Letters on a 1962 Typewriter

I found an old Smith-Corona typewriter at a garage sale for fifteen dollars. It was sky blue, with one sticky key and a ribbon that had dried out decades ago. I spent a month restoring it at my kitchen table.

When it finally worked, I didn't know what to type. So I wrote a letter to my granddaughter, who's eleven and lives three states away.

She wrote back by hand, on notebook paper with stickers, asking how the typewriter worked. I typed her a whole page about it. She asked about my childhood. I typed her stories about growing up on a farm and riding to school on a tractor.

We've exchanged forty-one letters this year. She keeps mine in a shoebox. She says her friends think it's "so retro." For her birthday, I found her a little pink typewriter of her own. Her first letter on it was eight words long, full of typos, and the best thing I've ever read: "Dear Grandpa, I love you. Clack clack clack."