Our sister publication, a community newspaper, The East Aurora Advertiser http://www.eastaurorany.com, provides the sound system for an annual Main Street carol sing each December, so the bulky speakers and related electronics are stored in a closet that also holds office supplies. Returning the equipment to the closet this year turned into a Fibber McGee’s avalanche of pens, various ink and toner cartridges, computer printer ribbons and … a package of carbon paper.
It turns out that our building would be an office archeologist’s dream if Mt. East Aurora erupted and covered us in ash. Of course there is no Mt. East Aurora, but sometimes our roughly 140-year-old building seems to have dust production on a Vesuvian level.
Between the regular accumulation of office supplies that comes with any business that has been in the same building for 100 years or so and the fact that this business once included a stationery store, our Main Street location is a treasure trove of obsolete and endangered office equipment and supplies from several eras.
Carbon paper, the last item to fall to the floor of the closet, started this trip down office memory lane.
My personal experience does include rolling a carbon sheet, tucked between two pieces of paper, into my manual typewriter. There are older versions of staplers, check writers, ribbons for manual typewriters, and a number of “what is its” around the office. Each has a story, no doubt.
What I find interesting, more than the various objects, is that someone had the desire to “build a better mousetrap.” The ripple effect that new mousetrap, no matter how small, can have on us can’t be discounted, whether it is making life easier or making our skills or jobs obsolete.
I’ve always been drawn to antiques “with a purpose” and their evolution. The spill plane made lighting candles and pipes easier (and created a market for spill jars); eventually, it was made obsolete by the match. The redware potter who made everyday objects eventually found stoneware a competitor and perhaps transitioned from dishes and pots to drain tiles and stovepipes. Economists call this process of rise and fall and replacement “creative destruction.” I see those antique objects left behind as insight into life as it was at the time.
As a footnote, a Fibber McGee’s closet was a running gag in the radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly” in the 1940s. It was an expression I heard from my mother every time one of our over-stuffed closet shelves sent its contents to the floor.
Grant Hamilton, Publisher
