Last week, I missed sending in an article. I hope some of my readers missed my sometimes interesting articles.

Now a day, whenever something bad happens, people say they are victims. I will claim that title. I am a victim of modern technology. When I came in Monday last, I sat down to draft my article. I had gotten a little behind, as I usually have a back-up article in case I don t have an idea good enough to write about. I had used up all of the back-up articles I had, and the only one left over was on my computer. I reached down to turn on the “hateful box” and nothing happened. I tried everything from “percussive maintenance” (smacking the box) to calling a 15-year-old son of a friend. No luck. 

We called the computer people, a skill which now is as essential as a plumber. After the usual wait, a repairman arrived. “It is dead” I was told. I knew that. “How long (will it take) to breathe life into it?” I asked. “We will have to order a part- it should be here tomorrow.” Tomorrow stretched into Wednesday and the hookups took until Thursday.

Dumbo here tried other methods. I have two (count them-two) typewriters. Both of them ran out of ribbon after the first sentence.  I tried seven places and got the response “type writer ribbons? What is that?”

Due to a light stroke a few years ago, my hand writing strongly resembles Cyrillic lettering. It also is illegible. My biggest stupid point was my failure to call either the editor, or the compositor. For anyone who does not know what a compositor is, that is the person that takes all the material, and lays it out so it will fit a page. Obviously, this was the person I should have called. I didn’t- until late in the day Thursday. Since I suspected I was in for a large scale chewing out, I chickened out, and sent an e-mail. It is hard to berate someone by e-mail.

Friday, I had been drafted to participate in a living history day for the Jefferson County schools. I will tell you about that later, but I had promised, and I could only hope the editor, and compositor would be gentle in beating me about the head. Thus, I am the victim of modern technology. My only request is: Do you know where I can get typewriter ribbons? Help! If you do, please let me know.  E-mail at davidcreekmore.knoxtnlaw@gmail.com.