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Penciling in a Thrill on Road Trip
Third in a series of columns chronicling my recent father-son travels from Paul Revere’s gravesite in Boston to John Steinbeck’s writing cabin in Long Island, and more.
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It was like seeing a Stradivarius violin, only better. Imagine eyeballing one of Babe Ruth’s bats – that he lathed himself. Or a paintbrush made by Rembrandt.
Such was the goose-bump thrill I had at the New York Public Library when I came head-to-lead with a pencil made by Henry David Thoreau. Even visiting the great writer’s home in Concord, Massachusetts, three summers past, I had not come across one of his graphite-and-wood handiworks.
Another surprise: the pencil is three-sided, not round.
My arm hairs stood at attention as I imagined Thoreau using this pencil to write down his thoughts about learning to “live deliberately” during his famous stay of two years, two months and two days at Walden Pond.
Serendipity had smiled. To my “collection” of typewriters I have seen that belonged to famous authors I added: “Thoreau’s Pencil*.”
The asterisk is needed because it was not possible for Thoreau to lug a typewriter into the woods in 1845 since the first commercially successful machine did not come out until 1868. Moreover, it is doubtful Thoreau would have used a QWERTY keyboard anyway. “Simplify, simplify” after all.
Enjoying a bully good time at Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill.
And so Thoreau’s Pencil* joined my list that includes Jim Murray’s 1946 Remington Rand; Thornton Burgess’ 1910 Underwood No. 5; Eleanor Roosevelt’s circa 1904-1905 Smith & Corona L C Smith Super Speed; and John Steinbeck’s Swiss-made circa 1950 Hermes Baby.
Only moments later, also unexpectedly on display in the New York Public Library, came another addition: novelist/screenwriter Terry Southern’s battleship-grey Olympia typewriter.
My collection expanded once more, and once more by surprise, the very next day when my son and I drove 40 miles northeast of the New York Public Library to Oyster Bay, Long Island. Specifically, we visited Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill home – known also as “The Summer White House” from 1902 through 1908.
With a hilltop view and wide veranda, the three-story Queen Anne-style mansion is grand on the outside. Inside it is no less impressive, its 23 rooms collectively filled to bursting with T.R.’s bully energy, artwork (countless Remington bronze sculptures) and books (8,000 volumes) and hunting trophies shot by “The Old Lion” himself.
Most breathtakingly bully of all the big-game hides, tusks and mounted animals is a massive Cape buffalo head in the entry parlor. Displayed at its actual height were the beast standing, the menacing ebony horns seem ready to charge and gore each visitor.
A different trophy caught my attention upstairs on the third floor. At the end of the hallway in T.R.’s study, which he called “The Gun Room,” a thread linking some past road trips to the New York Public Library now weaved into the present: Theodore Roosevelt’s black-and-gold Remington Standard Typewriter No. 6.
As with his niece Eleanor Roosevelt, I had not thought of T.R. as a writer. This was my great oversight, twice over, for Eleanor authored 28 books while Theodore surpassed that and greatly. Between 1882 (“The Naval War of 1812: Part I”) and 1919 (“Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children”), T.R. penned 47 volumes.
Due east 80 miles from T.R.’s hilltop Eden overlooking Oyster Bay, driving a rental car past the Hampton Bays and nearly to the tip of Long Island, another author’s home awaited us this same day.
This was the trophy destination our entire road trip had been planned around: a famous author’s home and backyard writing cabin he named “Joyous Garde.”
Indeed, the joy was to continue.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
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