Sunday, November 29, 2009

What Tom Hanks and I Have In Common


Think Tom Hanks, and the generation Y of us think Turner and Hooch. At least I do. Or Big. His acting skills aside, turns out ol' Tommy has a quirk or two up his sleeve. He was interviewed earlier this year, by I forget who, and spoke of his collection - typewriters. Apparently he has stored up over 150 of these marvellous machines. Portables, Manuals, Remington to Hermes to Czechoslovakian wonders. Until then I was naive enough to believe typewriters were all dull like the electrical late 80s Corona machine my cheap ass father bought me when I asked for a computer in the mid 90s. The thing barely printed, had none of the character of its predecessors, and looked like the front end of a '81 Audi. My father seemed to worry about the use of computer technology, and thought I'd spend my days chatting online to people across the world. Turns out he was right in the end.

Back to the beautiful beasts. Yes, folks typewriters come in mint green to grapefruit, small or large. Who would've guessed vintage typewriters are good for more than their glass keys, used to make those 'bracelets' hanging in the accessory store windows. Being the sort I am, dabbling in words here and there, I was, er, am enamoured. I needed to source a gold mine and naturally hit up search engines before finally settling on a beautiful Remington Model 5 Portable from Ebay. It cost more than I had anticipated (around $200) but it is in decent nick and it came from Australia (very important to me). So now my collection is under way.

The last collection I had was the peanut butter jar of erasers. I ate them all, which might explain why my digestive system completely hates me. Wait I told a lie. The last collection I had was letters from pen pals, who I'd find in the back of old Horse and Rider magazines. I kept the letters in an old cream and gold suitcase and opened them with a gold letter opener with a rose on it. I suppose you're meant to write back to pen pals, which could explain why I the collection never flourished. Hopefully this collection is more successful.

2 comments:

LiteraryMinded said...

I want one!

Amy Jackson said...

Hehehe. I love it. I'm going to write all my poetry on it. But I also have another one my Pa gave me from 1903. I'll need plenty o' room!