Whenever I get burned out, I go to visit and watch the greatest copywriter in the world at work, under the portales in the Plaza de Santo Domingo in Mexico City. Oliverio, with his Olympia typewriter made in Brazil, is clearly a king among evangelists, the scribes who sit at card tables behind the old platen presses where you can have your wedding invitations printed while you wait. Good, plain people who can't write letters for themselves come to Oliverio, and he is much closer to life than I'll ever get. He writes most eloquently about love waiting at home for sons and daughters to return and claim it. Oliverio always writes from the heart, and his business letters ring with the same truth as his love letters, so people travel from miles around with their problems for Oliverio to solve with his clever typewriter. Under his fingernails I see a permanent black edge from changing his ribbons. Back home, when I confront my antiseptic computer, I look first at my fingernails and if they are all clean I know my letter would be antiseptic, too. I wish I could take Oliverio's place at his card table for just one hour, but that would turn into a bitter circus-his clients would believe I was mocking them, and I think they would be right about that. Mocking them or him is something I would never want to do, so I melt into the background and watch and listen while my friend works. For my own work, the best thing I can do is try to keep Oliverio's human touch in mind every time I write. Lord knows I try.
—Bob Dolman
Freelancer
