‘Type-Rider’ Inspires Prose in Mahopac
Last Tuesday, the Freight House Cafe in Mahopac became the fourth stop on a national tour to create a collective poem with the words typed by hundreds if not thousands of Americans, stretching from Massachusetts to Wisconsin.
The tour was created by Maya Stein – or the “Type Rider” – who came up with the idea that directly following her 40th birthday, she would bike from her home in Amherst, Mass, towing a wagon that holds her turquoise, vintage manual typewriter. On each day of her 40-day tour, she would set up a mobile typing booth and invite local residents to contribute their words to the Great American Poem.
While organizing the trip, she called the Greater Mahopac Carmel Chamber of Commerce and spoke with Terry Fokine, who offered a suggestion as to where Stein might set up her typewriter during her stop in Putnam County.
“She needs to go to the Freight House Cafe. That would be a great place,” Stein said Fokine told her.
Freight House owner Donna Massaro said she was touched that Fokine had thought of her establishment as the perfect place for poetry and community interconnection.
“It was so cool that she thought of me first. It gets me a little choked up,” Massaro said.
The suggestion fit Stein’s idea of the kinds of venues she identified across her route.
“In reality, it’s the perfect cafe,” Stein said. “Donna was so incredibly welcoming and caring. The second I walked in, I left like I was in my second home.”
The instant connection between local cafe owner and traveling poet/bike rider epitomized why Stein had set out on this journey in the first place.
Having to press so hard on the keys of the decades old machine connects people to the experience of typing, Stein said, and the reaction to the typewriter – new to younger people and memory-provoking for older generations – connects people to each other and the experience.
“To kids, it’s something coming down the pike. They think it’s the future,” Stein said. “And their parents have a nostalgic reaction to it. Their face softens. They have some nostalgic memory of a typewriter.”
Each day, Stein offers a prompt at the top of the page that is threaded into the typewriter. In Mahopac, that prompt was “I Hope,” which proved to be quite serendipitous for two Mahopac residents, Joanne Sanchez and Patricia Bassett, who made plans to meet at the Freight House Cafe to draw up a business plan and ended up contributing to the poem.
“The experience was very spontaneous. I wrote about what I was feeling…about her coming to Mahopac. What that represents for Mahopac? A change and a new beginning,” Sanchez said. “It was auspicous that she was here and my friend and I came here and we connected.”
Bassett said sitting at the typewriter offered an opportunity for what might become of their business plans.
“I found the project to gather these writings phenomenal. It was an opportunity to put my wishes out there. To put these things out into the universe,” Bassett said.
After Stein makes it toMilwaukeeand finally home, she intends to take what people have written and publish it in a book.
“I don’t tell them that when they start. That can throw people off,” Stein said. “For people who have never been published, that’s very validating…to be able to give people that opportunity? That feels good.”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.