Saving the Underwood - Thanks for the Memories
I stood in the doorframe of the overstuffed storage unit and wondered how we got to this place, and where we would go from here. Dusty boxes of tax returns and old high school yearbooks, stacks of Great Aunt Lena’s paintings and a rolled up Persian carpet, a couple of living room chairs that showed years of wear and tear all crammed into the storage unit Mom and Dad rented for the past ten years. There were so many decisions to make, too many memories and heartstrings being pulled. In the end, I grabbed the typewriter and the vase and decided they made the cut.
At home, I spent the better part of two days scrolling through images on Ebay, Google, and Wikipedia wanting to learn more about the history of my parents’ treasures. I’ve been researching Dad’s old Underwood typewriter, trying to figure out the make and model, what year it was purchased, wanting to know it’s background. A few weeks ago, I obsessed over Mom’s mid-century smoky blue Blenko vase, curious to see what else the glass company produced during the early years of my parent’s marriage.
When she urged me to bring it to my home a month ago, Mom described in great detail the shop in southern California where she purchased the vase, over 60 years ago, and the conversation she had with the gallery owner. We talked about the kind of flowers she used to fill it with — sometimes Easter lilies, other times lily of the Nile, she reminded me. I think of those as flowers of my childhood. When I close my eyes, my sister and I are dancing around the glass coffee table in the living room where the vase sat holding a single blue agapanthus (the formal name for lily of the Nile). I can hear the sounds of Carol King, Dave Brubeck, and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass coming from the HiFi stereo cabinet that housed my parents’ vast collection of music— many were favorite jazz recordings from the evenings they spent at The Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach back in the 1950's.
I asked Dad about his typewriter, the one that had been collecting cobwebs in the storage unit, he laughed and remembered getting it at some point in high school, probably 1951 or 1952. The typewriter had been the perfect solution to his awful handwriting (he then recounted the broken arm from his childhood days — the primary source of what my family lovingly referred to as his unrecognizable chicken scratch). After Dad graduated from high school, the Underwood made its way from Los Angeles up to Stanford for undergrad and then back down to UCLA for his Masters degree. By the time my brother and sister and I were all in high school, the Underwood had a place of honor on our dining room table during finals week. English assignments being typed and retyped, testing the true meaning of the “Noiseless” model typewriter– made for long hours of smooth typing late into the night.
A month ago we moved my parents into a retirement community. Moving is a tricky business, each object has the potential take us down the rabbit hole of years gone by. There are stories behind everything, waiting to be told or retold, uncovered and discovered. We didn’t have the time or the space or the money to keep all the items they’ve kept over the years. But the Underwood and the Blenko happened to be a few of the treasures that found their way into my home, onto my dining room table.
The other day I filled the vase with some alstroemeria (lily of the Incas) from Trader Joes. I dusted the typewriter (the tiny key to open the case still works!) and slipped a clean sheet of white paper into the machine. There was a little ink left in the ribbon, and I gave it a whirl.
“Thank you” I typed. I was thinking about how grateful I am for the sweet memories these two objects have evoked, wondering what things in my home might pull the sentimental strings for my own daughters one day. And then, since it was Dad’s 86th birthday, I took a picture of what I typed next and sent the photo to my parents: “Happy Birthday, Dad ***”. (I had forgotten that Dad’s typewriter didn’t have an exclamation point or the number 1 on the keyboard. So, I used the asterisk instead and then went back to my research -Googling: why did old typewriters not have an exclamation mark?)
