HUNT & GATHER, SMILE & REMEMBER

Occasionally, the Wall Street Journal will, in its Saturday "Off Duty" section, highlight a city or scenic area and create a tightly scheduled, but perfect three day holiday.  This past weekend, WSJ settled on Minneapolis, calling it "The Nicest City in America."  A little over a year ago, my son was transferred to Minneapolis, bought a house and his sweet wife and two adorable children quickly flew there to join him.  We've visited twice since, and would certainly agree with the WSJ...Minneapolis is indeed a very nice place to be.  So nice, in fact, that many of our Arizona neighbors migrate there every summer to escape the dry heat of Arizona.

Since the WSJ, particularly the weekend edition, serves as my go-to coolness indicator, I began skimming their Minneapolis suggestions in hope that we had chosen correctly as we toured the city.  Although our visits lean a little toward lengthy lunches at Chuck E Cheese (the adorables are 4 and 7), we had still managed to visit, walk or drive by a few of WSJ's suggestions. But, generally, their schedule left me feeling a bit unsettled, not to mention uncool.  How could we have missed that many great restaurants and bars, groceries, bakeries and shops?  But wait!  I recognize that!  Scheduled from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon: Hunt & Gather.  Perhaps my favorite antique, oddities, curiosities, and all around interesting shop ever.  Located on Xerxes Avenue among similar venues, one can easily spend half the day on the first floor.  The one hour schedule allotted by the WSJ barely gets you in the door.  Relax, WSJ.  Enjoy.  Smell that bit of mustiness, savor the age, page through that book.  There may be a treasure just around the corner...or down the stairs.  How do I know?
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Because I was lucky enough to find this flawless, beautiful 1936 Royal Deluxe portable typewriter in the veritable rabbit warren that is Hunt & Gather's basement.  I spotted four or five well maintained typewriters, all displayed with equal care, but this one whispered my name as I approached.  My fondness (if not love) for  typewriters began when I was a small child and spent hours at my Aunt Letha's house typing nonsense on her vintage business-sized Royal.  I covered reams of paper with letters, numbers and symbols, and cried when it was time to go home.  When I graduated from high school and received my portable Smith-Corona (gray metal with green keys) to facilitate my college notes, research papers and the occasional letter home, I placed it carefully near my bedroom window and spent the summer typing, and day-dreaming of writing the great American novel.  Occasionally, I would open that window and light a cigarette I'd lifted from my mother's pack of Kools.  I'd carefully blow the resultant smoke out the window and magically become the very image of the Great American novelist.  

That summer, I was a voracious reader, devouring Time, Life and the Saturday Evening Post every week.  Through their pages, I shared Paris with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Simone de Beauvoir, literary figures typing madly away on their Royal Deluxes or Underwoods.  They were my beautiful people...the glamorous intellectuals living in far away Europe, fueled by booze and the occasional positive review.  They were who I wished I could be.  Unfortunately, they were not who I was fated to be, considering my poor showing in Freshman Honors English.   

   
I have no idea who might have owned my new wonderful typewriter.  I hope they loved it...they certainly cared for it or, perhaps simply didn't use it often, but it's in good hands now.  It has transported me back to those dreamy, sultry summer days at the bedroom window when everything was possible and just around the corner.  Dreams were real and right there for the taking.  It was a glorious time.  Perhaps dreams don't have to end...68 may be pushing it a bit but, Lord knows, if not now, when?