I bought my first typewriter sometime in the late 1970s (or maybe it was the early 80s.) at a little hole-in-the-wall shop in downtown Columbus Ohio, “Catlett’s Typewriter Exchange.”

The store had been there since the mid teens of the century, and the owners showed a proper reverence for its antiquity, with old wooden shelves lining the walls, vintage machines in the windows, creaky oaken floors, infused with generations of varnish….

…And on one pillar, a photograph of old-time movie actor  Warner Baxter! Apparently he had been a salesman for the company, because a note (typewritten, of course) beneath the note thanked Mr Catlett for loaning him the money to go out to California and get his start in the Movies.

Warner Baxter is barely remembered today, but he won the Best Actor Oscar (the 2nd one ever presented) as the Cisco Kid, and left an indelible mark as the driven director in 42ND STREET.