No, not the typewriter—me!
These words were typed by my father on an aerogram that he mailed from Spain to his parents. Hey, I was a newborn, and he was honest! There is no doubt that this machine typed this message—the deformed "r" is a perfect match.
On a recent visit to my mother she showed me the aerogram and a photo in which my father is in the background, using this same Clipper, some time in the ’50s.
The typewriter was a gift to him from his parents upon his high-school graduation in 1945. At some point he had the typewriter modified so it could type Spanish and brackets [ ]. (He became a professor of Spanish.) Eventually he got an electric Smith-Corona, which is what I remember him using when I was growing up.
About 70 years after he first got the Clipper, he gave it to me. It was so moldy that I had to remove the shell and dip everything in bleachy hot water. But now it's non-offensive and, of course, holds a special place in my collection.
And we all know how Andersen's tale ended ... Richard you grew from a cygnet to a great cob!
ReplyDeleteCleaning up and owning a parent's typewriter is such a powerful experience. I recently repossessed and restored the '62 SC I remember as "Mom's typewriter" (passed in 2010) from Dad's house (still living) when we helped him sell and move into managed care. It was where he wrote his dissertation--but I associate it nonetheless with Mom. That machine is charged! With all the memories of her speed and competence as a typist that I never saw her use in any other part of her life, with her typing my college applications against a deadline of my own making in 1986...the mighty clatter of it upon the folding card table I think every boomer parent was issued. I cleaned and repaired it, shrink-tubed the platen, and returned it to my Dad. Now we type occasional letters to each other.
ReplyDeleteMy mother had a Royal Quiet Deluxe that she used on a number of projects for me, as well as church bulletins for my father, who was a minister. If I could locate that machine again, I would buy it; toward the end of her life, she still had a great memory but couldn’t recall what had happened to the Royal. A parent’s machine brings back all kinds of memories.
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