The Selectric typewriter sat on Granddad’s desk like an abandoned army tank. Its once polished keys had dulled under years of dust. He bought it in 1972 for $550, half his monthly paycheck—because he believed words mattered. The receipt was still tucked inside the ribbon compartment, yellowed at the edges, the numbers fading into the paper like ghosts.
I often sat cross-legged underneath his desk listening to the metallic click-clack as Granddad wrote letters to congressmen. His hands were thick with calluses, but his fingers moved over the typewriter keys with grace and ease like a concert pianist. One day while he was outside, I climbed onto his chair. The chair spun slightly under my weight, my fingers hovering above the keys.
“What’ja you doing?” Mother asked, standing in the doorway with a basket of laundry.
“Pretending to write a story,” I said.
She sighed—a sound I later recognized as the exhaustion of someone who’d given up on her own dreams. “Clean your room first.”
After Granddad passed, I carried his typewriter to the attic in a type of silent funeral procession, burying it under holiday decorations and drop cloths. Every summer I would climb the creaking pull-down ladder and imagine the words I’d write if I ever dared to press those stiff keys.
Thirty years later, the attic steps groaned under my weight, the same sound they made when I first carried Granddad’s typewriter to the attic. By then, I was grading essays instead of writing them. The attic smelled of mothballs and regret. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry when I saw the typewriter again. The lie evaporated when my flashlight beam caught the outline of the Selectric under a drop cloth, its silhouette unmistakable even beneath layers of dust and time.
I pulled away the drop cloth, my fingers trembling. When I opened the ribbon compartment, the receipt was still there. The numbers had vanished completely, leaving only the ghost of carbon paper impressions where $550 once declared Granddad’s faith in words.
Downstairs, a stack of ungraded essays waited on my kitchen table. I was 54 years old with a master’s degree and a ‘teacher of the year’ plaque; yet my hands shook harder reaching for Granddad’s typewriter than they ever had handing back failing grades. The irony tasted like attic dust and last chances—I’d spent a career teaching kids to parse sentences while mine gathered cobwebs.
The first keystroke jammed. A decade of disuse had stiffened the typewriter; the second try produced a perfect, dark letter A that punched through the yellowed paper I’d found in the desk drawer. By the third paragraph, my fingers remembered what my mind had tried to forget—the rhythm of words arriving faster than thought, the way stories used to unspool through me before I learned to measure every sentence against curriculum standards. Somewhere between the attic’s exposed rafters and the third page, I realized I wasn’t writing this story. It had been writing me all along.
After a 25-year teaching career, Sara Etgen-Baker began her writing journey. She’s written a collection of memoir vignettes/personal narratives (Shoebox Stories), a chapbook of poetry (Kaleidoscopic Verses), and a novel (Secrets at Dillehay Crossing). Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines including Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Guideposts
"the way stories used to unspool through me..." you surely have a way with words, Sara!
A wonderful read. Thanks. The year (1972) that your Grandfather made the purchase is the year I started to learn to type in a disciplined, highly structured vocational class in high school on a manual machine. I think it was an elective although I knew then that I wanted to work in an office in a big city and date interesting men. I have never forgotten the sound of the clack-clack-clack. I could eventually type 90 wpm.