A Saturday Night Special

I live in a town small enough that when someone does something as odd as write a book on mechanical pencils, it's front page news.  It's also small enough that when the front page of the local paper had my picture on it holding a copy of my new book, people were surprised that they didn't already know one of their neighbors had a stash of thousands of mechanical pencils.

My in-laws have a family friend named Jerry who has known my wife literally since the day she was born, and he's known me since I first started hanging around my wife.  He and my father-in-law joined the local Elks lodge decades ago, and I see him regularly on Saturday nights when Janet and I go down for the weekly drawing -- usually at the same table, usually in the same chairs.  When it's not the same table or the same chairs, that itself is a topic of conversation.  It's a comfort thing, I suppose.

"I never knew you collected pencils," he said to me after the article appeared in the paper.  "I've got some I'll bring down to you to see what you think."

That much I've heard from dozens of people since the book came out.  Only a couple actually followed through and appeared on my doorstep, and Jerry was one of them.  He had a pretty nice bunch of things, and I paid him well for them -- after all, if I didn't pay more than fair prices for the things he brought me, that would really be a topic of conversation on Saturday nights.

Here's one of the things he brought me . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company