Always cheered up by an impromptu stop at a yard sale, this past weekend proved especially cheerful. I found treasure----memories in the making.
My daughter has wanted a manual typewriter for quite awhile. She is enamored with the keys and the thoughts of being a writer sitting at the ticking contraption----a quaint image.
At a yard sale this past weekend, I wandered amongst clothes strung on a line from tree to tree and blankets covered with kids' toys and kitchen gadgets. All the yard sale wares were interesting, but on one table, sitting there as if presented just for me, was a Smith-Corona typewriter. I fiddled with the lock and opened it up to find a typewriter in fine shape. I knew I must to take it home for my daughter.
There wasn't a price tag on the machine so I went looking for its owner. After a bit, an older, distinguished looking man approached and asked me what I'd like to pay him. I had no clue. As we both stood there mulling it over---him rubbing his scruffy chin---- a woman added from the porch, "That typewriter will be worth something someday..." And she then addressed the man by my side, "Didn't you write many of your books on that thing?"
"Really?" I asked, almost in disbelief. He turned and pulled out some travel books from a nearby bureau.
"This one and this one were written on that typewriter," he replied in a reminiscent tone.
Always a sucker for a nostalgia, I quickly replied, "Well, I must get it for my kids because they both want to be writers someday."
He smiled and replied, "Well, in that case... If it's going to a couple future writers..." And then he thought of something and told me to wait for him.
He returned a bit later with a couple of his books. He asked for my kids' names and dedicated the books to them-----"Happy writing"---and we settled on a price for the Smith-Corona.
My kids love their "new" typewriter and it only adds to its mystique that it came from a real writer. It has been traveling everywhere with us ever since and I must smile when I'm driving down the road listening to the tick-tick-ticking of a typewriter from the backseat of the car.
