I came across a 1958 Smith Corona Silent-Super manual portable typewriter—gray with forest green keys and Deco accents—in its original holiday case at the Presbyterian auxiliary thrift shop a half-mile from my home about three years ago.
It was buried under the women’s shoe rack as if someone had intentionally hidden it to be ignored by the volunteer women whose full-time job was to not take less than a dollar for The Kite Runner.
But there it was peeking out from underneath a pile of Steve Maddens and Nine West three-inch stilettos, all worn at the soles or beaten and broken and re-glued at the heels—keepers of the secrets of a thousand bad dates and conference room lunches.
There was no stopping me.
As soon as I excavated the post-War instrument from a pair of sagging Aldo boots, the typewriter was MINE. After some performative haggling, I skipped out the door with the surprisingly heavy but only on one end compact case under my arm for only $15.
At first, it was to be display-only—my typewriter—look at it. Look at me. I was a writer, after all, one who’d started way back with his version of a spec script on my mother’s old manual from high school and college. It was my seven-year-old self’s version of M*A*S*H that got me sort of in trouble because all Hawkeye seemed to say was, “Damn it, Hot Lips!”
At the time, I was also a big fan of California Typewriter, the love letter to the thumped-out word penned by Tom Hanks back a century and a half ago (2016) in his taut little documentary highlighting work of the similarly named Berkeley typewriter store which cared for and restored and resold Smith Coronas.
I believe in fate and magic and the thousand little things that come your way that if you DON’T look around and take advantage of them right then and there, your life takes an instant turn for the whatever, and you never get that chance back again.
And this was my typewriter moment, and I was going to nurse it back to its showroom-new glories, you know, restoring us both and all that.
I spent a couple of weeks watching YouTube videos obsessed with its care. Every key and rivet was expertly cleaned by my clunky fingers.
The top, with a blemish on it that refused to come out regardless of how much I caressed it with mineral spirits, smelled a little like industrial-strength decomposition—dusty and alkali—like an old car.
But with a new ribbon, and once-again shiny keys, and thorough cleaning of this simple creature from the undercarriage to adjustable paper guides—I was taken with the notion that actually writing on it would give me the peace of mind that I’d saved something from a less revered fate and reward me with a …classic.
You see, at the time, I wasn’t writing—like at all.
I was a landscaper and an odd-jobs doer. Wrangler of under-the-house hornets nests. Mover of cinderblocks. Cleaner of squatters’ detritus: empty cans of Monster, broken syringes, unopened bags of pretzels left in homes that had sat on the market for too long.
It was the last job I could get, in the last place in town that I looked.
And after twenty years of a career in newsrooms, for magazines, in the trenches of the constant threat of shakedown from average-Joe ghouls in middling tech companies, I was shivved one last time and spat out.
I remember telling a friend in a long and morose email (in the middle of an even more dire email thread) that I was “Done.” Forced out. It didn’t happen and that was OK.
All that time: high school, college, decades of trying, and like a bass player in a wedding band who puts his ax lovingly in his velvet case one last time after a gig where nobody notices whether he’s there or not, I stowed away writer me for the last time and went about my business of focusing on what I could to with my body while it was still in OK shape enough to do—something. I made money doing jobs nobody wanted to do getting paid under the table, and justifying when I needed to that it all went to help feed and clothe my kid. And that was it.
But this typewriter, it meant something, right?
Like a jerk, I imagined that hunting and pecking on this thing (I’m assuming you abandon all sense of knowing how to type on these extraordinary little machines...) would somehow produce something great. No Spotify to distract me, no email window permanently open, no Twitter feed outrage machine to endlessly scroll. Just me and the blank page and the thick, satisfying click, the slap of a keystroke.
I tried. I really did.
After its restoration, I propped the thing up on a pillow and got under my favorite blanket, and my faithful dog sat next to me. And I started (unironically) with this sentence: “Since we’re here, me and this typewriter, I thought we should both write again.”
And then I went on what I thought was a marvelous, affirming, he’s back baby once-in-a-lifetime screed that turned out to be: adpknfadufa7ypdpahfndd8d7payfdfu;aidfd8ahfe[ (mashed up with the fact that ribbon somehow tore in the middle of it and ink smudged everywhere including all over my hands, face, and shirt.)
…So the typewriter found its way back into the case and into the Indiana Jones Ark of the Covenant mini storage of my garage—and eventually on to eBay.
I’d all but forgotten about it until last night; someone named Sam5832 messaged me and asked me to take pictures of the font (apparently that model had several) plus a few other close-ups.
I moved some boxes and there she was, looking right back at me; I felt a wave of guilt. Were I to keep her, it’d only be to serve as a large paperweight to signal people who tour the well-preserved built-in shelving of the office in my upper Elmwood brown-shingle Craftsman that yes, indeed I AM a writer.
But those spaces cost $3.5 million and are left to the smoke and mirrors or generational wealth, finance bros, and Michael Chabon.
For me, I will always have room in my heart for the Smith Corona and all it represents, but the physical space in my life is taken up with other more meaningful projects, and for now, at least, that’s enough.
BYU vs. UAB in the Independence Bowl (Independent from anyone caring #amirite)
Bowl season is practically upon us *yawn* and no. 2 Michigan will be representing the West Coast in the College Football Playoff at the Orange Bowl on Friday, Dec. 31.
The rest of the teams (Michigan’s opponent Cincinnati, plus Georgia and Alabama to guarantee the SEC a spot in the title game, again) are at minimum 2,100-plus miles away from the Rose Bowl, where the only post-season college game that matters (Utah is going to destroy Ohio State, more on that next week) will be played in front of actual dozens of soon-to-be-Omicron-stricken fans.
The real story of this fledgling college football offseason is the same one as every other college football offseason—head coach musical chairs starring some names you never heard of winning the boosters’ lottery.
The first volley was a big one from the University of Miami who gave their head coach Manny Diaz $9 million (who says nobody wants to work!) just to go away and instead are supplying former Oregon HC Mario Cristobal with generational wealth to come back to his alma mater (8 years $80 million base.)
Hurricane faithful hope Cristobal can restore the team to its satin Starter jacket glory days and put Vanilla Ice and 2 Live Crew back on the charts; we’ll see. Sometimes there’s just not enough cocaine and bad decisions in the world to make it spin in the opposite direction.
The same year Miami faculty and staff were given notice that their retirement plans were severely cut back during Covid and that they’ll be making, IN TOTAL, less than the new head coach—did not sit well on social media.
Football is terrible for schools. It’s a bad investment, especially in times of endless pandemic. But beyond the money flushed to oblivion—even if we admit that young men doing permanent damage to one another’s bodies and brains is purely for entertainment and that undergrad is a giant sleepaway camp for well-endowed real estate juggernauts—it’s still an endeavor for the craven.
No coach will ever be good enough. No result permanent. It’s a pursuit singularly crafted to sell more car/home/life/health insurance.
I hope Cristobal and the others who are rewarded with eight or nine-figure scratchers enjoy the perks for now. Eventually, the ‘Canes will slink to 7-5 and appearances in the Quick Lane, or Cheez-It, or Frisco Classic bowl(s), and the school will move on to something, someone new.
It’s a game defined by homogeneousness now; no new offensive sets, no surprise defensive schemes, no tactics defined by region—nothing said in a press conference that hasn’t been said before, and better. In late-capitalism glory is temporary; living off interest is forever.
The BYU football Cougars will face the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the Independence Bowl on Dec. 18 in Shreveport, La. Besides having the slight home field advantage (I’m not sure John Smith knew about Shreveport though plenty of his flock will now follow him there for a pre-Christmas romp), 8-4 UAB (6-2 in Conference USA) doesn’t have a lot of weapons to counter the no. 12 Cougs’ air assault.
The Cougars won their first five games and had the role of West Coast CFP spoiler in their crosshairs but hiccuped with back-to-back losses to Boise State and no. 6 Baylor,
But they got back on track with five in a row to finish out the season, including staying undefeated (5-0) against the Pac-12—ending the year with a win on the road at USC.
BYU averaged 42 points this season, putting 66 on Virginia and 59 on Iowa State in late-October/early November, and the program never missed the over. It’s a third-tier bowl of broken promises and what-could-have-been's for the Provo faithful, but at least there’ll be some parking lot gumbo and a 20-point margin of victory for those who show.
Take no. 13 BYU -7 vs. UAB and the over (54.5) at Independence Stadium 3:30 p.m. EST Saturday, Dec. 18 on ABC