Detective Polhaus: “Heavy. What is it?”
Sam Spade: “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.”

Last night was rainy. Several storms moved through the area, bringing heavy rain, strong wind, and occasional light hail. The lightning show was spectacular.

Under normal circumstances, I would not have been out in it, braving the rain-slicked roads in the Mustang. It’s low-traction and high-torque. It doesn’t take much to make it fishtail or hydroplane in bad weather. But no rain clouds would deter me this night as I rounded the Twin Cities and headed north. For you see, these storm clouds had a silver lining.

A sterling silver lining, to be exact.

It’s a bit tarnished now, but with the proper care it should shine up nicely. For those unfamiliar, this is the almost-never-seen sterling silver edition Smith-Corona Sterling. The body is solid sterling silver, made by Gorham. They were made as part of a promotional window display for dealers in late 1931. The most accurate figure I have located for the total number made is 184. Only a fraction of those seem to have survived. Perhaps the reason for that is that Smith-Corona actually suggested to dealers that if they didn’t sell the silver machine by the end of the promotion they could recoup most of the cost of the $127.50 display by selling the machine in a regular housing and taking the silver housing to a silversmith for the market price of the silver.

I’ll have more about how this particular model came to be on Machines of Loving Grace soon.

EDIT: MoLG has been updated.

Clearly, the people behind Big Brad’s on Broadway (not to be confused with any of the other nonexistent Big Brad’s locations) put zero consideration into the grand, historic 110-year-old building that for over a century housed the Paine Furniture store.

Big Brad's on Broadway

The cheap brick façade, tiny rectangular window, and cartoonish handpainted sign make it look less like an upscale bar and more like the kind of place that you would want to slip into unobserved.

I’m sure neon beer signs galore can be expected to emanate their gaudy countenance upon what remains of a once proud building.

Typed on a 1940 Corona Sterling.

The other was my mom’s cousin, Terrill Bilyeu. Here he is, taken about 1955 during a visit to my grandparents Kansas farmhouse:

On October 24, 1960, Terrill was flying a T-28 Trojan Navy training airplane about a mile from Pensacola Naval Air Station when he collided with Kenneth Shelley, Jr’s T-28 upon final approach. One of the planes crashed into a field and burst into flames. The other crashed, but did not burn. Both pilots were 21. Terrill had been in the Navy just 11 months.

Who do you remember today?

Typewriter: Daphne, a 1930 Royal Portable

Working the Screaming Mimi in the back yard

Update: the transformation is underway!

Now I see that there has been a definite shift in attitude at my favorite thrift store, the one that until now had been my best supplier of serendipitous finds. The price of a blasé Sears electric from the ’80s has inflated by 3 times, and a late ‘6os Remington Streamliner which once would have been $4 or $5 now has been given a spot in the glass display case up front and slapped with a $25 tag. It’s pretty, but it ain’t all that.

I can’t help but wonder if someone there didn’t see the article and decided that they were underpricing their typers. The typewriter evangelist part of me wants to spread the word of clattery goodness, but the selfish, cheapskate collector part of me wants to keep their desirability a closely-guarded secret.

Typewriter: 1940 Remington Model 1

But an off-white Royalite slathered in flower decals…?

Now that’s irresistible tackiness! $5 was worth just the opportunity to photograph it.

If you were to guess that this typewriter was probably owned by a 16-year-old girl, you’d be right. The proof is that her class schedule, including Driver’s Ed, was written on a sheet of notebook paper inside the case. Take note, Pottery Barn set designers!

Also down in the bottom of the case were three Gold Bond Stamps. Those of us of A Certain Age remember trading stamps. Your mom would get a certain number whenever they bought groceries. At home, the stamps (most often the green S&H variety) would go into a little booklet, and after so many booklets were filled up, they could be redeemed for Valuable Prizes. I remember my mom once got a set of “unbreakable” dishes with trading stamps. (“Unbreakable” is a loose term in the presence of an 8-year-old.) I think that one could even get a Maytag washer by redeeming a ridiculous number of stamp books.

It makes one wonder: were typewriters ever offered as trading stamp prizes? Could that be how our mystery teenager’s mom bought her typewriter?

I’m leaning toward naming her Lizzie, after Elizabeth of York, whose marriage to Henry Tudor (aka Henry VII) effectively ended the Wars of the Roses by bringing together the houses of Lancaster (whose badge was the red rose) and York (the white rose). Henry subsequently adopted a white-on-red rose as his own badge. Known today as the Tudor Rose, it is still used as the heraldic emblem of the UK. It seems doubly fitting for the name, then, that our Royalite should be white with red roses.

Now if only it had script typeface.