iron, reporter proof manual typewriter requiring both strength and endurance to master.

Then, when I arrived at KPRC Ch 2 Houston…there it was...a Selectric III…at my assigned desk. I savored it …imagining that it somehow elevated my status in the world…for about a year before our entire newsroom was computerized….and we were terrorized with fear. …Fear of crashing ….fear of new technology…fear of giving up our beloved Selectric III’s.

But gave them up we did.

Now…almost 30 years later…there it was…in storage…actually abandoned by an insurance company that once employed dozens of women who typed everything in triplicate. No doubt most of them did it on Olympia’s while the boss’s secretary used the Selectric.

I sometimes feel an urge to get it out, plug it in, fire it up, threading paper and typing something. But why? What keeps me from doing just that was driving a restored 1961 Ford F-100 pickup truck. It looked great, even classic to those of us who grew up with them, and drove them long ago. But now, all that shifting of gears…nothing but an AM radio…no air conditioning…and the constantly wrestling with the steering wheel….exhausting. Nope…. Despite the nostalgia it was no fun. Much like an assignment in San Antonio flying in that 1932 Ford Tri-Motor Airplane…one of the few flights I wish I hadn’t taken.

But there it sits, that beautiful Selectric that I so coveted, collecting dust in a closet while I change out computers every two years or so. I could never have imagined anything beyond a Selectric…how could it be? But then I couldn’t imagine computers in every home, office, store, classroom and car in the world.

I thought about bringing it home, but..."Don't bring that thing home honey. What are you going to do with it, put it on top of one of those radio's...put it by the butter churn?"

Ok ..that's out....

And then I noticed it…right there by the Selectric, near some dried, yellowed forms and a few sheets of carbon paper…a bottle of “Liquid Paper.” I laughed out loud and thought, of all the useless things left here, Liquid Paper has to be at the top of the list.

I tried in vain to twist off the cap to see if there really was any liquid left. Probably not. Funny that the self correcting white tape on the Selectric made liquid paper obsolete. And that beautiful Selectric...not of any more use than the dried up little bottle of correction fluid.

Then I wondered…will Mike Nesmith hook back up with the Monkee’s now?