Suddenly, a Typewriter Appears!

My dad and stepmom have lately been cleaning out some of their storage, which means that I receive a box of… stuff in the mail every couple months.

This time, the box was heavy and only contained one thing:

This pristine Corona typewriter belonged to my grandmother, and she wrote every letter and Christmas card on this thing for decades. It’s a testament to who she was: a deeply thoughtful, college-educated woman who traveled the world and kept in touch with people on almost every continent. Everywhere she went, she made friends, and they were friends for life.

I’m not nearly as good at keeping in touch with people, especially now that I’ve killed off most of my social media accounts. This typewriter reminds me that people were able to connect with each other across countries and oceans, even before social media, e-mail, home computers, and international phone calls. If my grandma could do it, I can, too.

Then again, I can’t type as fast as her:

I think I can do around 50 words per minute, which is nothing to sneeze at these days. Can you imagine hammering out 125 wpm on a mechanical typewriter? Grandma must have had forearms like a sailor!