Sorry, Mr. Typewriter (It’s the first day of summer)

Note: It is no longer Saturday as I post this, nor is it any longer the first day of summer. It’s like the fourth or fifth day of summer, and every day has been as magical or more magical than the first.

I bought some ribbon for my typewriter today like one would purchase a pack of gum. I rode early (for a Saturday) to an obscure store half an hour north of my neighborhood that is open 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. on Saturdays. As far as I know, it’s the only place in the city that sells typewriter parts.

The old man who owns the shop sits by himself among the dim hum of a radio and mountains of antique writing machines. He looked surprised when I entered but has obviously been in business long enough to know the mechanical motions of a transaction. I told him what I needed, he procured a small white box from an unsturdy metal shelf, I compared its contents to the spool I had pulled from my typewriter, gave him some cash, and turned to leave. He said something about the weather as I was walking out — an observation about its present beauty and the long, cold spring we’ve had to wait through to receive it. I agreed abruptly, then exited the shop.

I felt upset as soon as I was outside. I had deviated from the protocol that such a specialized purchase from such a unique place demands, and was worse off for it. We are both typewriter people — he an old one, and I a young one — and there are typewriter-people things to talk about. It would be like two animals of a particularly endangered species passing in the jungle and not even acknowledging each other. Worse, I was the one who cut the conversation short. I saw on his walls half a dozen newspaper clippings, spanning years and publications, that all featured profiles of him and his typewriter shop. I noticed one by Rick Kogan, a longtime Chicago Tribune writer who wrote Studs Terkel’s obituary. The shop owner had much to offer, and I blew him off.

I suppose I was just in a hurry. Getting typewriter ribbon was an errand I had to run, not a ritual. I have some packages to send that require notes, and I compose notes on my typewriter. I had to meet my friend for lunch in an hour, and faced a long ride back south. I didn’t have time to dally with the typewriter man.

I was also infused with adrenaline from the bike ride to the shop. The street I rode up was packed with cars manned by angry drivers, honking and yelling at each other in the heavy heat. It was almost 90 degrees, and I had flown up the lane between the empty cars parked on the curb and the occupied cars parked on the road. This makes for dangerous riding — the greater the difference between your speed and that of the traffic around you, the greater the peril. Drivers don’t anticipate bicyclists flying up beside them at less than an arm’s length, and I had a couple close calls when cars lurched in traffic-jam fashion into my path. I didn’t talk to Mr. Typewriter because I was all amped up on hormones.

Upon my arrival home I lied in the grass in my backyard in the pulsing sun rays. I couldn’t open my eyes for the brightness, and it felt like I was lounging in a furnace. I was sweaty from my commute and basked in the grime of the first real day of Chicago summer.

After lunch, my friend Danielle and I walked through the Puerto Rican Pride Parade/Festival that’s been happening half a block from my house all week. We gambled on a game for which you picked numbers and won if a mouse they released on a spinning table crawled into the hole labeled with the same digits. We bought a piña colada and drank it out of a pineapple. We talked about how she moved to Chicago last May, and had fun during the summer, but after experiencing a complete winter here, summer would be a entirely different thing: Summer in Chicago after winter in Chicago is a three-month-long victory dance, an explosion of freedom and fun, like being released from wrongful imprisonment. After a cold and rainy spring, it has finally begun.

Division Street