A giant pencil

News from New York State: “Ticonderoga unveils giant pencil sculpture celebrating graphite heritage.” The graphite in Dixon Ticonderoga pencils once came from the towns of Ticonderoga and Hague. Now it comes from Sri Lanka. The pencils haven’t been manufactured in the United States in many years.

Related reading
All OCA Dixon Ticonderoga posts (Pinboard)

A Ticonderoga sighting

[From Targets (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1968). Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), and a Dixon Ticonderoga. Click for a larger view.]

The ferrule is the giveaway.

Ticonderoga sightings

[Robert Foulk as a police captain, John Harding as Dean Harvey Rockwell. From The Impossible Years (dir. Michael Gordon, 1968). Click either image for a larger view.]

The Establishment types in this dreadful movie had good pencils. If you click either screenshot for a larger image, you’ll see the distinctive Dixon Ticonderoga ferrule. By their ferrules ye shall know them.

Related reading
All OCA Dixon Ticonderoga posts (Pinboard)

[For Lassie fans only: Robert Foulk was Sheriff Milller.]

Cora, Nick, Ticonderoga

[Lana Turner and Cecil Kellaway as Cora and Nick Smith. From The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946). Click for a much larger view.]

Yes, I know — Lana Turner! But there’s also a pencil in the picture, and it’s pretty clearly a Dixon Ticonderoga. The distinctive ferrule is the giveaway.

*

Here’s Lana Turner with what appears to be a Mongol pencil. It’s a Getty photograph, so I don’t dare reproduce it here. Thanks, Brian.

Related reading
More OCA Ticonderoga posts (featuring Timmy Martin, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, and other pencil-users)

Yellow Ticonderogas

Eberhard Faber Mongols were on the job in the WJM newsroom during the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. After that, it’s Dixon Ticonderogas and no-name pencils. A great loss for Mongol fans.

Perhaps one of the writers was using a Ticonderoga when working on the episode “Mary Richards and the Incredible Plant Lady” (March 3, 1973). The premise: Rhoda (Valerie Harper) has borrowed money from Mary to open a plant shop, and she’s taking her time about paying back. The reason: she’s secretly using her earnings to buy Mary a new car, a yellow Mustang convertible. Rhoda knows that Mary has had her eye on a Mustang. But it turns out — uh-oh — that Mary hates yellow. She and Rhoda and Georgette (Georgia Engel) sit in the newly purchased car in the dealer’s showroom:

Georgette: “Yellow’s a lovely color, Mary. It’s the color of the sun, and wheat fields.”

Mary: “Yeah.”

Rhoda: “Ticonderoga pencils.”

Georgette: “And daffodils, and lemons — whoops, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Related reading
All OCA MTM posts : Ticonderoga posts (Pinboard)

Ticonderoga headwear

[Click for a larger view.]

Now everyone can be Mr. T. But I wonder if they have anything in a Mongol, 7⅛.

I have no information about this odd photograph. All I can do is thank the reader who sent it.

See also today’s Yellow Petals.

Related reading
All OCA Dixon Ticonderoga posts

Ticonderoga sighting

Just another day at the office: a Hawaiian travel brochure, drugs, and a Dixon Ticonderoga for jotting down appointments. If you squint, you can almost make out the name.

[Hell Bound (dir. William J. Hole Jr., 1957). Click either image for a larger view.]

More Ticonderoga sightings
The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : The House on 92nd Street : Lassie : Lassie again : Perry Mason : Since You Went Away

George Sanders and a Ticonderoga

[George Sanders and pencil, in Witness to Murder (dir. Roy Rowland, 1954). Click for a larger view.]

That’s a Dixon Ticonderoga, no doubt. The ferrule gives it away.

The Ticonderoga appears in a number of OCA posts, sometimes starring, sometimes in a supporting role. Among the other cast members: John Garfield, June Lockhart, Toni Morrison, Lloyd Nolan, and Jon Provost.

A Mirado jingle?

A reader who found my post about the end of the Mirado pencil wondered if anyone remembers a jingle from radio or television: “Eagle Mirado, the pencil that stays sharp for pages.” I went to Google Books to try to find it:



[The Saturday Evening Post, September 7 and 28, 1956. Click either image for a larger view.]

Well, there’s the “stays sharp for pages”, but no jingle. And that is one handsome haircut, isn’t it?

The secretary, too, has an attractive cut.

I also found something in snippet view from Newsweek, Office Management, and U.S. News and World Report (all 1959): “EAGLE’S live TV tests proved a pencil can be strong and smooth and durable without sacrificing any single value!” Live TV tests! So it seems at least possible that a jingle accompanied an Eagle television promotion.

Jingle or no jingle, the idea of pencils being tested on live television makes clear that there was nothing like the dowdy world for home entertainment.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[Let the record show that the September 7, 1957 issue of the Post also has a full-page for the Dixon Ticonderoga. Back-to-school time = pencil wars.]

Fred Hersch pencils

The pianist Fred Hersch writes his music by hand, as seen in the documentary film The Ballad of Fred Hersch. He prefers to keep things analog:

“My life is binder clips. . . . I am kind of a dinosaur in that way. You know, I’m a pencil geek. I buy my pencils — I get these special English pencils. I sort of like the ritual of the whole thing, trying to figure out what kind of paper. I mean, even the copying and taping of the parts is somewhat of a ritual.”

We see a variety of pencils on camera. First, a Mirado Black Warrior.


[Click on any image for a larger view.]


[The titles are from My Coma Dreams (2011), a theater piece, music by Hersch, libretto by Herschel Garfein.]

Next, a Mirado.



Finally, what appears to be a Derwent Graphic. That’s English, yes. The red stripe reveals its identity.



Here and there, a Dixon Ticonderoga and a Staples pencil appear in other hands.

The Ballad of Fred Hersch (dir. Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozanois, 2016) is now streaming, no charge, at Vimeo. And Fred Hersch is playing online, via Facebook, nearly every day, at noon Eastern. I’m more and more taken with his music. My favorite Hersch piece so far: “At the Close of the Day.” When I heard it (unidentified) in the film, it sounded like something I’ve known for years. But no — I had heard it just once before, earlier this week. And here’s a 1999 performance.

[Note: You don’t need a Facebook account to watch and listen.]

Today’s Ticonderoga

[“Nervig Endings.” Zippy , December 24, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, cartoonist Conrad Nervig seeks a new career. Stand by for the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2.

Related reading
All OCA Ticonderoga posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Toni Morrison’s pencils

Toni Morrison, from a 1993 Paris Review interview:

What is the physical act of writing like for you?

I write with a pencil.

Would you ever work on a word processor?

Oh, I do that also, but that is much later when everything is put together. I type that into a computer and then I begin to revise. But everything I write for the first time is written with a pencil, maybe a ballpoint if I don’t have a pencil. I’m not picky, but my preference is for yellow legal pads and a nice number two pencil.

Dixon Ticonderoga number two soft?

Exactly.

[From Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (dir. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, 2019). Click for a larger view.]

No Ticonderoga in the documentary. That’s a Paper Mate SharpWriter. But it is a no. 2.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Nineteen Eighty-Four (dir. Michael Radford, 1984). Hacking coughs, cheap gin, state propaganda, televised executions, and surveillance by screen and helicopter. John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton are perfectly mismatched as transgressive lovers; Richard Burton is an especially terrifying O’Brien. Watching this film in 2019 is especially unnverving. 2 + 2 = ? ★★★★

*

So Big! (dir. William A. Wellman, 1932). “Edna Ferber’s Epic of American Womanhood,” said the poster. It’s the story of a lifetime, starring Barbara Stanwyck as Selina Peake, later De Jong, a young woman who takes up the life of a teacher, marries a farmer, and devotes herself to the farm and her son Dirk, known as So Big. The film is pre-Code, but that means little here: So Big! is a story of quiet comedy, deep humanity, and asparagus. With Bette Davis as a dazzling free-spirited artist. ★★★★

*

Out of the Past (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1947). I’ve come to love this film, for many reasons: Marney’s Café, the swank Reno house, the murky streets and cab rides, the slightly spooky Kid (Dickie Moore), the cabin in the woods, the meeting in some other woods, the Heart of Darkness lie, and the dangerous Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). As gas-station owner Jeff Bailey, Robert Mitchum trades in his work clothes for a trenchcoat and fedora, and he’s right back at home in the detective business, working for Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). I’m still not sure I understand what unfolds in the film’s present, but what happens overall is something like a cross between The Maltese Falcon and The Killers. “All I can see is the frame.” ★★★★

*

Bull Durham (dir. Ron Shelton, 1988). I have good excuses for not being especially strong on movies from the 1980s: I was a grad student living within walking distance of a revival house, and then I was a new professor, and then I was a new father. So seeing Bull Durham for the first time was something of a crash course in movies with awkward serio-comic sex scenes and non-diegetic rock ’n’ roll. The triangle — Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins — felt too much like an R-rated version of Cheers, but the line between two points — Robbins’s erratic hotshot pitcher and Costner’s veteran minor-league catcher — held a lot more interest. My favorite moment: a discussion of wedding gifts on the pitcher’s mound. ★★★

*

Dawson City: Frozen Time (dir. Bill Morrison, 2016). Save for the musical score, it’s a nearly silent documentary about movies, history, and permafrost, focusing on the Dawson City Film Find — the discovery, in 1978, of hundreds of reels of silent film in a Yukon town that flourished in the Gold Rush and stood at the end of the line for film distribution. A surprising array of familiar names appear: Sid Grauman, Alex Pantages, Frederick Trump (proprietor of brothels and restaurants), and the 1919 Chicago White — or Black — Sox. Brief excerpts from silent films, printed on highly volatile nitrocellulose, virtually all suffering from water damage, put me in mind of Sappho’s fragments: the wonder is that they survived at all. The most remarkable feature of the documentary: fragments from the Find are paired with whatever historical or contemporary events the screen titles describe, in an extraordinary effort of imagination and editing. ★★★★


[Pathé Weekly (1914). From Dawson City: Frozen Time. Click for a larger view.]

*

The Gold Rush (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1925). A reconstruction of the 1925 film from various sources, with a new recording of Chaplin’s 1942 musical score added. Brilliant pathos, brilliant fun, and a Lone Prospector who never loses his dignity. The dance of the rolls is worth the price of admission, or the price of a subscription to the Criterion Channel. But then you also get a room full of feathers and a teetering cabin at no extra cost. ★★★★

*

The House on 92nd Street (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1945). I’ve written about this movie’s supplies — Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and a pocket notebook — but not about stuff like plot and character, the stuff people usually think about with movies. This semi-documentary tells the story of the FBI’s infiltration of a Nazi spy ring. As double agent Bill Dietrich, William Eythe is a fairly bland lead, though then again, “bland” might be just what you want in a double agent. Watching once again, I was especially struck by the great Manhattan location shots, the calm, reassuring presence of Lloyd Nolan (as FBI Inspector George A. Briggs), and the unsavoriness of the spy ring’s minions — Harry Bellaver, Alfred Linder, and Lydia St. Clair. ★★★

*

Jane Eyre (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1943). Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles as Miss Eyre and Mr. Rochester. I kept finding other films in this one: the stark close-ups and moody scenic shots look so much like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, and Bernard Herrmann’s music suggests Vertigo. Welles as a man with a dark secret suggests Charles Rankin in The Stranger; Fontaine as the newcomer to a strange house of secrets suggests Rebecca; and Agnes Moorehead as a severe relation takes us back, again, to Kane. Jane Eyre turned out, for me at least, to be “the movies,” in wonderful ways. ★★★★


[From Jane Eyre. Click for a larger view.]

*

All Night Long (dir. Basil Dearden, 1962). We saw this reimagining of Othello only last month but watched again with friends. I looked past the music this time and watched more for character: the seemingly composed but insecure Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris), the cheerful, good Delia Lane (Marti Stevens), the younger, hotheaded Cass Michael (Keith Michell), and, of course, the impossibly suave and quickwitted Johnny Cousin (Patrick McGoohan). I wonder now if this film served to influence Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000), which also uses a recording device in its reimagining of Shakespeare. My only complaint: we should get to see the complete Dave Brubeck/Charles Mingus performance. ★★★★

*

Since You Went Away (dir. John Cromwell, 1944). Jonathan Shay, who works with and on behalf of veterans living with post-traumatic stress, speaks of the importance of the communalization of grief — the urgent need to mourn the sorrows of war with others. I can only imagine how this movie, a look at life on the home front in World War II, made that possible for audiences in 1944. The story veers again and again from bittersweet nostalgia to quiet happiness to joyful abandon to heartbreak: it’s life in wartime, utterly unpredictable, with the possibility of a sudden shock around every corner. With an all-star cast — Claudette Colbert, Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker, a deep bench, and many moments of brief conversation in nightspots and train stations. ★★★★

*

The Scarlet Claw (dir. Roy William Neill, 1944). You know how every so often a movie that you cannot account for rises to the top of your Netflix queue? So it was here. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Basil Rathbone and NIgel Bruce, who else?), in Quebec for a conference on occult phenomena, end up solving a series of murders committed with a repurposed garden tool. The plot is tired, and Holmes seems ready to break up with his slow-witted partner, but some eerie phosphorescence and Ian Wolfe’s presence as a shady butler enliven the proceedings. ★★★

*

No Greater Glory (dir. Frank Borzage, 1934). An adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s novel The Paul Street Boys, offering a powerful allegory of war, as two bands of boys fight for control of a vacant lot. This Criterion Channel find borrows from All Quiet on the Western Front and Frankenstein and must have influenced West Side Story. But this film’s ending undercuts any easy sentimentality about lessons learned: as in the Iliad or Mother Courage, war will go on. You might recognize Frankie Darro from Wild Boys of the Road; George Breakston, who stars as the doomed Nemeecsek, is the boy who cries on the bus in It Happened One Night. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

Ticonderoga sighting

[Since You Went Away (dir. John Cromwell, 1944). Click for a larger view.]

No, Brig Hilton (Shirley Temple) is not gasping at the conductor’s Dixon Ticonderogas, even if they are sporting nifty clips. The conductor is played by Harry Hayden, who also turns up as the counterman in the opening scene of The Killers (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946). I know that I’m supposed to be thinking about pencils, not diners. But the setting here is a railroad dining car. Speaking of which, the Railroad Dining Car Archives are a wonder to browse. Though they’re short on pencils.

Other Ticonderoga sightings
The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : The House on 92nd Street : Lassie : Lassie, again : Perry Mason

Timmy Martin, writer

A Dixon Ticonderoga works for most purposes. But not all. From the Lassie episode “The Contest” (September 20, 1959), as Timmy Martin prepares to write about What My Pet Means to Me:

“Where’s the pen and ink and good paper?”

Notice: the pen. One, for the house. It’s a dip pen.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Timmy Martin, Ticonderoga user

[Timmy Martin (Jon Provost) writes an urgent message. From the Lassie episode “The Phone Hog,” April 3, 1960. Click for a larger view.]

The ferrule is the giveaway. A Dixon Ticonderoga appears in at least one other Lassie episode.

More Ticonderogas
Bells Are Ringing : The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : Harry Truman : The House on 92nd Street : Perry Mason : Pnin

All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Masonic Ticonderoga

[From the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Wayward Wife,” first aired January 23, 1960. Click for a larger view.]

Tools of the writer’s trade: a Dixon Ticonderoga, a cigarette, in the hands of Arthur Poe (Marshall Thompson). Several anonymous pencils lie in waiting.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Perry Mason posts

Force of Evil

Force of Evil (dir. Abraham Polonsky, 1948) stars John Garfield as an attorney involved in a scheme to take over the numbers (policy) rackets in New York City. Martin Scorsese, who introduces the film on DVD, thinks of it as a neglected noir masterpiece. I’m not sure I agree: the scheme and the romantic subplot are not exactly convincing. But George Barnes’s cinematography is aces. And the film has something for everyone, or at least for me. Click any image for a larger view.


[A Phi Beta Kappa key.]


[A locked drawer. Holding what?]


[A private line.]


[A Dixon Ticonderoga.]


[A Chemex coffeemaker. That’s Beatrice Pearson with Garfield. She worked mainly in the theater and appeared in just two films.]


[A pocket notebook. A “bank” is a numbers operation. Check.]


[A telephone booth, as seen from a lunch counter.]


[The same telephone booth and Beatrice Pearson. That’s her white glove above.]


[A notebook in a key case. (Huh?) Left , right , left , right : the combination for a safe.]


[A bakery, open late.]


[Mr. Hooper, moonlighting. This is the second time I’ve seen Will Lee as a bit player.]


[More Ticonderogas!]

Related reading
More Ticonderogas: Bells Are Ringing : Harry Truman : Lassie : The Dick Van Dyke Show : The House on 92nd Street

More notebook sightings: Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Home Town Story : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window

Lassie Ticonderoga

[Timmy (Jon Provost) and Ruth Martin (June Lockhart). And, of course, Lassie. From the Lassie episode “The Owl,” September 28, 1958. Click for a larger view.]

In a farmhouse just outside Calverton, the pencil of choice is the Dixon Ticonderoga. The ferrule gives it away. There’s also an episode in which Timmy sits at the kitchen table and writes a note with a Ticonderoga, but I can find no trace of that epsiode online.

Other Ticonderogas
Bells Are Ringing : The Dick Van Dyke Show : Harry Truman with Ticonderoga : The House on 92nd Street : Pnin

Ticonderoga, Ticonderoga, Ticonderoga

[From the Dick Van Dyke Show episode “When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen,” May 8, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) is struggling to come up with a comedy bit. The Dixon Ticonderogas aren’t helping. The pencil stage right? Perhaps a Mirado or Velvet.

Other Ticonderoga posts
Is there a pencil in The House (FBI Ticonderogas)
Musical-comedy pencils (Judy Holliday, sharpening)
Pnin’s pencil sharpener (“ticonderoga-ticonderoga”)

Mrs. Flood’s pencils

“I’m a product of Mrs. Flood. She didn’t take my crap”: Dixon Ticonderoga’s CEO Tim Gomez donates 100,000 pencils in honor of his high-school English teacher Wilma Flood.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: ferrule

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day is ferrule:

ferrule \FAIR-ul\ noun
1 : a ring or cap usually of metal put around a slender shaft (as a cane or a tool handle) to strengthen it or prevent splitting
2 : a usually metal sleeve used especially for joining or binding one part to another (as pipe sections or the bristles and handle of a brush)

Examples:
“A band of metal called a ferrule is glued onto the end of the pencil where a recess has been cut, while at the same time a plunger presses an eraser plug into the ferrule. When the glue dries, everything is bliss.” — From an article by Steve Ritter in Chemical & Engineering News, December 16, 2002

“Making a brush is as simple as knotting and gluing bristles to the handle, and holding them in place by slipping a tight metal ferrule over the bond between bristle and handle.” — From a post at swatchgirl.com on May 15, 2013

Did you know?
“Ferrule” is a word for a simple metal band or cap of great versatility. The ferrule is ubiquitous. It is the cap at the end of a cane or crutch, a chair or table leg; it is the point or knob at the hub of an umbrella; it fits together tubes and pipes and binds paintbrush handles to bristles and pencils to erasers. In Middle English this universal thingamajig was called a “verrel.” That word commonly referred to the strengthening bands or rings of iron used to prevent the splitting or wear of the wooden shafts of implements. The name evolved from Middle French “virelle” and Old French “virol” and ultimately from Latin “viriola,” meaning “small bracelet.” The “f” spelling of today's “ferrule” was influenced by “ferrum,” the Latin word for “iron.”

Ferrule is a word with special significance for pencil users. A superior pencil with an eraser will almost always have a distinctive ferrule. In these images from The House on 92nd Street, for instance, the Dixon Ticonderoga ferrule is instantly recognizable. And even in a blurry videotape transfer of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, the Mongol ferrule is unmistakable. By their ferrules ye shall know them.

Pnin’s pencil sharpener

With the help of the janitor he screwed onto the side of the desk a pencil sharpener — that highly satisfying, highly philosophical implement that goes ticonderoga-ticonderoga, feeding on the yellow finish and sweet wood, and ends up in a kind of soundlessly spinning ethereal void as we all must. He had other, even more ambitious plans, such as an armchair and a tall lamp.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957)

The pencil sharpener is part of Timofey Pnin’s effort to “Pninize” his office, “Office R.” As this tribute to the Dixon Ticonderoga suggests, Nabokov was a pencil man. And yes, I have a touch of Nabokov fever. The Original of Laura drops, as they say, on November 17.

Related posts
Is there a pencil in The House? (Dixon Ticonderogas in film)
Musical-comedy pencils (more Dixon Ticonderogas)
Pnin’s posy
Vladimir Nabokov’s index cards

Rite-Rite Long Leads

[4 1/16" x 5/16".]

Another item from a now-defunct downstate-Illinois stationery store. Affixed to the back, a label with a price — 10¢ — in fountain-pen ink.

In 1921, the Rite-Rite Mfg. Co. began mfg. fountain pens, mechanical pencils, and pencil leads, clips, and erasers. The company later became a subsidiary of the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company (as in Dixon Ticonderoga). I have these details from a 1950 case heard in the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, Rite-Rite Mfg. Co. v. Rite-Craft Co. Rite-Rite was unhappy about Rite-Craft's choice of name, claiming that it would lead to confusion among customers. The Court's decision includes this bit of dry impatience:

We cannot understand how any purchaser of a lead pencil or a fountain pen, which had applied to it as a mark the word 'Rite,' could imagine that such term meant anything except that it was a misspelling of the word 'write.' It is clearly descriptive of the character of the goods of both parties.

Thus Rite-Rite and Rite-Craft kept mfg. under their chosen names, supplying supply-hungry writers before fading into the stationery past.

I wonder what sort of calculation went into the spelling of the name Rite-Rite. Having opted for the pun, the company must have decided that twin misspellings would make it simpler for customers to keep the name straight. Greater convenience when calling Directory Assistance!

Related post
Real Thin Leads

[This post is the second in an occasional series, "From the Museum of Supplies." The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family's word, for all manner of stationery items.]

Back-to-school shopping

Jana Pruden still wants to go back-to-school shopping:

I never even liked school very much, but the Back to School season was still something special. Back to School was a time of such great newness it always left me feeling that anything could happen.

With my school supplies laid out all clean and perfect in those final days before school started, I could always catch a glimpse of the better me that could possibly emerge that school year.

Ah, supplies. Thomas Merton has a wonderful passage with a similar feeling.

Shopping for supplies was a late-summer ritual when my children were in elementary school. El fanatico (that's me) insisted on the best — Dixon Ticonderoga or Faber-Castell or Mirado pencils. It was only years later that I learned that all supplies were pooled for class use. I think that my kids didn't have the heart to tell me.

The school supplies we now buy are (thank goodness) for personal use — books, computers, notebooks, pens.

Is there a pencil in The House?

Whoso would be a G-Man must be a pencil user, as Emerson might have put it.¹ The pencil is the FBI's writing instrument of choice in The House on 92nd Street (1945, directed by Henry Hathaway), a movie whose interiors seem to have been furnished by a pencil fanatic. Pencils are the tools of counter-espionage in this movie: we see glassfuls in various work areas, and again and again we see the Dixon Ticonderoga, always the Dixon Ticonderoga, in government hands. (The ferrule, with its three dark bands, is the giveaway.)

I have no idea whether The House on 92nd Street is accurate in its depiction of pencil-wielding FBI agents. But the depiction is plausible. Unlike a fountain pen, a pencil is ready to write without priming. It has no cap to unscrew and keep track of. It cannot skip or clog or leak. It remains available for sporadic notetaking without drying out. Its lifespan is always visible: one will never be surprised by unexpectedly running out of ink (or, as with a mechanical pencil, out of lead). If a point breaks, it can be resharpened, or another pencil can substitute. The plainness of the wooden pencil — just doing my unglamorous job, ma'am — seems to fit the G-Man ethos.²

"Well, I guess that's all": a G-Man posing as a Civil Defense worker pockets his Ticonderoga.



Distinguished physicist Dr. Arthur C. Appleton (John McKee) uses a Dixon Ticonderoga to do some calculations concerning Process 97.



Inspector George A. Briggs (Lloyd Nolan) is Inspector Dixon Ticonderoga himself. He never uses his desk sets (yes, he has more than one, as we'll see), just pencils. Note the ferrule of the pencil in his hand.



Dixon Ticonderoga noir! Five more pencils wait on the notepad. Great phone and film projector too.



Two desk sets, two rocking blotters (!), and two pencils, one Dixon Ticonderoga and one anonymous. Inspector Briggs holds a page with some of the details of Process 97, which seems to be the secret process for making a snowman.



¹ From "Self-Reliance": "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

² The ballpoint pen wasn't for sale in the United States until October 1945, after the movie's release.

Related posts
The dowdy world on film
Film noir pencils
Musical-comedy pencils
Pocket notebook sighting: The House on 92nd Street
Q and A
The real Mr. T (A Dixon Ticonderoga spokespencil)
Young woman with a pencil

And at Pencil Revolution, a photo-essay on some old Castell 9000s: Serious pencils indeed.

The real Mr. T

How exciting (to me, anyway) to discover that a pencil manufacturer employed a cartoon spokescharacter. Meet Mr. T, who represented Dixon Ticonderoga pencils.

I found this image (from a 1957 magazine ad) in Warren Dotz and Masud Husain's Meet Mr. Product (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2003).

A lost weekend

I Wireless zero
I came to a conclusion at about 2:00 this morning: pencils are a lot more reliable than network cards. Time spent getting one of the Dixon Ticonderoga Tri-Writes that I bought on Saturday up and running: about fifteen seconds in a sharpener. Time spent attempting to get the laptop network card that I bought on Saturday up and running (before giving up): about six hours. The six hours were largely a matter of looking online--for updated drivers and info on settings--and uninstalling and reinstalling the card. I also put in the usual obligatory (and fruitless) call to technical support. While browsing online, I found many discussion group messages from other people with Vaio laptops (and all manner of laptops) who have also found themselves in wireless hell, with--of course--no solutions. Do you turn on "wireless zero configuration"? Do you turn it off? Either way, it seems you lose. Wireless zero indeed.

II TV Land
Before giving up, I discovered that All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Good Times are all on television really, really late at night. I wonder how many people remember that Good Times was a spinoff of Maude, which was itself a spinoff of All in the Family.

III My wireless solution
I bought a 100-foot ethernet cable. Doing so was a lot easier than trying to get a network card to work in a Vaio laptop. The cable doesn't even require sharpening.

IV In conclusion
I am now happily wireless-less.

Q and A

A question and a wonderful answer:

Q. You had a large handbag with you at the [Yankees World Series] game. What was in it?

A. A Hermes address book with an extensible very thin silver pencil; and two other pencils--a black ball-point (my name stamped in gold), retractable, made by a veteran who is paralyzed below the chest, who makes and sells a variety of eye-catchers as a living--Hal McColl, 101 West Club Boulevard, Durham, North Carolina. I occasionally order a pen set of him since it doesn't scratch or exude spiders. In case it gave out, I had a Dixon Ticonderoga with brass cap; had a Standard ring-topped notebook and a little thing of fifteen pages with a glazed white cover, souvenir of Unz & Co., Stationers, 24 Beaver Street, New York City--given me for a trip but saved for a single special event. Then I had a miniature pair of black plastic binoculars weighing an ounce and three-quarters--bought by mail to watch a bluejay that for two or three years had preempted a catalpa tree in a backyard adjacent to my back windows. I like to startle it by imitating it, so that it gives a sharp look round and answers uncertainly. It stays all winter.

Question by man of letters George Plimpton, answer by poet Marianne Moore, from "Ten Answers: Letters from an October Afternoon, Part II," Harper’s (November 1964).

[Moore's "spiders" seems to refer to the way fountain-pen ink will sometimes spread out on highly porous paper.]