PEA RIDGE — Several weeks ago, some of us fellows at church decided in jest, that we would just call off winter for this year. That was back in late January. We were really expecting that winter would hit us before long, despite our talk. Amazingly, as time has passed, winter for the most part has stayed away, and I wonder if we should have been joking around as we were.
As disagreeable as winter is to bear, I think the cold and snow actually do us good in the long run. So, if bad consequences come this year from the lack of winter weather, we guys will protest that we didn’t really mean it; we were just joking. Let winter come as it will. Actually I remember heavy snows in April in past years.
Some signs of spring are already here. We noticed that Effie’s flowers out on the north Brush Creek hill were in bloom a week ago. I also see that June Easley’s flowers on Easley Hill near Little Sugar Creek are blooming, even if the calendar says it will be another couple of weeks before spring. At our house, our tulip tree has blooms all over. Maybe we should have another meeting to see if we can call off any freezes that might nip the blooms. Through the years, we have some years in which the trees and flowers are invited to bloom by warm weather, only to get hit hard by a freezing spell in March or April.
I’ve been thinking about fountain pens lately. I haven’t even seen a fountain pen in years, let alone using one to write. What a fantastic invention the fountain pen was! Before fountain pens, people used feather pens or other primitive pens to write with ink. I don’t remember ever writing with a feather pen myself. Fountain pens were the thing when I was young. In my early school days, and in going to eventsat the old Shady Grove schoolhouse northwest of Pea Ridge, it was common to see school desks with a groove across the top for pens and pencils, and at the end of that groove, a hole for the inkwell. I don’t remember ever using an inkwell at school, but I understand an inkwell was very handy, especially if you were sitting behind a girl who had her hair in long braids. After all, Inkwells were especially designed for dipping.
Fountain pens pretty much made inkwells obsolete. At least you didn’t need an inkwell at every desk. A fountain pen was able to take in a considerable ink supply from a bottle of black or blue ink.
There was a little pull-out lever on the side of the pen which squeezed the bladder inside the housing, and you dipped the writing end deep into the ink bottle, moved the side lever to its normal position, and the ink bladder would draw in a supply of ink. So fountain pens let a person write for a long time, rather thanhaving to dip the pen into an inkwell for every word.
Sometimes, though, the little ink bladder inside the pen cracked and burst.
That wasn’t good. It often meant blotches all over your paper, ink on your hands, and maybe all over your desk and everywhere.
Fountain pens were a great invention. They just weren’t perfect, and they didn’t last forever - maybe almost forever, but not forever. Fountain pens were often sold as fine gifts in a box, sometimes with a mechanical lead pencil included, and a little box of replacement leads.
I think it was soon after 1950 that we began seeing ball-point pens in the stores, and those began competing with fountain pens as people’s favorite writing instruments. The first ball-point pens were kind of an aggravation;
and I didn’t think they would catch on. For quite a while, I still preferred a fountain pen. The first ball-point pens were stubborn about getting going.
You needed a scrap pieceof paper to work on to get the writing point rolling.
Then there would be skips and light spaces where the ink didn’t flow well over the ball-point, or the ink would flow way too well, and your words would be blurred by the overflow.
But, as time went on, the ball-points improved, and over time they pretty much replaced the old fountain pens. They were cleaner to use, and eventually became very dependable.
For a long time the ballpoints were provided with replaceable ball and ink inserts. You could buy the replacement inserts at most variety stores, so we kept our pens and just replaced the writing inserts inside them. That is one of the big differences I see in “the old days” and “these days now.” Back then, we tended to fix things, replacing parts, keeping things going, only reluctantly throwingthings away.
Sometime back there in the 1960s and 1970s, we saw a trend toward more throwa-way things. The stick pen was one of those developments. You can’t buy parts for them. A month ago, my computer printer began leaving a blank spot in every line of print. I took it to be repaired, and was told, “Oh, to send it for repairs will cost you more than just buying a new one.” I hate that, to have to discard the whole big thing because of one little problem! Things need to be more fixable!
This throw-a-way world is too much!
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.
He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 03/14/2012