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                                    Fools%u2019 Journey542Although my belly wasn%u2019t gone completely, it was greatly diminished, and I had to do some extra cinching of my belt to keep my pants from falling down. So I quit dieting%u2014but figured I still needed the exercise, so I kept riding my bike. When winter set in, I rode whenever the temperature was above 40 degrees, and the road was dry enough that my tires didn%u2019t flip water up at me.%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 of their belongings 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 small, ethnic statues. One day I spotted an old upright, black, Underwood No. 5 typewriter on their auction. It dated from the 1920s, looked like a dinosaur, and was the type of machine my dad had repaired and sold when I was a young boy. Back then, I asked him, on more than one occasion, to teach me how to repair 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 a typewriter in for a new one, how to count out change at the checkout counter, and how to look at an invoice, which listed the wholesale cost per dozen, and calculate the retail selling price per unit. But actually fixing typewriters would have been much more fun. If he had just given me an old one that was worn-out just to play with and dismantle, I would have enjoyed it immensely. But he never did, and I never thought to ask for one.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%u2014
                                
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