Royals

Trolling memories. Thinking about a new story.

My grandfather had a royal upright on the desk in his home office. I loved it ..the look of it: the sound of the letters hitting the paper: the scaping sound when you pulled the carriage across to return to start. And then...the words appeared on a piece of paper.  Magic.

When my mother typed her fingers flew across the keys as she filled pages with words. She was a 

professional secretary. Once she was secretary to the District Attorney and she worked in the Court 

House, a big important building downtown.

After my grandfather died my grandmother bought a portable typewriter for her smaller apartment. I was overjoyed when she gave the old Royal Upright to my daddy. I could type my high school papers on it but they were always plagued with typos. One night when my mother saw the pile of crumpled papers on the floor beside me my 

mother told me to move over and she typed my paper for me. It was perfect.

But the adolescent stories did not have to be perfect so I typed them myself.  Clicking and clacking the keys as I reached for the words I needed.

Shortly after we were married Jim and I went to the Goodwill 

Store in Baltimore and bought a Royal upright typewriter for $20...and a good sized executive desk for $10 ... a lot of money for our budget. 

The oversize kitchen in our row house apartment was the warmest room so we put the desk there making it our first quasi home office. Jim typed his medical student  papers and letters on it.

I had always had a hankering to be a writer so I spent the lonely evenings when Jim was

working or studying typing stories, long letters and anything else I  could think of.  

It started the pattern we followed for the next 56  years.