Nearly everything I acquire these days is brought to me by friends at pen shows or comes from someone who has stumbled across this blog and emailed me. When I am out on the prowl at antique shows and malls, I rarely find anything that interests me; it sometimes seems like we are reaching a singularity in which all the pens and pencils are already in the hands of collectors.
Imagine my elation when Janet and I walked into an antique mall we had not visited for some time in September, and the first showcase inside the door looked like this:
I asked the person working the desk to let me have a look – might as well bring the whole box up to the counter, I told her, because this might take a while. Most of it wasn’t worth buying, but there were a few things that were reasonably priced. I probably overpaid, but it’s hard to maintain interest in the thrill of the chase if you never catch anything.
The top one is another of those Hicks snail-patterned pencils; nothing to write home about, but it’s clean and people like these at pen shows. The next two items in this little haul are a pair of Tiffany ballpoints. They aren’t the prettiest – that’s Exhibit A for the premise that Tiffany-marked stuff is like Ohio State memorabilia (put that name on a dried out dog turd and they would sell like hotcakes). Still . . . the two patterns were nice to buy together, and they aren’t bad additions to the Tiffany section at the museum, which now also includes a Tiffany magic pencil that came from Rob Bader’s Victorian haul.
The next one, in floral-engraved sterling, has a hallmark near the nose - an F in a shield. That denotes Fairchild & Co., the last incarnation of the firm founded by Leroy Fairchild, as carried on by his son Harry from 1905 until 1927 (see “Three of a Kind . . . Maybe Four” on March 23, 2018: Volume 5, page 199). You don’t see those often, especially in the wild, and I didn’t have one like it.
Next is something I don’t normally chase; it’s unmarked, but I just liked it. The three colored buttons on top indicate the lead colors in the three pencils nested inside.
That had me going back through the Victorian haul from Rob Bader looking for something I thought wound up in my pile, and it did. Rob’s is also unmarked, which is why it wound up in inventory rather than the museum . . .
Two’s a coincidence and three’s a collection, as Janet always says. Dammit, there’s no point putting these back in inventory, because I know myself . . . when the next one comes along, I know I’ll bite and I’ll drive myself crazy trying to find these two again. They now reside in the “unmarked but worthy” wing at the museum, with a space next to them for the day I know will come.
That blue plastic fountain pen with what looks like a modern plastic clip is much older and better than it looks: it’s a “Graphomatic,” made by the Sager Barrel O’ Ink guys. I have wanted an example of my own since Richard Binder allowed me to use an image of one in his collection in a piece I wrote about a Graphomatic double-ended pencil – see “A Name Closer to Right” (April 15, 2020: Volume 6, page 48).
Then there’s that Eversharp lookalike at bottom - it’s actually a Shur-Rite, and even though it’s really clean, I’ve got a couple others just like it at home.
I had to have it anyway, even though it was a bit overpriced, because of what was on the top: “Awarded by L.C. Smith & Bros. Typw. Co.,” it reads.
With my little pile of goodies waiting in my bin at the checkout counter, Janet and I explored the rest of the mall and I found . . . absolutely nothing. The thrill of the chase was losing all of its thrill as we trudged along, and I began to have an existential moment wondering what the heck I’m doing. I’ve chased these things for more than twenty five years now, and I’ve got more of them than I’ll ever have time to write about, much less use – even if I wrote one word with each one for my next book.
Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I write a lot.
Whenever I have these thoughts, it makes me remember something I first heard in 1995, something that has dogged me ever since. That was when I first watched what I consider to be the finest hour of television that ever aired: it was an episode of The X-Files titled “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” - season three, episode four for those of you who track that sort of thing.
Peter Boyle (best remembered as Ray Romano’s dad in Everybody Loves Raymond) guest starred as Clyde Bruckman, an insurance salesman with a unique but very limited gift: he knew how and when any particular person would die.
As Mulder and Scully investigated the murders of several fortune tellers, Mulder tried to tap Bruckman’s gifts by taking him to the scene of the latest crime. There, standing in the midst of the victim’s extensive doll collection, Mulder asks Bruckman if he had any insights into what motivated the killer. Bruckman’s response has haunted me.
“Why does anyone do the things they do?” Bruckman replies. “Why do I sell insurance? I wish I knew. Why did this woman collect dolls? What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said, ‘I know... dolls.’ Or was it a whole series of things? Starting when her parents first met that somehow combined in such a way that in the end, she had no choice but to be a doll colle...”
With that, Bruckman has a vision, and he trails off mid-sentence.
I reached the end of that aisle in the antique mall as I thought once again about Clyde Bruckman’s words, musing as I have done countless times why I was doing what I was doing. This time, the universe must have heard me; I rounded the corner, and I found something.
It wasn’t a pencil. It was my explanation.
There, laying in the center of an antique table, was a coffee table book titled The Baseball Companion. It was opened to display what was written inside the front cover:
“Scott -
“Since I can’t always be your ‘companion,’ maybe this book can substitute and remind you of the good times we had playing catch in the backyard . . . . . and how that helped you go on to be a champion with the A’s (and with everything else that you have accomplished)!
Love,
Dad
8/3/95
“P.S. Remember, God will be your “companion” always, and will keep you a champion -”
With that, just like Clyde Bruckman also did in 1995, “Dad” trails off . . . leaving me standing there thirty years later, in the middle of an antique mall trying to hold back the tears.
That’s it. That’s always been it.
Whether or not I have always known it, my fascination with writing tools and with writing about those tools has been a celebration of the miracle that is the act of writing itself. “Scott’s” Dad dragged a stick with a bit of ink in it across a piece of paper thirty years ago, and the shapes he made with that stick planted forceful and visceral emotions into my head that remain every bit as powerful today.
Writing is powerful. Whether it’s a pen, or a pencil, or an old typewriter, or a laptop – the tool doesn’t matter, but the raw and awe-inspiring power these things have in the hands of the humans who wield them does. Sometimes that power is used for good, and sometimes it is used for evil. Nearly always, what is good or evil is mostly a matter of perspective.
We are born, we tamp down the earth beneath our feet as we walk around this little round rock for a while, and then we are gone. To quote comedian Randy Feltface in “Randy Writes a Novel” (another hour well worth spending), life is just that insignificant hyphen in between birth and death. We leave no trace of what we thought, who we loved, or who we didn’t. For better or for worse, all of that ends when we do.
Unless we write.
I write books about pencils, tools that by themselves are of no real consequence. When I write an article, there’s something more to it than the pencil itself, and thanks to Scott’s father I can finally articulate why. Telling you these stories connects me with you – and your children, and your children’s children – in a way that nothing else in life can do. Every anecdote passes on human thoughts and emotions from which future generations may benefit and learn in some small way.
It doesn’t matter whether you agree with me or whether the words I write please you, anger you, enlighten you, or bewilder you. It is a marvelous human endeavor that I can press buttons on a machine and no matter the distance, no matter the decade – you feel something.
I didn’t buy that copy of The Baseball Companion, as much as I wanted to bring it home. To extrapolate on Clyde Bruckman, imagine all of the things that had to occur for that instant to occur, at exactly the right time. The universe, whether by design or by an amazing series of coincidences, gave me an amazing gift, and I do not believe that gift was only for me. I left that book right where it was in the hopes that others would see it and would be as moved as I was – surprised by the unexpected emotions welling up inside them as they experience an inexplicable and intimate connection with a person they have never met. Maybe that in turn would provide them with a greater appreciation for the connections they have with those in their own lives.
Maybe they will go home, pick up the phone, and call their own fathers - or their children, or whoever else is important to them.
Maybe now that I’ve told you this story, you will, too.
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