Benjamin and I arrived in Texas a couple of days before Thanksgiving. The following week, we found ourselves tackling my grandmother’s garage. A whole wall of shelving was coming loose from the wall and things were leaning uncomfortably close to the car. It was time to pull everything off for sorting and deal with those precarious shelves. As we were removing items from the shelves I lifted a faded, hard-sided, black box and was surprised to discover that it was heavy for its size. I sat it down on the garage floor near the other items and warned Benjamin that I didn’t know what it was but that it was rather heavy. He looked over at it with a glance and told me it was a typewriter.
In my memory, I swear time stood still because that’s how monumental the moment felt. But in actuality, I think I probably got really animated and excited instead; I was ready to open it right away! We opened the case and inside was the most beautiful, old, black typewriter. I couldn’t believe it. We sat it aside to continue our work, but my wheels were already turning. What condition was it in? Could it be made to work again? Where did it come from?! I couldn’t wait to find out more about it.
Admittedly, I was baffled to find it. In my last post I described all of the glorious treasures we had to play with when we visited our grandparents and I assure you that I availed myself of them. I’ve always taken great delight in exploring, rooting through, and uncovering treasures. I like to see the storage rooms, drawers, closets and other such tucked away places where imagination and wonder can hide. Because the items at my grandparents’ house were so novel and exciting, due to their unique interests and work, the payoff was consistently quite high - so I snooped, explored and treasure-hunted around there a lot. This is why my surprise was so great upon finding something I’d never seen before. How had this typewriter never once come across my exploratory path?!
In the days that followed we had plenty of time to learn more about it. Benjamin identified it as a 1927(!) Underwood Portable 4-Bank. He began working on it and painstakingly, scrubbed, cleaned, oiled, polished, and restored every inch of the beautiful machine and its case over the course of the next five weeks. The typewriter itself was dirty with age but generally in good working order. The case, however, looked so rough and faded that I was unsure if much could be done for it. Instead, Benjamin stunned me by restoring the deep black color by moisturizing the dry fabric with some shoe-polish wax. He glued down the edges and seams that were coming up and trimmed loose threads. He polished the metal pieces and y’all, he even crafted a new leather handle to replace the one that was long-since missing.
She is a vision of beauty and a gift of love. I typed my first letters on her on January 4th and I’m itching to type so many more! The first couple of rounds on her were a little rough. It took some time to adjust to her feel, find where the keys are, and intuit how she handles, but I’m learning her. Just one day later I was already so much speedier and more assured. I’ve named her Maggie, which is short for Magpie.
