Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Another Adler J5

If anything I am haunted by the blog post "Is the Adler J5 Junk?" That post is the third most-often looked at post I have ever written. How could it be then that another Adler J5 has come into my life? Goodwill.

We were cleaning out some things and I said that I would take all the donations over to the local Goodwill. I haven't had any luck at the local GW since I passed up an IBM Selectric in light blue.  (The same machine pays a part in Catch Me If You Can.) I walked over to the electronics department and I did not see the tell-tale typewriter case. Scattering the shelves was the usual bevy of printers, odd remotes to long dead televisions, and cheap 35mm cameras. I walked by without even noticing the black plastic case. Rummaging around another section, I found a nice old Polaroid Land Camera 600 (you can still get 600 film from the Impossible project) and not much else. On the way to the check-out lane the black case caught my eye. Every thought turned to it being an electric typewriter, but I was surprised to find it was a manual Adler J5 in fair shape. After a once-over the machine seemed solid and so I went to the check-out Polaroid and typewriter in hand. $9.00 would have been a good price to pay, but 4.50 is even better. It was my luck that the yellow tags were %50 off that day.

Is this typewriter Providence showing me the error of my Adler-hating ways? Perhaps, but this typewriter is headed for the classroom when we return in August.

Those keys are brown, not black. Black would have been much better.

A coronet.

A badge.