This week, my friend Timothy G. Huguenin, asked me if I still had any pictures of Rod Sering’s typewriter around. I had to look around, but I’m slowly digging them up and thought they might be fun to share.

Let me preface things with this disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge, this Royal KMM belonged to Rod Serling during a time in his life when he still lived in Binghamton, NY. It was purchased by the man I bought it from to write term papers while he was a student at Harper College in the 1970’s. Everything is word of mouth, I have no documentation. The typewriter is not for sale and I only learned about its previous ownership after I paid a whopping ten dollars for a rusty, mud covered, old typewriter with keys that barely moved. I was looking for a project and I sure got one!

This picture was taken after I’d removed the mud, strands of hay, and bird poop. There was still a long way to go to make it work and clean it up. I don’t restore the typewriters I work on very much cosmetically because that takes the history away and the fun. My interest was in getting it to work. The process took roughly a month of spare time sessions. I’ve always been fond of the Royal and Remington brands of typewriters, so that’s where I was headed at the time. A nice non-portable typewriter to either use for writing or possibly sell when it was ready.

The phone rang and I picked it up nervously because it was the guy I’d bought the two typewriters from. Maybe he’d want them back or more money? Turned out he’d just called because in talking about writing and my reviews of speculative fiction, he’d forgotten to tell me about the Royal…

Hoping to post more about this well-used typewriter soon. Stay tuned!