A woman who lives in our neighborhood and in our Ward at church is having to sell most of her belongings to move into a retirement home. She is a dear friend and I have had some wonderful evenings chatting with her. She has some amazing stories to tell, of hardship and pain, but also overcoming her trials with love and humor. I will be sad to see her leave our area.
Last weekend she had a garage sale, trying to clear out her house and earn some money. My friend Audrey was helping her run the garage sale and she told me about a typewriter that Bette was wanting to sell. As soon as Audrey saw it, she knew that I would have to have it. She called me to come check it out.
They hadn't even put the typewriter out in the general sale, hoping that I would be interested. Boy were they right! Eric was with me, and we were both stunned when we pulled it out of the cardboard box it had been stored in. It is a Smith Premier Typewriter No. 2, built back in 1904. I had never seen one like it in person before, only in pictures. The pictures cannot do it justice! This is a neat machine!
Bette wouldn't even let us make an offer on the typewriter. She said to go ahead and take it with us, and we could talk money later. She just wanted it to go to someone who would love it, and not try to turn around and sell it. The typewriter had belonged to her father, and he had loved it. I think about all the words that have gone through that machine over the years, the stories it could tell. I am inspired to write a story based on that, hopefully I can do it justice!
Bette told us a funny story about how she acquired the typewriter from her father. She and her older sister were always in serious competition with each other. As soon as Bette said she wanted something, it was an automatic response that her sister would want the same. As her father was in his old age dividing up his possessions between his children, Bette asked if she could take the old typewriter. She had always loved it. She loved to write, and it was something special to her that reminded her of her father. Her sister immediately said that she wanted it as well, even though she hadn't paid any attention to it before.
Bette's father leaned in conspiratorially with her sister saying, "It's broken anyway, and Bette just likes to play with it. Just let her have it."
At first Bette was offended, thinking that her father didn't take her seriously, saying how she just likes to play with it, but soon she realized that he just wanted her to have it. Her sister, thinking that she and her father were in on a little joke, agreed to let Bette have it. Bette won.
She said that she had never loved her father more.
Now I get to make some memories with this old machine. Bette had told us that her uncle sautered some of the pieces together because it was falling apart, and so it no longer worked. Eric took it home, pulled out a flashlight, and together with Ethan marveled over the delicate mechanisms inside the machine. He tweaked a few things and got the keys to work properly. Now it just needs a new tape with ink to completely work.
Eric teases me, saying that it was an expensive paper weight, but he was just as excited about the old typewriter as I was. It may not even ever write anything again. It may just collect more dust. But now it sits in a place of honor in my pretty glass curio cabinet. It is valuable, not just for its monetary worth, but for what it meant to Bette and her father, for what people touched its black and white keys, for what stories it told and what letters it wrote.
Oh, if only it could speak for itself.
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