Midwest Memo
Desktop
by Alan Shultz

I recently came into possession of a new stapler and tape dispenser. These items, as common as they seem, are quite remarkable to me. I find them remarkable, fascinating and somewhat entertaining because, simply put, they work.

Though new to me, the stapler and tape dispenser are vintage items. I don't know how to put a date on them but they decidedly look and feel pre-computer, pre-Selectric typewriter. I'm thinking the 50s or 60s. They come from a former accountant's home office full of manual typewriters, mechanical adding machines, wooden rulers, slide rules and all kinds of office gizmos no longer made.

On my bathroom scale the tape dispenser weighs in all by itself at 2 pounds. Now that's a substantial weight for a little tape dispenser. When you pull a piece of tape from this mini mountain there's no wobble, no twist. It's almost like a tug of war, except that the dispenser and you are working together.

The tape dispenser isn't all that big. It's 5 inches long, 2 inches tall. But with all that weight it decidedly makes for a great weapon of self-defense. I can see it starring in the murder mystery board game "Clue." That's the game where you acquire clues in order to name the murderer, the location of the unfortunate crime and the murder weapon.

"It was the secretary in the upstairs study with the tape dispenser."

Design wise, the tape dispenser is way more than cute. It has the curves and flashy lines of an eyecatching 50s Chrysler. It is big, bold and has a little Art Deco thrown in.

The bottom of the tape dispenser still shows the original factory sticker sans bar code! It says the piece was made by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.

Though the composition of the tape dispenser remains a mystery to speculate over, the thing itself is remarkable in that perhaps a half century after it was made it still does its job... and remains maintenance free!

On my desk top, next to my new tape dispenser, sits my new stapler. We're talking same vintage and same kind of weight. This item is battleship gray but without any manufacturer's marking but clearly made in the U.S.A. It, too, has the big Chrysler lines, an arching curve, a little racy Deco detail on the sides.

I work in an office with many, many staplers. None of them work consistently. They are hopelessly cheap, plastic, lightweights that can't fasten two pieces of paper together. It doesn't matter what angle you use, light tap, heavy hit. The staples fold half way over, they mangle, they jam. My favorite is when they complete an actual staple but leave all kinds of room between the pages so that they are affixed to each other but with a wobble of space between.

I bet my new to me, old to the world stapler hasn't misfired, jammed in 50 years. One hit and the job is done. There are no angles, no mangles, this is a machine, a stationary machine designed to wallop once and move on. I would bet on my new stapler against any new electric stapler that Office Depot could challenge us with any day.

It seems that little light-weight plastic office tools are forever missing. They are so portable, they seem to float away. Not so with my bruisers. If you actually move the tape dispenser or stapler somewhere off the desk it's going to be obvious and you'll remember the effort. You'll break a sweat and the items won't ever wind up in your pocket.

So there they sit on my desk, the old and the new. My laptop computer actually weighs less than the tape dispenser. It almost looks vulnerable there sitting sandwiched between the tape dispenser and the stapler. The visual creates a kind of brains verses brawn conflict. And I'm kind of getting spoiled with all this dependability.

Now if I could just find a ribbon for that manual Royal typewriter...