Chapter Un

One of the most common questions I am asked, just after: “Are you any relation to Mike?”, is: “How did you get into fountain pens”.

Almost as early as I learned cursive, or “longhand” as we were taught, I have loved the feel of writing. The flow of cursive on a page just feels, to me, more expressive than every nonverbal communication. Maybe music… music is more effective than writing, but I am far too lazy to learn an instrument.

I don’t recall if I bought my first Sheaffer Skripsert or stole it from a local drugstore or stationery (shoplifting was a neighbourhood tradition in the inner city when I was a kid), but I did persevere swapping those little plastic cartridges, ink staining my fingers and my Catholic school uniform, to spend hours scribbling endless essays and book reports. It irked me that we had to use a pencil to fill in those little squares on punch cards when we did exams, but when we were done with that strange ritual, and the essay portions came up, out came my trusty Sheaffer!

One of the rituals of those early years was creating a signature that would express who you are and announce your status to the addressee. We would write on scraps, the backside of anything that we could use, and the remnants of retired scribblers to test and refine variations of our names and initials, often inspired by the hand of a parent or close relative whose writing we admired. Around our “homeroom” would be examples of letters and numbers, both print and cursive, usually on posterboard, tacked above the blackboard, so we always had samples to mimic.

The nuns were relentless; having us write page after page of letters until we finally managed to form characters that were more similar than not to the ones posted ubiquitously. “Penmanship” was judged as a component of our grade in English, and I took that (for a boy) fairly seriously.

Of course the girls were the standard bearers for fancy penmanship, but were frequently demoted for the cutesy punctuation and excessive flourishes.

Eventually, I was moved to Merritt, BC, that bastion of creative literature and esoteric ventures such as rodeo and rodeo and beer, and rodeo.

During my school lunch break, I often would be found hanging out at The Merritt Herald, who had a stationery store at the front of the print shop, where I could ogle the Parker 25. I was just such a geek and, fortunately, had little in common with my classmates unless I was earning extra money pushing cattle at the rodeo.

I fell off the fountain pen infatuation and ran through many years of Parker Jotters, cap actuated ball pens, Bics (gasp), Paper Mate (Oooh, classy…), Uniball, Zebra (don’t judge me!). Fountain pens were not practical nor even considered for many years.