In a world full of fast-changing technology, Charlie Justice offers a bit of nostalgia in Keller.
Justice has been repairing typewriters for more than 15 years, but his first brick-and-mortar, Typewriter Justice, has been open since March 2025.
Inside the store, the oldest typewriter dates back to 1898 and there are models from around the world. Justice provides sales, repairs and rentals of typewriters from the Keller location.
He said people who use typewriters have a common thread.
“People who think, but underlying, there is a desire to communicate,” Justice said. “You don’t need the modern world to operate one. You are the engineer. The freedom that comes from it is not often experienced in the modern world.”
The details
Justice said he became drawn to typewriters when he took part in the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, challenge, where aspiring authors try to write a novel with a goal of 50,000 words. He used a typewriter when he first did the challenge in 2010.
Justice got a start in the typewriter business in 2011, going from a patron looking for repair tips to repairing them himself. He said he learned he had a knack for fixing the machines and opening his store in Keller was a way “to make sure I stay poor and happy.”
Justice said this would remain his dream profession, even if he won the lottery someday.
Long story short
Justice said that while participating in his first NaNoWriMo challenge, he discovered using a typewriter rather than a computer made it more likely for him to get more words written on that machine than on a computer, removing the self-edit mindset.
“You can type for a long period and get paragraphs, rather than [on a computer] rearranging, adding a word, deleting a word and workshopping the story, and it isn’t much better than it was before,” he said.
Justice said there is no need to back up your work or save anything to a cloud when using a typewriter. He said most of the people coming in to get repairs or rent typewriters are between 15 and 40 years old.
Methods of communication like emails are often forgotten and phone calls and text messages are not real connections, Justice said. A letter typed and in your hand becomes something you keep for years.
The big picture
Justice’s vast collection in the store was acquired from garage sales, antique stores, thrift stores or estate sales, with the oldest operating typewriter that he owns dating back to 1902. He said he also bought out some collections and uses a 1923 Corona to make a grocery list.
Typewriter Justice is an outlier overall, but Justice said he is far from the last typewriter repairman in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. He knows of two other repairmen in the metro, Ray Abel Jr. in Fort Worth and Todd Payne in McKinney. He says they often refer customers to each other, depending on the type of repair needed.
Currently, Justice has a stack of nearly 30 typewriters with needed repairs that customers have brought to him.
The older machines have names of companies long forgotten to most: Royal Typewriter Company, L.C. Smith & Corona, Remington, Olympia, Erika and RC Allen Typewriters.
“Most typewriters have outlived their original owners and they will probably outlive the current ones, too,” he said. “With a little bit of loving attention, they’ll outlive their current owners’ grandkids.”