Photo: David Tempone
Two and a half years ago, after rudely leaving the Chicago Latin School where I taught for 11 years, a close friend gifted me with a manual typewriter, a 1964 Royal Safari. Year. I have had eight teaching positions in the last two and a half years. I lost friends over it, lost contact with others, and was rescued by an even closer plan. I feel like I disappeared alone. For all the jobs I’ve had since Latin, I feel like I’m everywhere at the same time.
But ever since, I’ve been writing on a manual typewriter. Rather than obsessively re-reading and correcting mistakes on the screen during my early drafts, I preferred to scribble down my thoughts quickly on paper. lost. Manual typewriters have set me free, and I now own half a dozen as a result.
The sixth was Olivetti Underwood’s Letera 32, the same model that Cormac McCarthy used to write nearly all of his works. He was later bought at auction for over $250,000. Francis Ford Coppola reportedly wrote “The Godfather” in Lettera 32.
My brother Jeff gave this to me after further periods of not talking to each other for reasons other than distance, routine and time. He owns a successful commercial and industrial refrigeration business where we grew up on Long Island and he has someone to do the junk removal. Long Islanders always have a man.
This guy had a job cleaning out abandoned storage lockers (kind of like a small garage).My brother’s guy came across what appeared to be a bowling bag. He called my brother when he opened up and discovered Olivetti. He accidentally threw away something my brother had treasured during another junk removal job, an old brass firefighter’s nozzle, the one the New York City firefighters used when they came back. I am grateful that it has happened. that day.
My brother sent me a picture of the machine and a text. it’s yours “
But Jeff sent me another photo, which was more interesting to us than the actual machine. Inside the case was one of his thick yellowed parchments, proudly printed at the top with the name “Hermann Schloss” in his blocky serif font.
Perhaps the typewriter I now own once belonged to this man, and all I knew about him was an odd array of types: some cursive, sans serif, bold, not bold. Some words are all uppercase, others are both uppercase and lowercase. The strangeness of his choices, his seeming inability to make decisions, or his sheer willingness to choose no uniformity fascinated me, and I swore quietly. more about him.
I’m not so much a typewriter restorer as I am a cleaner. I know how to clean properly. If there was a serious problem with the machine, I would probably take it apart, forget how to reassemble it, and put all the parts in a small cardboard box and put it in the closet. The ribbon alone was something I could handle.Hermann Schloss took good care of this machine, probably with regular use.
Hermann Schloss was a stamp collector. I had never heard of it until I discovered this person and his letterhead.The word is strange, of Greek origin fill- Combine with (love) Atells (taxes, tolls and fees free). Since stamps are used instead of tolls, stamp collecting is said to be a “love for stamps”.
He has written two books about his love of stamps. More specifically, he wrote about counterfeit stamps: How to spot the tiniest features that indicate fraud. His books are listed in reverse chronological order on his letterhead. “Timbrex” was his first publication in 1944, followed in 1948 by the more popular (and more clearly titled) “Characteristics of the Classic Stamp”. Collector newsletters and references found online.
There are several copies of the more popular titles online, but I wouldn’t pay $100 for one. My interest in his life far exceeds his interest in detecting counterfeit stamps. I wrote to a book collector and offered a few bucks if he would photograph anything personal he might have written on the page. All I wanted was a biographical note, perhaps a self-indulgent side commentary somewhere in the book, but from the pages I was able to see online, Schroth didn’t write that way His writing was clear and direct, intended to teach rather than impress. In the end, the bookstore ignored my request. Anyway, I think they thought it was a strange question. Who wants to know something about strangers who are only popular in the tightest, most obscure circles?
My son David scoffs at my habit of finding out where the cemeteries are and who is buried in every new American city we travel to. It’s not that uncommon if you’re just interested in something attracted to the dead, the resting places of celebrities, but when you’re in your 50s, you want to know more about ordinary people who no longer exist. I come to think. like me.
Herman Schloss’s final resting place is Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens County, New York, home of the US Open of tennis and the New York Mets. It is also the inspiration for the fictional Valley of Ash, which appears in F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this scene, an unremarkable man shovels ashes while luxury cars roar past, now Route 25A. ) get to all the life going on in New York City.
More than 217,000 people are buried on Mount Hebron, more than the population of Salt Lake City. As a child, I remember driving to Brooklyn to see her aunt’s sister and being horrified when Calvary Cemetery unfolded. There are about 1.8 million people buried there, most of whom I believe have been forgotten.
I was able to find some pictures of the book cover of “Characteristics of Classical Stamps”. it reads:
“Hermann Schloss wrote this book during three years of hiding in the French underground. I had very little, but I had many. timeFor this reason, his vast knowledge of stamps, combined with his ability to draw his own designs, has benefited the stamp collector immeasurably…”
Aside from the incredible story of how Schloss participated in the French resistance movement against the Nazis for three years (something I’d rather have Schloss write on than on stamps), the cover of the book was actually underlined. I am surprised by the word “time” that is used. What once existed as an abundant resource for men is expended. I’m running out of time.
It also occurred to me for a moment that the typewriter I was holding in my hand typed the words from the book. This was actually the typewriter that Hermann Schloss had when he was fighting the Nazis in World War II.
But the Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32 was built in 1963, so that’s not possible. He died two years after he died on July 10, 1965 at the age of 70.
Hermann Schloss lived in a low-rise apartment on 168th Street in Flushing, Queens. He spoke fluent English, French and German. Schloss is a member of the German Stamp Society and Collectors Club of Manhattan, founded in 1896 and still in existence. A quick search for Hermann Schloss on the club’s website yields no results.
We will continue to follow the life of Hermann Schloss. I want to know who he loved and where he drank, whether he had a son who loved him but didn’t really like him, or a brother who sometimes thought of him. I would like to know more about people like There may be a moment in the future when the only evidence of my time on Earth will be something like a discarded typewriter with parchment. As you put the paper into the machine, the platen catches it and scrolls it to the space just below the letterhead. It looks like a kind of tombstone.
