<h1><span style="font-size: 50px;">Shootin’ type action</span></h1>

The Story Behind the Blog.

Well, all this “type madness” started quite suddenly. Several years ago I started the documentary about the history of Latvian Rock music back in the 60ies “Rockin’ Down The Curtain. Sixties. The Beginning”. For one of the historical re-enactment episodes, we needed the typewriter. I went to the Riga Film Motion Picture studio and arranged one from the props department.

We shot the episode, but later during the editing, we understood that we are short on details. I asked them again, could we have it for a few days at our office, but they asked a price that made me think, “I can buy one for that price!” I searched through local classifieds. What a disappointment! There were few but completely broken and rusted. I waited for a week, but no luck. At antique shops, they asked even higher rental prices, so I thought I have to go back to Film studio and pay the price they were asking.

But then suddenly an old Optima (P1) appeared on classifieds for a 15 EUR. I immediately called the number and arranged a pickup. I went to the old soviet blockhouse district with broken doors and stinky staircases. An old Russian lady opened the doors and welcomed to her tiny flat. I was pleased to see the cleanliness of the place compared to the dreadful neighborhood.

Based on the judgment from the poor classifieds picture I didn’t expect much. But how I was pleased to see the almost immaculate, perfectly kept, olive green “Optima” with completely as from shop artificial leather green briefcase! It worked like a charm! It has a Cyrillic keyboard, so I had put all my efforts to remember the position of the keys to type a few sentences. The old lady began to laugh seeing me searching for letters… I was trying to remember and type down Pushkin’s poetry “Я вас любил” (“I loved you once..” )

Я вас любил: любовь ещё, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим.

1829

She was surprised and quoted from memory missing lines. We started to talk and she offered me a tea. An hour and several teapots and buns with jam later she was telling me her life story. She was retired schoolteacher, who taught Russian literature for almost 40 years. She received the typewriter as a graduation gift from her parents in 1959. All those long years it was well kept and loved, rarely used, as she preferred handwriting to typing. I was her guest for about two hours. I then paid her a full-asked price with a pleasure and went home, proudly carrying a green case with a beautiful typewriter.

Later we shot missing action and details of the typing episode and after that Optima became an office décor.

Cyrillic typewriters were very common in Latvia under the soviet regime as all the official correspondence was forced to be in Russian. But such a perfectly kept gems are rare, almost impossible to find nowadays.

That’s a first part of the story.