The world of Stephen Brockelman: Memoir, Arts, Opinion
My first typewriter was a Remington Streamliner. It was a sweet little machine.
Classic Remington Streamliner Typewriter 1960s
#TBT When I started high school, I asked my grandmother to get me a typewriter for Christmas. (I’d already tapped my parents pretty heavily that year.) She said, “Sure, honey, but I wouldn’t know what in the world to buy.”
Well, I just happened to have picked out the one I wanted and had an ad for it in my pocket. She asked me why I wanted that particular typewriter because, she said, “It looks nice, but you might want something larger, more substantial.”
Christmas arrived, and my new Remington Streamliner was under the tree. I never did tell her why I picked out that particular typewriter, but I’ll share the reason with you:
It was the Remington model that Dick Van Dyke—as Rob Petrie—used on The Dick Van Dyke Show when he was working from home at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road, New Rochelle, New York.
Sally Rogers at the Remington Streamliner
My Streamliner moved to New York with me in 1969, and I used it for nearly a decade. I was really fond of that machine.
Even today—after all these many, many years—I’ll sometimes hear the ping of a small bell with a certain high pitch and feel, in response, as if I need to push the Streamliner’s sleek, chrome carriage return to the right and begin a new line.
As a Sr. Writer at T. Rowe Price, I work with a group of the best copywriters around. We belong to the broader creative team within Enterprise Creative, a part of Corporate Marketing Services.
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A long and winding road: My path to T. Rowe Price was more twisted than Fidelity’s green line. With scholarship in hand, I left Kansas at 18 to study theatre in New York. When my soap opera paychecks stopped coming from CBS and started coming from the show’s sponsor, Proctor & Gamble, I discovered the power of advertising and switched careers. Over the years I’ve owned an ad agency in San Francisco; worked for Norman Lear on All in the Family, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and the rest of his hit shows; and as a member of Directors Guild of America, I directed Desi Arnaz in his last television appearance— we remained friends until his death. In 1988 I began freelancing full time didn’t look back.
In January 2012 my rep at Boss Group called and said, “I know you don’t want to commute and writing for the financial industry isn’t high on your wish list, but I have a gig with T. Rowe Price in Owings Mills…” I was a contractor for eight months, drank the corporate Kool-Aid, became a TRP associate that August, and today I find myself smiling more often than not.
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