Leadhead's Tread: The Ohio Pen Show

It feels good to be home.

As it is every year, I’ve been running around across pretty big chunks of the country all year long, meeting people, talking pencils and even buying one or two . . . give or take a few. Each November, when I walk in the door at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Dublin, Ohio, it feels like crossing a finish line after a long, long journey home.

There’s more to that statement than it might sound. Yes, I live a mere forty minutes or so from the hotel – close enough that I usually commute back and forth for a couple days – so of course I’m home. But the more people I talk to at this show, the luckier I feel that I live here, because I think most of us that come to this show agree that it wouldn’t matter in what city this show is held. No matter how far away you live, this show feels like home.

People usually start trickling into Columbus on Wednesday afternoon. I picked up Michael Little at the hotel on Wednesday. We said hello to a few people in the hotel bar, but since we didn’t see any trading going on in the trading room, we scooted on home to Newark where, as Janet described it, we looked like a couple kids playing with baseball cards. By the time it was over, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, Michael and I each had a big pile of things we’d pulled out of each other’s stuff. The next morning, we started trying to figure out who owed money to whom, but after we horsed around with the math for awhile we decided we both felt like we’d gotten a good deal so we called it even. . .

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