Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 25, 1994                   TAG: 9401250164
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ONCE, DURING THAT REALLY ENJOYABLE ICE STORM

This is not as fast-moving as your average kickboxer flick, but I became obsessed with the way Jane sat at her typewriter and wrote, I guess, `Watch on the Rhine."

This affected me so strongly that I thought about going to the convenience store for a pack of Winston Light 100s, but Happy Highfields Road was sheathed in ice.

Then there was the sturdy old typewriter she was using as a cigarette dangled from her pouting lips.

And I wept for the days when I sat before such a machine and dangled a cigarette from my pouting lips.

And it came to me that today Lillian Hellman would be wearing a nicotine patch and tapping on a computer keyboard today.

Computers are all right, but if the lights go out, you don't have any more machine to type on. I daresay Lillian liked a little toddy every now ands again, and if you spill a bourbon and water into a typewriter, nothing startling happens.

I'm not saying the Lillian wrote and drank at the same time. I am merely showing you the advantages of a typewriter.

If she had spilled a drink, the keys might have become gummy and the machine might have smelled bad for a few days.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I never drink and type at the same time, but I'm told that if you spill a drink into a computer keyboard, the results are quite dramatic.

I have a friend who spilled a vodka and tonic into his computer, and the result was kind of like the time Judy Garland threw water on the wicked witch.

What he was writing appeared to melt, and heart-breaking messages appeared on the screen: YOU HAVE KILLED ME DESPITE MY EFFORTS TO BE USER-FRIENDLY. DATABASE ERROR. NO CARRIER. HELP."

I understand the shock was so great my friend stopped drinking and went back to writing longhand on a legal pad - which is kind of charming when you think about it.

The thing is, those were better times when Jane wrote on the old manual machine. Nobody knew smoking was killing them, and you could spill all the bourbon you wanted in your typewriter.

And I think that if Lillian had had to put up with a computer that sent her odd messages, she would have become a well-known female plumber instead.

Sometimes I wish I had become a plumber.