Alex Wittwer/The Observer

On a whim, I bought my dad a Smith-Corona Coronamatic 2200 typewriter for his birthday. The intent was to have him write down the fantastical stories he had lived through — from captaining a fishing boat through Panama while warplanes bombed ships to the time spent in an impromptu shelter of an elk carcass.

I found myself looking up typewriters on eBay and scoping local thrift stores for these vintage machines. Writing is something I’d always struggled with, especially holding a pen. My fingers quickly cramp and my handwriting holds no envy among doctors and chickens.

I bought a Webster XL-500 typewriter from Swartz Ink on Jefferson Street a few days later. It’s baby blue and sprightly. And then a cast-iron Royal KMM. And then a Smith-Corona Automatic 12 off eBay — which came packaged with an egg carton as padding. I had to restrain myself from purchasing an Underwood No. 5 at Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

These machines are nearly bulletproof. Like vintage film cameras — which I also collect — you can see the reflection of past generations within the engineering. Everything serves a purpose.

There’s also a bit of magic in the clacks and chimes as letters hammer against paper and platen. It’s the same gratification you get when you take a Polaroid instead of a phone snapshot; there’s a reason wedding photographers urge their clients to print photos instead of only posting them on social media.

Hard drives fail. Phones crack or get lost, and leave no physical proof of our existence. I watched my nieces and nephews grow up on Facebook. There’s no telling whether social media will exist in 40 years as society trudges forward.

To quote Ben Ryder, played by Ed Harris in the movie “Kodachrome”: “Years from now when they dig us up there won’t be any pictures to find, no record of who we were or how we lived.”

— ALEX WITTWER, MULITMEDIA JOURNALIST, THE OBSERVER