Typewriter Rescue

Oregon was on fire. Facebook was doing its best to make it worse. I couldn’t travel to help my parents evacuate from their Clackamas County home. I had absolutely nothing to write and had just written about nothing. My favorite Pendleton shirt reeked of mold. I don’t have a dog. There wasn’t any wood left on my beaches to build a driftwood fort. The President was urging Americans to vote twice and break the law in order to ensure a lawful election result.

So . . . I went to my favorite animal thrift store and felt certain something in there was going to change my life for the better. I knew it! I can say for the record that I have purchased items from a thrift store that have changed my life for the better, quite drastically in fact.

I saw it. A blue portable Brothers Charger 11 typewriter from the 70s. Mint condition. $11! I found a piece of paper and ripped it around the platen. I hit the keys. Nothing. The ink was dry as a desert, dried out as American’s civic mindedness in the face of catastrophe.

Not matter about the ribbon. I could buy one online and be clanking away in a matter of days, perhaps even in OTA country! I’d be making a racket writing letters and streams of consciousness and pissing off the old timer who sits near my table and watches absurd B-Westerns. My god, the rifle fire from the Army killing the Indians is twice as loud as a typewriter. But when we come together, oh what a great noise it will make!

I left the story giddy and I strode into the smoke and fog with a tinge of happiness. Now to put that typewriter to work.