But although it may seem strange to pause and reflect over a now discarded plastic box of electronics, that is exactly what I'm going to do. There are memories attached to that printer.
Christmas 1995. In the latter part of my former life, it was one of the good years, perhaps the best. Our son had just turned seven years old. Relations with my spouse were better than they had ever been as we cared for our son and renovated our Silver Spring, MD, bungalow. That year we had just refinished our basement and put on a new roof. I had become something of an accomplished plumber in those years, and I still remember soldering those last joints in the copper pipes connecting the basement radiators that a friend had helped me collect from southern Maryland. I didn't know then that those would be the last joints I would ever solder.
The days before Christmas 1995 found me at the Computer Depot on Rt. 355 in Rockville - Gaithersberg. Computer electronics were to be a large part of that Christmas as we upgraded to whatever the technology flavor of the year was, maybe one of the first Pentiums running Windows 95? I do remember with excitement that there would be a DVD drive. As I made my way to the cash register, I saw it on prominent display: an HP DeskJet 400 ink jet printer. The price was a bargain, not even $100 as I recall. Should I? I thought about the dot matrix printer that had served us well but got excited over the thought that with an ink jet we would be able to print photos. I added the printer to my cart.
Christmas morning was a good one, and I recall us watching our first-ever DVD on the big 20-inch color VGA monitor. But it was the printer that stole the show. It printed in color! True, one had to swap cartridges to switch between color and B&W, but it seemed like magic watching the paper with printed image appear in minutes, a time that in those days seemed to us unbelievably fast.
The years went on, and one by one every computer-related device from that Christmas became outmoded and was moved to the attic if not to the trash. The HP DeskJet 400 lingered longest and served us well until it, too, found its way to the attic, supplanted by something that seemed at the time faster and better even if I have no recollection what that might have been.
The HP DeskJet 400 gathered dust in the attic, alternately freezing and broiling for five or more years until I happened upon it again in the summer of 2005. I was getting ready to go Moscow for my first overseas assignment as a Foreign Service Officer. I didn't want to remove anything of great value from our home and was, rather, combing the attic for things we didn't need but that could still be of service to me. Our HP DeskJet 400 was soon in a container bound for a new life in Europe.
For ten years the HP DeskJet 400 served me faithfully. In 2006 I turned my back on Microsoft and switched completely to Linux that among its other traits gives renewed life to old hardware that is incapable of running current Microsoft operating systems. I had pressed old computer hardware including a vintage late 1980s 486 computer back into service, and anyone seeing my home office in Moscow would have felt he was entering a museum. My HP DeskJet 400 hummed along as she always had even if I could no longer find ink cartridges for her. Instead, every few months I would sit over an open newspaper to refill the cartridges I had using a syringe.
My HP DeskJet 400 returned briefly to the US in 2007, but I think it was the return to Silver Spring in 2013 that broke her heart. I lived only a mile from the home I had shared with my spouse and son when that Christmas morning dawned in 1995. Much heartache and heartbreak had filled the intervening years even if, in the end, I think we all ended up in the places we needed to be, places that were better for all of us. Our HP DeskJet 400 ached and groaned now, unwillingly ingesting new pieces of paper. I had to feed each sheet carefully by hand much as one might feed an elderly friend no longer able to feed herself.
When I unpacked her in Kazakhstan in 2014, our HP DeskJet 400 would no longer accept paper no matter how carefully I coaxed. In the end I put her aside, even buying a specialized tool so that I could open her and attempt a surgical cure. Work intervened, and the printer sat forlornly for a year. Only this Christmas, some twenty years after that Christmas of 1995, did I finally find the time. I studied and diagnosed as best I could. I thought I saw the problem, rollers that no longer had sufficient surface to grab paper. I attempted a cure using pieces of cork cut to size and glued in place carefully. Yesterday morning I put the HP DeskJet 400 back together, reconnected her to the parallel port on my old computer, and sent the print command. Ever hopeful, my heart dropped as I saw nothing had changed. Even with my careful coaxing, she would not accept the paper. I opened the printer, adjusted, and tried again without success.
The time had come to say goodbye. As I near the end of this Foreign Service career and look toward retirement in a small home in Maine, I know I will need to discard, give away, or leave behind many things even as I look to that future with joy. This morning, placing our HP DeskJet 400 that had served me and our family so well for so long in the trash container, I said my first goodbye.
Correction. In writing this note I am saying my goodbye. Memories of that Christmas twenty years ago fill my mind. I have no photos from those years; they were all lost during the years of heartache, separation, and divorce. I have only the snapshots of memory. For all the pain of a troubled marriage, there were good moments, and that Christmas morning of 1995 was one of them . . . when a wrapped box under the tree opened to reveal an HP DeskJet 400 printer that was still shiny and new, ready with joy to print what in those days seemed to us the miracle of color photos of a young couple with a young son for whom the world was just beginning. Farewell, faithful friend, with gratitude for serving us so well and for so many years.
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PS -- If any of my readers are raising eyebrows over this ode to a plastic box containing computer-related electronics, let me help raise them further by informing as to what printer I selected to take the place of this trusty HP DeskJet 400. After the HP ceased working shortly after my arrival in Kazakhstan in 2014, I went on eBay and purchased . . . a Panasonic KX-P2135 dot matrix printer not that much different from the Epson printer I had used in the late 1980s. No refilling of cartridges needed here! Ribbons are still available and last seemingly forever. I've just needed to get used to that dot matrix printing sound all over again.
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