Though my family has a long history of serving in the armed forces–ranging from the War of 1812, to the Civil War to the Spanish-American War, to both World Wars–we have been fortunate that only two have died in uniform. My great-great-great uncle, a German immigrant named Hood, was killed in the Civil War, but his full identity has been lost to time.

The other was my mom’s cousin, Terrill Bilyeu. Here he is, taken about 1955 during a visit to my grandparents Kansas farmhouse:

On October 24, 1960, Terrill was flying a T-28 Trojan Navy training airplane about a mile from Pensacola Naval Air Station when he collided with Kenneth Shelley, Jr’s T-28 upon final approach. One of the planes crashed into a field and burst into flames. The other crashed, but did not burn. Both pilots were 21. Terrill had been in the Navy just 11 months.

Who do you remember today?

Typewriter: Daphne, a 1930 Royal Portable

Working the Screaming Mimi in the back yard

Update: the transformation is underway!

Weekend before last the local paper ran a nice half-page collectibles feature on typewriters. I and some of my typers had prominent spots in the piece, which is neither here nor there.

Now I see that there has been a definite shift in attitude at my favorite thrift store, the one that until now had been my best supplier of serendipitous finds. The price of a blasé Sears electric from the ’80s has inflated by 3 times, and a late ‘6os Remington Streamliner which once would have been $4 or $5 now has been given a spot in the glass display case up front and slapped with a $25 tag. It’s pretty, but it ain’t all that.

I can’t help but wonder if someone there didn’t see the article and decided that they were underpricing their typers. The typewriter evangelist part of me wants to spread the word of clattery goodness, but the selfish, cheapskate collector part of me wants to keep their desirability a closely-guarded secret.

Typewriter: 1940 Remington Model 1

Under normal circumstances, if I were to come across a late-model Royal Royalite in the thrift store, I would probably pass it by–especially an off-white one beginning to yellow with age. The Holland-made Royals  with the “squashed Futura” look just don’t do much for me.

But an off-white Royalite slathered in flower decals…?

Now that’s irresistible tackiness! $5 was worth just the opportunity to photograph it.

If you were to guess that this typewriter was probably owned by a 16-year-old girl, you’d be right. The proof is that her class schedule, including Driver’s Ed, was written on a sheet of notebook paper inside the case. Take note, Pottery Barn set designers!

Also down in the bottom of the case were three Gold Bond Stamps. Those of us of A Certain Age remember trading stamps. Your mom would get a certain number whenever they bought groceries. At home, the stamps (most often the green S&H variety) would go into a little booklet, and after so many booklets were filled up, they could be redeemed for Valuable Prizes. I remember my mom once got a set of “unbreakable” dishes with trading stamps. (“Unbreakable” is a loose term in the presence of an 8-year-old.) I think that one could even get a Maytag washer by redeeming a ridiculous number of stamp books.

It makes one wonder: were typewriters ever offered as trading stamp prizes? Could that be how our mystery teenager’s mom bought her typewriter?

I’m leaning toward naming her Lizzie, after Elizabeth of York, whose marriage to Henry Tudor (aka Henry VII) effectively ended the Wars of the Roses by bringing together the houses of Lancaster (whose badge was the red rose) and York (the white rose). Henry subsequently adopted a white-on-red rose as his own badge. Known today as the Tudor Rose, it is still used as the heraldic emblem of the UK. It seems doubly fitting for the name, then, that our Royalite should be white with red roses.

Now if only it had script typeface.

I need to take a moment out of working on the next installment of Amelia & Me, the 2009 Typewriter Roundup, the 2010 MoLG calendar (I’ll bet you didn’t think I was going to do one, did you?), and legitimate work to tell you something very important:

The new Kleptones album is finally out!

For the uninitiated, The Kleptones is Eric Kleptone, a British DJ who likes to mash together all manner of musical styles to create Something Completely Different. A listen to one of his albums is a trip through his entire musical education, without regard to genre (who would have thought that Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” vocals would have overlaid perfectly with Rage Against the Machine’s “Down on the Street” backtrack?) or obscurity (did you know that Harry Nilsson recorded a cover of “Sixteen Tons” back in 1964 just so it could be mixed with Sister Surround’s “The Soundtrack of Our Lives” 30 years later? Me, either.)

Naturally, the recording industry considers Kleptone’s work to be in violation of copyright and illegal to possess.

Midnight, Jan 1 saw the long-awaited release of “Uptime / Downtime“, the duo’s first album of original material since 2006’s “24 Hours“. As the title suggests, disk 1 is all upbeat, fast-moving, sometimes aggressive tracks; disk 2 is a slower wind-down set. I wish I had had Uptime to play at my New Year’s Eve party (heck, I wish I’d had a New Year’s Eve party), and Downtime for the day-after recovery. “Uptime” is a little heavy on the Beastie Boys samples to me, but that didn’t diminish my overall enjoyment of the side.

Here’s an example of some of the things you can expect to find buried within each track. This is a list of samples used in just the “Uptime” track “Come Again”:

• The Beatles – “Come Together”
• Beastie Boys – “No Sleep till Brooklyn”
• Daft Punk – “Robot Rock”
• Rare Earth – “I Just Want to Celebrate”
• Queen & David Bowie – “Under Pressure”
• Cypress Hill – “Insane in the Brain”
• John Lennon – “Power to the People”
• Boston – “More Than a Feeling”
• M|A|R|R|S – “Pump Up the Volume”
• Freeez – “I.O.U”
• Art of Noise – “Close (to the Edit)”
• S’Express – “Theme from S’Express”

“Downtime” finds things like Nick Drake merged with Star Trek’s computer (Majel Barrett) and Marianne Faithfull collaborating with the late Paul Newman.

And somehow it all works.

“Uptime / Downtime” is not for everyone. If your musical tastes lean more toward Tobey Keith or Jimmy Buffet, this album is probably not for you. But if you’re looking for an alternative to the packaged synthpop that fills the airwaves today, The Kleptones may just be the aural antidote you’re looking for.

I’ve started something kind of different. I began to write about this ongoing historical quest I’ve been on for over two decades now. It quickly became apparent that to tell the story was going to take more than one blog post–or a few. In fact, the project turned out to be so deep and layered that I ended up forming a whole new blog just to tell it in. The first post is up. It’s also my first attempt at a pencast; I hope my scratching isn’t too difficult to read.

As it’s a new blog and I realize that registering to comment on my site is kind of a PITA, if you want to leave your comments here instead, you may. I really had no time to configure the site other than basic setup and formatting.

Good news! I finally found a Fox upstrike!

Bad news. It’s being sold by a keychopper, and he’s already pulled off its keys.

Good news! The keychopper will throw in the whole typewriter for the cost of the keys!

Bad news. The typewriter is a disaster.

Worse news. There’s a wasps’ nest inside it.

Could-be-worse news. The wasps are all dead.

Who was the patron saint of hopeless causes again?