Pencil Necked Geeks

  Today is Pencil Day.  Not #2 pencil day (that's earlier in the Fall, suitably when kids return to school), but Pencil Day none the less.  A pencil is what most grammar school children use before they choose to take notes later in their scholastic careers with pens.  A writing utensil that has amazing properties; a pencil can write in zero-gravity (NASA spent bokoodles of bucks on developing an ink-pen to do the job a simple pencil could).  It can write while underwater (the paper tends to disintegrate though).  Gotta make a notation on the underside surface?  No problem!  Whip out the pencil, it writes while upside down.  You could draw an uninterrupted line for 35 miles with a standard pencil.  Why you would want to is beside the point, pardon the pun.

Lead is no longer used (folks where mad as hatters back in the day).  Now, graphite is used.  The best graphite used to be in China, where the color yellow symbolizes royalty and respect.  So the best pencils where made in China.  Since the common folk did not write, only those of special status did and so pencils were yellow.  Tradition dies hard and 75% of our pencils are yellow today.

The wood is cedar.  Which brings me to the Cedar Key, Florida.  It is a lovely little place, about 2hrs south west of Gainesville.  At one time, before Red Tide washed away most of the good fishing, oyster beds, and shrimping industry...Cedar Key was a thriving spot.

About 8 years ago, I visited Cedar Key.  It had all the amenities of a tourist's dream, without the exotic prices.  I was able to secure quite the charming suite, complete with a kitchenette for the entire weekend for about $50.  I visited the little craft shops and enjoyed the small secluded beaches.  The nicer homes on stilts were on the market, for very cheap prices (definitely a buyer's market).

There was a bird sanctuary, a wildlife reserve, and a museum.  It was while speaking with a life long resident of the island at the museum that I learned that years ago, back in the day, Cedar Key was the hot bed of pencils.  This was before the fishing industry bloomed (and died), before the huge wave of tourists and summer residents (or rather Winter Birds and retirees from up North), and before the current economy was struggling.

This was when american children were armed with pencils.  When computers were not yet a common commodity and when accountants, shopkeepers, and other paper pushers used pencils primarily.  Cedar Key residents worked in the Pencil Plant.  The US Government (especially the Department of Education) was the largest consumer of pencils produced.

The elderly museum volunteer warmed to the subject and spoke for quite some time, explaining how the preferred Cedar Key pencil was not painted yellow, but was the soft pinkish red of sanded cedar.  He told me that some runs were fat round pencils that children could handle with ease.  He spoke with pride of how the plant provided all the employees with pencils for their own children at the beginning of each term.  His voice grew wistful when he spoke of the scent of cedar pleasantly odorizing the air throughout the entire island.  Er excuse me, KEY.  Cedar Key.

So, next time you see a plain old fashioned pencil, not one of them new-fangled mechanical do-jobbies with the refillable graphite...think of the illustrious history of the pencil, its many uses, and see if it doesn't fit in your hand just write.