I don’t think we consciously start collecting certain things. We don’t wake up one morning and say, “Today I’m going to start collecting cows.” It starts more organically than that. We see something that triggers an emotion and since we want to be reminded of that emotion, we buy that thing and set it on a shelf at home. Then one day, we see something similar to the first thing and it, too, spurs that memory or that feeling. And, so we buy that thing and put it on the shelf next to the first one. From there collections seem to take on a life of their own. Now you’re either purposefully seeking out that thing or you’re seeing that thing everywhere you go. Next, thing you know your shelf is full of all variations of that original thing. The beauty of collecting is that even though you may have two or twenty of those things, they each conjure up that warm and fuzzy feeling of the very first one you put on the shelf. 

This is the story of my typewriter collection. When I was in junior high school, my father had a blue Smith-Corona electric typewriter. This was the 1970s. One day, I was pecking away at it and he came into the room. I told him I was writing a story. And he casually said, “You should be a journalist when you grow up. That way you’ll never have to depend on any damn man.” 

I used that same typewriter all through school, writing essays at the dining room table, listening to its hum and the click-click of the keystrokes. I learned how to change its ribbon. I couldn’t play the piano like my sister. I couldn’t play golf like my brother. But, I could write on that typewriter. 

I have lived through typewriters, word processors, computers without hard drives, computers as heavy as boat anchors with cords as frustrating as tangled yarn. I have traded up through the years to where now the entire keyboard and screen are as flat as my palm and will fit into my purse. And I had forgotten all about typewriters. Until one day. 

We were rooting around the second floor of a flea market inside an old warehouse. My husband was plundering through boxes as I ambled down the crowded aisles. Then I saw it. The hard case was battered, but I felt a whisper brush through my gut. I touched it. My fingers searched for the way in, knowing exactly where the handle and latch were. My hands pushed up the lid and my heart flopped the way it would when I saw the face of a loved one. It was blue. It  was electric. It was the one. 

I ran my fingers over the keys. I flipped up the lid to see the ribbon spools. It was dented. It was dirty. It held memories. It symbolized my life before. It was the past promise of a future. It was me, sitting, writing, my first forays into the flow. I could hear my father’s voice. I wish I had listened harder, I wish I’d heeded his advice. But, at that moment, it was just me standing in front of an old friend. A friend I knew was coming home with me.   

I took the old girl home and gave her a good clean. I was surprised to learn you could still buy typewriter ribbons online. I went to YouTube to learn how to unstick her keys. And, one day I plugged her in. 

She jumped to life with that familiar hum and as I listened to her ratchety voice as I fed her a piece of paper, my chest filled with anticipation and love. I started tapping at the keys. The sound was intoxicating. I kept going until the bell rang and that sent another pang of happiness through my body. I pushed the long handle that turned the cylindrical rubber platen that pushed the paper to the next line and felt another rush. It was working and I was time traveling back to writing essays and short stories and the beginning of a novel. I was a teenager with the future yet unfolded and not particularly interested in it anyway. There were no bills. There were no sick husbands. There were no needy children. There were no layoffs. There were no foreclosures. No grown up struggles. That typewriter was my portal. My entrance backward. 

And so it began. As Sherlock Holmes would say, “The game’s afoot!” I began scouring Craig’s List, eBay, Goodwill, yard sales, flea markets and the collection grew. I fell in love with the small portable black and glossy 1932 Royal typewriter I bought from a girl on Offer Up. Its rounded shoulders and circular keys with the letters encased in glass made my heart swell. It was her grandmother’s and so I named it Granny. Others would follow, gray metal machines with green Bakelite space bars, plastic ones in vivid mid-century colors, ones with foreign letters and ones that typed in script. Script! I know!

Whew! Do you see what collecting can do to you? I would recommend it to anyone. And, thankfully, there are people who collect all sorts of things out there or I wouldn’t have a reseller business. Maybe that’s why I have a reseller business. Because if I can help one person find that one thing that sends them into the same ecstasy, the same joy, the same validation that there was a time in their life so happy, so safe, so easy and that object I’m selling them is their access to it, then I have fulfilled one of the great purposes of my life. Who knew all it would take was a beaten-down typewriter.