Trisha Ricketts

My Grampa Webster’s 1938 maroon Sterling-Corona typewriter graces our mantel. Whenever I look at it, I first see Grampa sitting at his basement desk surrounded by stacks of size-3 shoe samples as he typed invoices for his shoe customers. That basement, however, was also where he painted: shoe salesman by day, artist by night. Next, I see my sisters and I sneaking down to his “atelier” trying on sample high heels to transform ourselves into movie stars while the adults shared cocktails upstairs.

When that typewriter was passed down to me in 1981, I drafted my first novel on it during my children’s naptime. Took me a full year. Unfortunately, that novel was lost in a move, forever floating somewhere in the ether of fond memories, along with Grampa’s spirit.

Now I have a computer to hold my writing, but whenever I look at Grampa’s Sterling-Corona, I hear his whispered message: “Keep writing.”