Don Canney

I know that title suggests a bizarre combination if there ever was one. I received my second Covid shot last week and while waiting in my car for 15 minutes to ensure there was no reaction (probably my only 15 minutes of “fame”) some random thoughts came to mind. By the way, kudos to the National Guard and the medical staff where I received my shots in Londonderry, NH. A very efficient and well-organized operation, with a great bunch of folks! So far, no dire reaction.

Raise your hand if you can remember dozing off late at night on the sofa while watching TV and waking up to what was then affectionately known as a test pattern? (No, not the 2019 movie). The test pattern resembled a large 1950’s Buick steering wheel, with the station’s call letters, channel number or other station specific identification affixed to either side, back in the day when TV stations didn’t broadcast 24/7. They’d sign off somewhere around midnight. Just before sign-off and before the screen resorted to the infamous test pattern and its annoying beep, the National Anthem would play. At that point, you were either extremely tired from a long day’s work and chose to stay on the couch, or about to experience one of the nastiest hangovers of your life and remained on the couch by default.

Speaking of flashbacks, I saw a candid clip recently where several youngsters were given a rotary dial phone and asked to make a phone call. It was funnier than most stand-up comedy routines. The receiver and rotary dial were totally baffling, as was the dial tone. How did we ever survive without caller ID and auto dial? But the kids seemed to have fun with it. In all fairness, it would probably be like trying to get anyone my age to send a telegram using the old Samuel Morse method. I would be just as stumped.

I can remember having just one phone in our house (yes, we had to get up off our butts to answer that one phone, which was typically in the kitchen on the wall). And initially, it was known as a party line, where up to eight families had access to that same line. Therefore, we had no secrets.

Does anyone remember their phone number being a combination of numbers and letters? Our neighborhood identifier was Tuxedo. So, the phone number would be TU (Tuxedo, or 8,8), followed by 5 digits.

I would have liked to have seen an experiment like the one with a rotary phone using the good old typewriter. Watching a pro pecking at those keys and manually moving that carriage return was a thing of beauty, particularly with a trained typist. For younger readers, the carriage return was not a place where you’d return a rented baby stroller. It was the long mechanism at the top of the typewriter that controlled the impact of the letters on the ribbon that struck the paper.

Then came the much more advanced electric typewriter, where one could simply push a key to advance the carriage return. Our version of high tech. Each time the carriage-return resorted back to the next sentence; a bell would ring. In a room full of dozens of typists, one’s head might feel like a boxer starting the fifteenth round.

Back then, if one fat-fingered a key, the only option to starting over was to use Liquid Paper (originally, called Mistake Out and generically known as correction fluid). That time saving concoction allowed a typist to make corrections on the fly without having to start from scratch. Messy, yes. And its usage was dependent upon the importance of the document. Interesting trivia: Liquid Paper was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham, who mixed the first batch in her kitchen blender. The Graham name may not ring a bell to many, but for those of us who were fans of the 1960’s band The Monkees, she was the mother of their lead guitarist, Mike Nesmith.

Yes, I have used a typewriter myself. And lots of Liquid Paper. And, if I were typing this column using said typewriter, it might eventually be ready for a 2022 edition of The Telegraph.

Don Canney is a freelance writer and professional voice artist. He was born and raised in downtown Nashua with great interest in Nashua history circa 1950-1970. He now resides in Litchfield.