One Christmas Gift Remembered

About six months before my older brother Eddie died from cancer, we sat on my porch and talked about our upbringing. 

We were somewhat poor when we were growing up, especially after my late father, Edward M. Davis, was injured while working as a lineman. He was electrocuted and burned severely over most of his body. The tough old former WWII frogman survived, but he was out of work for a good while. 

My brother and I agreed that although we were struggling, we had a happy childhood. My late mother, Claire, and my father (seen in the above photo), somehow managed to keep our house, and we never went hungry. 

Christmas was celebrated in our house, but we were told we could only have one gift (other than the socks and underwear placed in our stockings that hung on the wall). 

I knew that I wanted to be a writer when I was 12. That year I told my mother that if she would buy me a typewriter, I would be a published writer within a year.  

I don’t know how my mother did it, but I received an Olivetti Underwood typewriter for Christmas that year. I was surprised and grateful. (see the above and top photo of the typewriter). 

Some years later, I went to the movies with my friends. We went to see John Wayne in The Green Berets. I pounded on my friend Buster’s arm when I saw that David Janssen, portraying a writer covering the Green Berets in Vietnam, was carrying the distinctive Olivetti Underwood typewriter’s light and dark blue carrying case. 

“I have the same typewriter as the reporter,” I told my friend excitedly. 

He didn’t know what I was talking about. But due to my literary and journalistic ambitions, I was more interested in David Janssen's character as the journalist (based on Robin Moore, the author of The Green Berets, who trained and reported on the Green Berets in combat in Vietnam), than John Wayne and the Green Berets portrayed in the film.     

Although I was off by many years, I finally became a published writer. And although I use a computer these days, I still have my Olivetti Underwood typewriter, and it still works.  

So, as I celebrate Christmas this year with my wife, children and grandchildren, I'm thinking of my late mother, father, sister and two brothers. 

And I’m thinking of my Olivetti Underwood typewriter. 

Note: Below is a photo of the young aspiring writer: