Sitting in his sunny Goodlettsville shop, surrounded by a collection of typewriters that were manufactured over the course of a century, Kirk Jackson describes his love of the machines as something completely out of his control.
“When I got bit by this bug,” Jackson says, “I got bit pretty hard.”
He started Nashville Typewriter in his barn a few years back and opened the brick-and-mortar a little more than a year ago. Jackson describes himself as a blue-collar handyman who has always been drawn to the arts — visual art first, then writing, poetry. But writing on computers didn’t suit him. The internet is distracting as hell, and his handwriting is messy. The physical act of writing with these tools didn’t make sense. Jackson was browsing in beloved local vintage store Dead People’s Things — which was owned by Shayne Parker, who died in 2021 — when he saw a Remington Quiet-Riter.
“I popped it open and started just kind of futzing around with it a little bit,” he says. “I ended up buying it and got it home. … That was all it took for me to fall in love with them. … One typewriter became three, and then 10.”
The biggest draw for Jackson is the tactile experience. “It’s a very deliberate writing technique, you know? It’s like every word, you have to kind of think before you put it down on paper. It’s that visceral, tactile experience, where it’s like you’re using mechanics to make the words happen. It felt a little bit more like sculpting or painting or playing the piano — it’s got that kind of a feel to it.”
He’s not alone — folks come in from places as close as East Nashville and as far-flung as Italy to browse and buy typewriters. Jackson taught himself to service them, too. “These machines, nine times out of 10 … they just need a very good cleaning and some adjustment, and just a little love.”
He keeps that first machine, the Quiet-Riter, in the front of his shop. His favorite, though, is a 1930 Olympia SG1. “A big boy,” he says. It has an Art Deco sans serif typeface, and he found it here in Nashville at Music City Thrift. Each machine in his showroom has its own personality, both in appearance and in functionality. He always invites his clients to try some out, including little kids. He wants the next generation of typewriter lovers to get the bug.
Jackson has this in common with his friend Tom — America’s Dad, Tom Hanks. Hanks loves typewriters and makes it a point to visit shops around the world. He’s visited Jackson twice. He’s totally genuine, Jackson says — just “a dude who is so excited about typewriters.” But Jackson isn’t flashy about their kinship. I’m in the shop for more than an hour before Jackson mentions that just the day before, Hanks shipped him a typewriter overnight from California.
It’s 1954 R.C. Allen VisOmatic — a large desktop typewriter with forest-green keys. It came along with a note — typewritten, of course — from Hanks that reads, in part: “You just may be giving this miracle of a machine a fuller, newer life of use.” Typewriter copy, of course, is prone to more typos than what’s written with a word processor. “Take good care of it,” Hanks wrote, “and halp it keep doing it’s job for another hundred years.”
Jackson will oblige.
Photographed by Eric England at Nashville Typewriter
Profiling some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from drag legend Tina Louise to TSU’s Flutebae and more
