For my birthday a few years ago, Zane wrote “World’s Best Dad” on a mug in ceramics class. I’ve worn that cup out, but no matter how much I hint, I never get another.
On Jan. 5, Deidre and I met in Noe Valley at La Boulangerie de San Francisco to pick up king cakes to celebrate the Epiphany, and then a little shopping. Christmas had come and gone, and I was still looking for my gift.
Ever have a birthday and a friend shows up with what she thinks is the perfect present, and you don’t want to disappoint her but the back of your brain is going: “Where the hell am I gonna display this for the next 30 years or until she stops being my friend?”
For our wedding (the prelegal one), a co-worker gave us a sterling silver powdered sugar sifter. In the 34 years since, I can count on one hand how many times I have needed to sift powdered sugar, and on none of those occasions did I want the sugar sifted through a sterling silver sifter. But I keep it, because even though the giver lives on the other side of the continent, I can’t take the chance of her showing up and not seeing it in our china cabinet.
Gifting is worse within our family. My sons, Zane and Aidan, rarely think to buy Father’s Day gifts, but when they do, it’s usually New Religion T-shirts with red omegas. I’ve never been cool enough to pull that off. Yet often when I’m getting ready to step out of the bedlam blue bungalow, their first question is: “Why don’t you wear that omega shirt?”
I was grateful, therefore, that both sons had forgotten to pick out a Christmas gift. It gave me an excuse to pick out my own. When Deidre steered me into an antique store, my gaze fell upon an ancient Royal typewriter.
Longtime Chronicle readers know that Herb Caen produced his column, a thousand words a day, for 50 years on his Loyal Royal. On my first day with the paper, reporter Jill Tucker showed me the world’s most famous Royal, displayed like a museum object in a plexiglass case. (The second most famous? A gold-plated typewriter upon which Ian Fleming wrote all the James Bond novels.) I was humbled and awed to be part of a journalism tradition that stretched back to correspondents like Bret Harte, Jack London and Mark Twain.
“This is my Christmas present!” I told my husband when I got home. But of course, the ribbon was broken and a couple of keys were stuck, so it went into the closet. It sat there next to my boxes of X-Men comics until just last week.
Brian had an appointment with the Limb Salvage Clinic, and so I took the day off. But there’s only so much physical therapy you can do for a toe that isn’t there anymore, so when we were done, I said, “Let’s get that typewriter fixed.” The man at Berkeley Typewriter did not roll his eyes when he simply replaced the ribbon and shimmied the keys apart, but he did charge me for my ignorance.
Returning to the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior, I tried writing the draft for this column on my new old Royal. Never have been a great typist (although I did go to typing camp when I was 15), but in the decade working with my not-so-loyal iMac, I’d forgotten it takes a lot more pressure to type on a manual. The keys get stuck. And I needed Wite-Out. (Younger readers can Google that.)
On the other hand, my Royal didn’t need electricity, so I could type in the dark if I had to. But if I did, of course, I wouldn’t know what I was typing.
A bit of synchronicity: In the mail that day was an envelope from a Chronicle colleague, reporter Nanette Asimov. She had saved one of Mr. Caen’s hand-typed columns, about Madonna and Warren Beatty, and she thought the “time was right” for me to have it. In that moment, I had my true gift: a slim page of history, of a tradition to which I now belong.
I may never write as well as Herb Caen. In fact, I’ll never even type as well.
But whether on Royal or iMac, I now get to write about the city he loved, a town where you can find king cakes and antique typewriters. And a sterling silver sugar sifter, if you need one.
Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
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Grateful for unexpected gifts that are just my type - San Francisco Chronicle
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