“Pop would have wanted you to have it,” said my older
sister as she handed the case to me. “Because you’re the writer in the family,”
she added, though this explanation was quite unnecessary.
The “it” is a Royal Quiet De Luxe that reportedly was
Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter of choice. The Royal Typewriter Company
manufactured its popular portable model from 1939 until 1959, the year of my
birth. My late father, Michael Augustine Olivas,
purchased it sometime after he had returned to the United States in 1952 after
serving two years as a Marine during the Korean War. I surmise that this
17-pound typewriter was a prized possession for this son of Mexican immigrants
who worked in a factory and had dreams of becoming a published writer.
Sadly, those dreams would remain unfulfilled to the end of
his life in 2020.
As with many immigrant families during the 1950s in my old
neighborhood a few miles west of downtown Los Angeles, my parents were able to
start a family, purchase a small house, and buy a car on the sole salary of my
father’s factory job while my mother focused on the hard work of primary
caregiver to their children, who would eventually number five over the course
of a decade.
My father worked the nightshift at an electric turbine
manufacturing company. He told me that when I was a baby—their third child—he
would set his typewriter near my crib and work on a novel, short stories, and
poetry. Pop joked that all that typing near my young self must have destined me
to the writing life.
I imagine him now, a handsome young man in his late 20s—younger
than my own son—clacking away on that Royal Quiet De Luxe with dreams of
becoming a published writer like the authors he loved: Fitzgerald, Cather,
Maugham, and of course, Hemingway.
Pop’s old portable typewriter is a beast of a machine in
all its mid-century glory. The light-brown metal casing complements the green
keys and space bar. The ivory-colored letters, numbers, and symbols still stand
out brightly against the green beds of the keys, which dip slightly at their
centers to allow fingertips to nestle in comfortably. And the smell—oh, that
smell!—when I open the case: The pungent tang of typewriter ink emanating from
the ribbon ignites a flood of childhood memories. I love that metallic, inky
scent. It reminds me of my father.
What happened to Pop’s typed pages? That was a mystery to
me until about 15 years ago. I had a book reading at Tía Chucha’s Centro
Cultural & Bookstore for a short story collection, and my father attended.
When it came time for audience questions, Pop stood, arms behind his back, and
introduced himself as my father. Everyone nodded, smiled, appreciated that this
man offered his son the support of his presence. Then he said softly, “I used
to write, too.”
The audience again nodded, smiled, and perhaps became a bit
puzzled about where this was going. I grew nervous, not certain what Pop was
planning to say next. He continued: “But it was trite.” I took a breath. And he
added: “Nothing important. Nothing like what you write.”
“I wish I could read
your stories,” I said, not knowing what else to offer.
He waved his right hand slowly to brush away my desires. “I
burned them all,” he said, punctuating the end of his story with a smile that
was far from bitter or morose, just accepting. He then sat, and the room fell
into a thoughtful silence. I could not bring myself to ask why he took such
final action in destroying his creative writing.
But a few years later, when my parents were visiting me and
looking at my various books and literary journals in our family study, I asked
Pop why he had destroyed his pages. As my mother looked on with trepidation, my
father explained that his writing had been rejected repeatedly by publishers,
and he decided that he needed to move on with his life. That meant he focused
on getting his college degree and master’s and eventually getting a job where
he wore a suit to work.
I so dearly wish Pop had saved his writing. I think about
what he wanted to express through fiction and poetry. The question of what he
wrote about was clearly a painful subject for Pop. I tried a few times to find
out what stories and sentiments he tried to tell through the written word, but
he never offered more than a wince and vague responses.
I do know this: My father was a proud Chicano who loved his
culture and people. My suspicion is that the publishing industry in the late
‘50s and early ‘60s was many times less hospitable to Chicano literature than
it is today—even with the structural racism that BIPOC and other
underrepresented writers still face and battle.
And that is a heartbreaking conclusion. A conclusion that
means my father’s voice will remain in my memory and not in the printed word. A
voice that—I believe—would have enriched not only
his family but also the world at large.
[This essay first appeared in The Writer Magazine.]
