Jones Typewriter
Vern Trampe, Part 1. Vern Trampe, Part 2. Vern Trampe, Part 3. Jones Typewriter is located on the main drag of Maplewood, MO — that stretch of Manchester which used to be Route 66, between the old-fashioned Maple Leaf barber shop and the new-fangled Bouffant Daddy hair salon. It's a mess inside. The area up front is the way station for things fixed and awaiting reclamation by paying customers. It is cram packed, ceiling to shelf to tabletop to floor, with archaic business machinery — from every era since the invention of the typewriter right after the Civil War to the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s. The combined functions of all this bulky old apparatus now fit into a pocket-sized smart device. The back of the shop is devoted to repair, a frenzied disarray of tinkering: oiled parts, oily gray rags, oil cans with long skinny necks, "World's Greatest Dad" emblazoned mugs full of oil-thick coffee. Repairman Charlie Mays will che...