The Keyboard Cowboy

 

THE KEYBOARD COWBOY!
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, July 11, 2025

For the record, I attended Chaney High School in Youngstown, Ohio from 1960-1963, and graduated in 1963.  We were known as The Chaney High School Cowboys.  

One of the most productive courses I have ever taken in Junior/Senior High School or even in College was a typing class.  At the time I took the class I was also a member of the High School Band and played many instruments but specialized on the Clarinet and Baritone Saxophone.  Why is this important to know?  Both the typewriter keyboard and the musical instruments require that you learn to use all of the fingers on both hands.  In fact, my Clarinet teacher gave me finger dexterity exercises to do every day and I did them  As an example I would hold up one finger (the same finger) on each hand.  Then with my hands facing each other, I perform flex motions in unison and then as opposite motions.  I would do this with the four fingers on each hand, and even the thumbs at times.  The exercises helped me tremendously in playing the Clarinet and Sax. More importantly it put me light years ahead of anyone else in my typing class.  Putting these two topics together, I came up with an appropriate description of myself, I became a:

The class taught me another valuable lesson.  The typing instructor asked everyone on day one if they had ever taken typing before?  He then asked if anyone in the class ever used a typewriter.  I said no to both questions which was the truth.  How do you prove to someone you never typed on a typewriter keyboard?  You can’t!  It requires proving a negative or a positive where there is no evidence for either other than the person’s word.  As it turned out, my word was insufficient.  Why do I say that?  I took to typing like a duck takes to water.  I know with certainty it was because of the time I spent on the Clarinet and Sax.  The goal of the class was to be typing 30 words a minute with zero to just a few typos by the end of the class.  I think I hit that goal after the first three weeks.  That may not sound like a lofty goal but in the 1950s, we had MANUAL typewriters.  If you have only typed on an electric typewriter or a computer keyboard, you have no idea how the manual typewriter keyboard actually slows you down. 

My best guess would be that you have never heard of the QWERTY layout of the typewriter keyboard.  There are lots of rumors as to why the keys on a typewriter are laid out as they are so I asked ChatGPT and this is what I discovered:

• Early typewriters (1860s–1870s) had keys that would physically strike a ribbon to print a character. If two adjacent keys were pressed too quickly one after the other, their typebars could jam or clash.
• Christopher Latham Sholes, the inventor of the QWERTY layout, reorganized the keyboard to separate commonly used letter pairings, making jams less likely.
• This design had the side effect of slowing down typing speed, which helped avoid mechanical issues but wasn't strictly aimed at making typists less efficient—just at keeping the machine functional.

Misconception:

• It’s often said QWERTY was designed purely to slow people down, but it’s more accurate to say it was designed to optimize the mechanical limitations of early typewriters.

Today:

• Despite the original purpose no longer being relevant, QWERTY stuck due to familiarity and training inertia, even though more efficient layouts like Dvorak and Colemak exist.

So yes—QWERTY was a compromise between speed and function, with "slowing down" as a means to prevent jams, not the primary goal.

By the end of class, you would have thought that because of the speed I could type I would have received an A for the course but I did not.  Instead, I received a C.  When I asked why, the teacher said he did not believe me when I said I had never typed before because of how fast I was able to pick it up.  He said he had never seen anyone do that before.  Well, I can honestly say he was wrong!  Nothing I could say convinced him otherwise.

How fast can I type?  So glad you asked.  Before I tell you, let me tell you that my ability to accurately type and type fast was the result of several really good unit assignments when I was on active duty with the U. S. Coast Guard.  The first one caused me to be transferred from a unit where my main job was cutting fallen trees around the Coast Guard Radio Station (NMG) New Orleans.  I managed to acquire a very severe case of poison ivy, so much so, they had to transfer me as soon as possible to separate me from the cause of the skin issues.  The first question I was asked was could I type?  When I said yes, the District Commander transferred me to the Eighth Coast Guard District Office where I worked at becoming a Yeoman (administrative specialist).  That led to me getting married, being transferred to London, England, having four children that led to nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren, as well as becoming a Yeoman Class A School Instructor all because I said I could type.

How fast can I type?  Let me explain by showing you:

I can type 300 words a minute without a mistake!

Do you want to see me do it again?

I can type 300 words a minute without a mistake!

I hate to have to explain a joke but that was obviously a joke.  You may have to read it twice to understand it.

Over the years I have become what I refer to as a Keyboard (typist) Cowboy (Chaney High School).  I like, the title, have always enjoyed writing and typing.  I initially wrote a great deal with a fountain pen and paper.  This may be hard to believe or understand but there was always something very special to me when I wrote with a fountain pen (which very few people do any more).  I can see the ink flowing from the nib (pen point) onto the paper.  The words went from my mind down through my arm and hand, through the pen and out onto the paper.  I doubt many people have ever thought like that but I did.  The words I put to paper reflected the creative juices I had stored up in my head.  Those thoughts would have remained in my head forever had I not put them onto paper.

Therein lies the purpose of this Nugget; to get people to think about writing down or typing out the words in their heads so that others can some day see the world as you have seen it and experienced it.  I have relatives who have long since passed who I would love to be able to hear or read their life stores but unfortunately those stories died with them never to be heard again or experienced again.  My advice is to not let that happen to you. 

“Don't Die with the Music Still in You” 

The above quote is attributable to many people.  I personally heard it from Dr. Wayne Dyer at  seminar he gave in Austin, Texas.  It is great advice, don’t die with your stories still in you!

I began writing as a way of sharing information about real estate sales with my agents within my company.  I understood that time was very important to them as it is to everyone.  Sitting in a class for one or two hours to learn a new way to sell real estate, develop personal relationships, learn contract law, etc. was just too much to expect from everyone.  I started writing one-to-three page Nuggets for the Noggin, like this one.  I would then print them out, copy them and place them in the mailboxes of all of the agents.  Did they read them all?  I have no idea but it became obvious to me that many did just by watching the way they conducted their businesses.

That was before the days of computers.  Computers made it much easier to do the same thing and it made it much easier to safely store what I had written or so I thought.  I wrote the Nuggets beginning in the early 1990s.  I had a total computer failure and lost everything I had previously stored.  I thought I was doing the right thing by copying the Nuggets to what we then referred to as floppy Discs.  Unfortunately, the virus that attacked my computer was also on the Discs. All of the early Nuggets have been lost forever.  The lesson learned from that experience was to pay for an offsite storage program.  I have and I have had to use it at least twice to restore a computer that had crashed.

How many Nuggets have I written over the years?  I really don’t know but it has to be between 900 and 1200.  I initially used the format to write about sales and book reviews.  After I retired, I began writing about whatever came to my mind.  You can find most of the Nuggets since the early 2000s on my blog at www.NuggetsfortheNoggin.com.  I post them primarily for my own enjoyment but I have been keeping track of how many people open each one I post.  I have been blown away at the number of people who have been opening the blog pages.  I posted one 2 days ago and already have about 1000 openings.  That’s a lot of people.  Recently over 5000 people opened just one of the Nuggets.  5000! 

Over the years, I have begun writing all of the life experiences that I can remember.  That is yet another valuable lesson.  The older I get, the more difficult it has become to remember things; that is just life.  That is why it is never too soon to start writing down YOUR life experiences so you can pass them on to your immediate family and they can pass it on to their familes, indefinitely!

I have one such document that I titled, Humor In A Coast Guard Uniform.  It explains all of the humorous things that I was involved in over a 20-year Coast Guard career.  At first you might think that would be small document/booklet.  It turned out to be a rather lengthy read, 78 pages; I had a lot of fun over those 20 years.  I have since begun writing another book about everything I can remember from the late 1940s through to the present.  One tip that I can pass on is this.  When I began writing the book on humor, I first started by writing down words or phrases as fast as I could think of them.  What I discovered was that one thought triggered the thoughts of something else and it went on like that for a day.  I then took each word or phrase and started writing about what they represented.  I discovered that as I made the initial list, the more I wrote, the more I remembered.  The book about my life is far more involved.  There has been a lot to remember and I know for a fact that as soon as I think I am done, I will remember even more to add.  That is the magic of this process.  Since it is a computer file, I can simply go to the point where the story fits and insert it.  Anything I write is better than writing nothing at all.  The same goes for anyone reading this.  WRITE IT DOWN BEFORE IT BECOMES THE DUST OF HISTORY!

You want to leave a legacy for your kids (4), your grandkids (9), your great grandkids (4) leave them a story about your life!  Annotate it with photos or pictures when you can.

“There ain’t no story to tell after you are gone!”

(Sounds like the beginning of a great country and western song!)