Kevin Riordan: In this case, there's no going back

A would-be novelist yearned for an electric typewriter like the one Angela Lansbury used in Murder, She Wrote.

A 90-year-old Lambertville lady needed a ribbon for her beloved manual - and someone to change it, too.

And a Hollywood set decorator sought an office full of sleek late '60s IBM Selectric 1 machines for a Manhattan movie shoot.

"We had 'em," says Rick Dutczak (pronounced dew-chack), the 51-year-old proprietor of Karl Business Machines in Hamilton Township, Mercer County.

"They were in the basement," says Roberta Winder, his second-in-command. "Under 30 years of dust."

Alas, there are no boxy, battleship-gray Royals like the one I banged out stories on at my first newspaper job, back when newsrooms reverberated with the energetic, kinetic clatter of typewriters.

But the mechanical and electronic devices at Karl are a visual reminder of what office work used to look like.

Clunky calculators, chunky cash registers, and all manner of manual, electric, and electronic typewriters are displayed at the store, a landmark since the late 1970s on a busy strip in the township's Mercerville section.

The oldest machines are arrayed, like fine objects, in a glass display case. Among them are a century-old Oliver and a pristine Royal from the '40s that Dutczak promises to let me try out.

Elsewhere, sleek IBM Selectrics in a rainbow of hues take up one wall in the basement; machines that write, print, and count are shoulder-to-shoulder on shelves on both floors.

Some will be disassembled for parts. Because - as was common before throwaway appliances and help desks in Mumbai - the people at Karl actually know how to fix stuff.

"We get creative," says Dutczak, who mostly handles electric and electronic typewriters. Winder, meanwhile, has a knack for fax machines ("from thermal to laser") and printers, from the antiquated dot-matrix to current devices.

And "Uncle" Joe Benczik, a retiree from New Brunswick who's been with the store since the beginning, takes care of the oldest, oddest mechanical repairs. He can even custom-fabricate a part that nobody else makes anymore.

"Some things you just can't get," says Dutczak.

Including talent: Thirty years ago, Karl employed six mechanics. "Today, if you need to find an adding-machine mechanic, you better bring a shovel," Dutczak says. "Because they're all in the cemetery."