Saturday, April 7, 2018

Simple pleasures

"My 96 year old father-in-law says that when the internets crash, the person with all the pencils will be king." (Comment by Tiffin)

When I started working at the lab, there was an old-fashioned hand-cranked pencil sharpener attached to a back wall in an obscure area. It was such a good sharpener that I would willingly take the time to search it out and use it when my pencil points became dull. Favoring mechanical pencils mostly, this didn't happen often; so rarely, in fact, that I worried each time that I wouldn't find it again.


It was reminiscent of grade school, and it worked. The little hand-held jobbers that appeared over the years just seemed to shave off lopsided hunks of wood, then break the lead (Felix Unger: "Graphite!"), then shave off more wood, then break the lead... until nothing remained but a broken-leaded stump which was then, finally, thrown away--still-good eraser and all. Usually all in the space of 5 minutes.

This throwback was the real deal, so when the lab underwent a massive remodel/reconstruction and it was in peril of being discarded, I grabbed it and took it home. It languished in the embarrassment that was (under) the work bench until The Big Redo, but as soon as I uncovered it again it was installed at the end of the bench.

If the person with all the pencils will be king, the one with a working sharpener will be Grand Vizier. This beauty puts a lethal point on with a couple of turns of the crank. It's such a magnificent point that I'm finding myself searching out real pencils now, recalling my high school days of balancing bank statements, writing reports, and building up that "accountant's bump" on my right middle finger.

I might even invest in a package of those angular eraser caps too.

2 comments:

  1. Best pencil in the world - "Dixon Ticonderoga"!! I came over to your blog from Quiltville this morning, and wanted to say that I too enjoy the old crank pencil sharpeners. There's one in this house just like the one in my old home, and it works so well.

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    Replies
    1. I don't know how I missed this, Ruth! Thank you for stopping by and commenting. I've enjoyed reading your blogs too!

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