Do you even have one? I ask because the last typewriter factory in the world is closing down.

My introduction to the joy of typewriters came via my mother, who was a writer and editor (when she wasn’t busy raising six kids). She had a little Remington (I think it was a Remington). When I was little, I would turn the lid of her typewriter case over and sit in it, rocking back and forth, pretending it was a boat. She would write and I would sail, both of us in the happy haze of our imaginations. The first typewriter I ever owned was an old Royal that I bought for $5 at a garage sale. It was made of cast iron with huge keys that forced you to strike it like you meant it. You couldn’t write garbage on that sucker–your body wouldn’t allow the wasted energy.

I still have two. One is something I picked up at the AAPA auction last year, and one is a little Olympia that my mother bought me at the now-defunct Cleveland Typewriter back in 1985 when I started college. I deliberately chose a manual typewriter. When I got to college, most folks had electric typewriters and a few had very early computers (I have no idea what kind they were). But I wanted the manual.

I love the feel of a manual typewriter, of consciously striking the keys and seeing the imprint of the letter on paper. It signifies a commitment. Sitting here at my laptop, with a keyboard that requires no effort to depress each key and typing countless pixels doesn’t have the same feeling of permanence. It can (and does) encourage junk writing. At the same time, it makes revisions a breeze and saves reams of paper. When I used to write on a typewriter, more of my thinking and plotting went on in my head or on scraps of paper. Revisions meant you had to slow down and think and retype every damn word in order to ensure the manuscript was clean and perfect. I still often do revisions by hand–printing out a draft, reading the hard copy and making notes or adding/deleting things in the margins or on the back of the page. It’s a holdover habit. I don’t know if people who grew up writing on computers do that or not.

Although anyone could have seen this day coming (and I’m sure many people thought it already had), the loss of the last typewriter factory is, well, A Loss. It’s a loss for people who love words, for people who love simple yet beautiful mechanical objects, for people who still have a sense of romance surrounding the sound of a metal key slapping a sheet of paper.

Be kind to your typewriter. They aren’t making any more of them.