He is known around the area as Tony “The Typewriter Man” Kitchens.
Despite the overwhelming shift to computers since the 1990s, Kitchens said being a typewriter repairman keeps him busy.
The majority of his customers are in the legal and court systems, where typewriters are still used quite frequently to fill out forms.
“I think it’s harder for them to scan (the document), fill in the blanks and print,” he said.
He sees a couple of typewriters a week and travels as far as 50 miles to maintain the precious antiques.
Although Kitchens has had to adapt his business slightly to the new technology by adding printer repair to his list of know-how, typewriters are still his specialty.
When he started as a typewriter repairman for Pollack Office Machines on Seventh Street in 1973 at age 21, it was a different industry.
Manual typewriters were still on the market, and it took five other repairmen spreading themselves across the area to tackle the never-ending list of repairs.
“I’ve been in just about every business, hospital, bank and government complex in Augusta in the last 40 years,” he said. “It’s been a very interesting career.”
Kitchens recalls working on typewriters in “top secret” areas of Fort Gordon where the ribbons had to be removed because of the words imprinted on them.
At the time, Kitchens said, he was rebuilding models and reselling them for $600.
“We couldn’t keep them even at $600,” he said of the high-demand item.
Now he doubts the typewriters are worth $10.
“They don’t have much value – even as antiques,” he said. “Maybe in another 100 years.”
The majority of the machines he spends his days working on are at least 20 years old.
The most difficult part of the job is the actual repair of an item that doesn’t have parts readily available.
Kitchens sometimes is able to pull a part from one of the 10 or so models he keeps at home, but usually he has to modify the part until it’s in working order.
That was the problem The Typewriter Man ran into when he was called to the home of a woman in her 80s not long ago to repair her manual 1960s model Smith Corona.
“I could tell she had taken care of it for 50 years, and she deserved to have it fixed instead of me telling her the part was worn out and couldn’t be fixed,” Kitchens said.
Generally he sees a lot of older people who still cling to the outdated technology to write letters, type recipe cards and fill out checks.
“They shake so bad from just being old that it’s easier for them than writing,” he said.
He figures that in about three years it will finally be time to call it quits.
“I’ve told them all that when I retire, that’s it,” he said.
Hang in there Tony we still got word processors for you to fix:o)
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