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Fools%u2019 Journey542pants from falling down. So I quit dieting%u2014but figured I still needed the exercise, so I kept riding my bike until winter set in, then started again in spring.%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022There was a business in Bloomington called Estate and Downsizing Specialists. As its name implied, when someone wanted to sell off some belonging so they could move into a smaller residence, or a family needed to dispose of an entire estate, the company would catalog and photograph those possessions and list them for sale through their on-line auction. Lynn and I perused their website occasionally, but not with any regularity. Over several years, we had bid on, and won, two ethnic statues. One day I spotted an old upright, black, Underwood No. 5 typewriter on their auction. It was from the 1920s, looked like a dinosaur, and was the type of machine Dad repaired when I was a young boy. Back then, I asked him, on more than one occasion, to teach me how to repair on them, and each time he just said, %u201cNo, you don%u2019t want learn to do that.%u201d I%u2019d asked because I did want to learn. The mechanical nature of typewriters had always intrigued me, and I wanted to know more about how they operated. Of course, he did teach me other things. Such as how to change a ribbon when a customer brought in a typewriter for a new one, how to count out change at the checkout counter, and how to look at an invoice with the wholesale cost per dozen and calculate the retail selling price per unit. But actually fixing typewriters would have been more fun. If he had just given me an old one that was wornout to play with and dismantle, I would have enjoyed it immensely. But he never did, and I never thought to ask.Dad started selling typewriters in 1938, six years after graduating from High School. He was able to obtain an exclusive franchise to sell Remington Rand models for the area surrounding Fowler%u2014including part of Illinois. The company also put him through a training course for a week in Chicago to learn to repair them, so he was able to refurbished and sell used machines too. But when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1942, he had to place all