Typewriters In Their Prime

An essential business in St. Tammany Parish was Parish Typewriter Service. A visit to that store was a fascinating experience, seeing all the new typewriters, both manual and electric, the hand-cranked adding machines, calculators, ditto duplicating machines, check writing machines, mimeograph stencil machines, etc. 

We don't see many of those any longer, what with computers doing much of that work, but several decades ago every office and many homes had at least one typewriter and a stash of carbon paper and a couple of bottles of liquid paper. 

The business had started in 1944 in the Patecek Building. 

The Parish Typewriter Service ad from the 1946 phone book

A 1940's vintage Royal Typewriter

This business was a mainstay in the community for decades, keeping businesses and government offices humming with typewriter repair services and the never-ending supply of typewriter ribbon. (Remember the two-color kind: red and black on the same ribbon?) This was even before photocopiers, tele-copiers, self-correcting IBM Selectrics and facsimile machines. Now having said that I know some younger folks are wondering, just what the heck is he talking about?