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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, February 21, 2000
The quest for the Write Stuff
In response to a steadily rising clamor - or is it a steadily rising yeast muffin? . . . Never mind: Today, as I was saying, we shall address a topic worthy of the dignity and prestige of this space.
We shall discuss Writing.
Not, you understand, Writing in the sense of The Creation of Literature. No indeed. Others, vastly better read than this humble scribbler, should escort you through the vineyards wherein toil the likes of Hemingway . . . Fitzgerald . . . Jacqueline Susann . . . Mickey Spillane. We'll leave that to the highbrows.
No, what I've been pondering for, oh, at least the past seven or eight minutes is the more straightforward matter of transmitting ideas, notions and plain old nonsense from one's cranium onto paper. Handwriting, in other words.
You remember handwriting, don't you? I realize it's far from fashionable in an age in which many of us spend eight or more hours a day chained to computer keyboards and video display terminals. Still, we are nowhere close to shaking loose from our thralldom to those relics of our Stone Age past: pens and pencils.
Case in point: our line of work at this establishment. We send our superbly-trained, cutting-edge, computer-literate reporters out on their rounds every day armed with laptops and tape recorders and so on. At one time or another, though, virtually all of them must resort to the primitive expedient of scribbling notes on a pad or tablet.
The good news is that, while we remain enslaved to pen and pencil, we have made progress toward making these archaic instruments more user-friendly.
When I first got into the handwriting business, you had your pencils, and you had your fountain pens. The latter being both delicate and messy, we little folk were not allowed to have anything to do with them whatsoever.
Our pencils followed the still familiar format: long hexagonal wooden wands with an eraser at one end and a point at the other that you had to sharpen with numbing regularity. (Back in third grade - at Windsor Park School, in fact - I stuck my finger in a sharpener to see out what would happen. I found out.)
Ah, but then came the onslaught of technology: A sleek, streamlined creation called the ballpoint pen. Click the button, the business end emerged; click it again, it retreated. What fun!
And it got better still: The thing didn't drip. Oh, sure, it blotched - did it ever - and if the surface on which you were writing happened to be the least bit greasy or grubby (as most of the surfaces on which I toiled were), your marvel of technology was useless.
But never mind: The race was on, and in the intervening years the innovations have come hot and heavy. On the fountain pen front - I was allowed to watch from a distance - the Sheaffer people came up with an absolutely fascinating device: the Snorkel pen. Twist the barrel, and a tiny tube emerged; you dipped that into your ink bottle, operated the miniature pump, and presto! You were good for dozens more pages of . . . whatever it was.
Then came the cartridge fountain pens, which are still with us: You can find them in supermarkets, usually displayed in some dim, dusty corner for nostalgists who are willing to go to the trouble of tracking them down. Bought one a couple of weeks ago. Doesn't work worth a darn.
And more, much more: Magic Markers. Felt tip pens. Something called Liquid Lead which, as I recall, didn't quite live up to its promise.
There was even a mechanical pencil designed with a sort of triangular cross-section. The idea: to force the writer to grip the instrument properly. My dad thought it would be just the ticket for me. Never happened.
Now, of course, there are even more marvels to beguile us. Megabuck fountain pens carved out of solid billets of Unobtainium and other exotic materials. Roller-ball pens filled with ink in gel form. (These work great, save for one little problem: They run dry after about two or three days' worth of serious scribbling.) Mechanical pencils with ultra-thin leads - down to .5 mm. (These I recommend.)
Will we one day break free from all pens, pencils and the like? Some would have you believe the handwriting is on the wall. Me, I'm hanging onto my Eberhard Faber. And, of course, my pencil sharpener.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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