Ko-Rec-Type, Part No. 3

[The secret word is ploks. 2 1/16″ × 1 3/8″ × 3/8″. Click for a larger view.]

This sort of stuff was once ubiquitous. Make a typing error, take out a little piece of correction film, hold between paper and ribbon, hit the offending key, and the mistake is gone. The result: a neater and more discreet fix than what could be had with correction fluid, aka Liquid Paper, aka Wite-Out.

I’ve had this little box of Executive Ko-Rec-Type Typewriter Correction Film for many years — probably from the early 1980s, when I was a graduate student banging out papers on an Olympia manual typewriter. I like the matchbox-like design (“one strike is all it takes”) and the strange contrasts: fancy script over stencilled letters, secretarial pink clashing with the word Executive. (Is this film reserved for executive secretaries?) I like the (unnecessary, to my mind) “Part No. 3,” which names a product that isn’t part of anything larger than itself. I like the spelling of Ko-Rec-Type, perhaps a joke on the mistakes the film was meant to hide, or perhaps just a space-age spelling. I really, really like the arcana on the side of the box: “To correct colored originals ask your dealer for Part No. 1-ES.” A more complicated part!

The box bottom has a bonus in the form of an adhesive strip:

Peel off protective covering
Attach to typewriter or any surface

I guess then you would really be in the executive lane.

I have a second, less interesting container about half full of Ko-Rec-Type Opaquing Film, which appears to be Typewriter Correction Film with a newer name. This container, from which films slide out like sticks of gum, has an address for the Ko-Rec-Type Corp.: 67 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Here’s a post from Forgotten New York with some photographs of the building. As of 2018, the company, founded in 1955, was still in business but looking to sell its Brooklyn properties. As of this morning, Ko-Rec-Type was still selling newer-fangled correction tape and other items on Amazon.

I would now like to imagine a scene in an office-supplies store:

“Good day, sir. Please, a box of Ko-Rec-Type’s Part No. 1-ES, with a vignette effect, if you would.”

This post is the twenty-second in a very occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. The vignette effect in the photograph is by the Mac app Acorn.

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Ace Gummed Reinforcments : C. & E.I. pencil : Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Esterbrook erasers : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Harvest Refill Leads : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : A mystery supply : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule

TV academics

From the Murder, She Wrote episode “School for Scandal” (October 25, 1985): “Professor Laird, the cucumber sandwiches are running out. Would you like me to get some more?”

And then there’s Roddy McDowall as Professor Alger Kenyon. He professes to write seven articles a year on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I love it when television does academia.

Strapped for time

In an effort to BMA (Be More Analog), Elaine has started wearing a watch again. Me, susceptible me, I’ve started wearing a watch again too, a Timex Expedition, purchased in the first decade of this century.

I thought it might be fun to get a new strap. One way to really know what time it is: try finding a watch strap at a friendly neighborhood multinational retailer.

Petrie opines

Ruth Martin is making barbecued spare ribs for the Grange dinner. There’ll be more than thirty people. It’s “the biggest Grange dinner of the year,” Paul Martin says. There will also be salad and baked beans. Uncle Petrie opines: “And there’s nothing better than barbecued ribs and beans on a cold winter’s day.”

I love this nonsense. It’s from the Lassie episode “The Big Cat” (January 11, 1959), the famous/infamous episode in which Lassie fetches the C-clamp. The C-clamp, Lassie, the C-clamp!

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Oh, what a difficult puzzle. Oh, what a difficult grid. Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Andrew Bell Lewis, is a true Stumper. It’s deceptively easy at first: 1-A, ten letters, “Western ethics attributed to Autry.” And four obvious answers start down from that one. Other answers require retrieval from a considerable distance. In other words, they’re farfetched. Take 28-A, four letters, “Avoid capping.” Take 30-A, three letters, “Well-loved trio.” Take 48-D, four letters, “It’s swallowed by piranha.” Take these clues, please.

Some clue-and-answer pairings I especially liked:

13-D, eleven letters, “A Charlie Brown Christmas instrumental.” It’s perhaps the one tune that doesn’t spring to mind.

34-D, five letters, “#2 baby girl name in 1960, #959 in 2017.” I remember three girls from elementary school with that name.

42-D, six letters, “City that sounds like sausage.”

47-D, four letters, “Pit follower.” (BEAN? FALL? No.)

56-A, ten letters, “They have no matches.” (NONSMOKERS? No.)

No matches, and no spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

A name from Nancy

If anyone doubts that the comic strip Nancy is, as they say, having a moment: in the January 20 New Yorker crossword, the clue for 1-D, five letters, is “Rich boy in Nancy.” That would be ROLLO.

Go Bushmiller! Go Jaimes!

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

“The irony is almost too obvious”

David Kurtz, commenting on a Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump* “told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial”:

The irony is almost too obvious to point out: In order to stave off an impeachment conviction for putting his own personal interests above the national interest, Trump once again put his own interests above the national interest.

$200,000

News not to be overlooked:

Bestselling authors Stephen King and Don Winslow have pledged to give $200,000 to charity if Donald Trump’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, holds a press conference this week.

Grisham has refused.

“Irish Haiku”

Sounds Irish to me. Or maybe like Gertrude Stein. No, Irish, I’m sure.

Hop, skip, jump

I’m watching a bit of Donald Trump*’s rally in Toledo, Ohio on C-SPAN 2. Trump* just moved from the size of Adam Schiff’s neck to the Academy Awards to journalists (a lot of bad ones) to the fact that he won’t be getting a Nobel Peace Prize, even though he saved a country. (What?) Hopping, skipping, and jumping around.

And now he’s declared that he’s going to use both Make America Great Again and Keep America Great as slogans in his reelection campaign. Gotta have an extraordinary mind to figure that out.

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And now, bragging that Republican voters prefer him to Abraham Lincoln.

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“A couple of hundred years ago there was nobody here.”