Pencil Memories

I've been reading Henry Petroski's book The Pencil, which I highly recommend. This led me to gather all the pencils I could easily find and shoot this picture.

Interestingly, there are only a couple classic "regular pencils" (yellow, hexagonal, with attached erasers) in the set. Detailing what we see here:

Half of these are an array of FaberCastell COLORAY pencils I purchased for a college cartography class (though the orange Venus Paradise, which was stored with them, is obviously a separate purchase). The other orange-finished pencils are all Detroit Tigers souvenirs, though one of them's not labelled; there's also a green Clinton LumberKings artifact in this collection.

The white JS Bach pencil my sister picked up in Germany. The two cuties with toys on the end were gifts. And the long ones say "Brookgreen Gardens," which is in Myrtle Beach and must be from Mother.

The red one that says "Drive Drunk" actually says "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk," and is a leftover from my time in Michigan's Bureau of Driver Improvement. The white one with "Answer" advertises the 1990 Census, and one of the apparently-conventional yellow pencils says "Arnolds Payless for Better Health," which certainly sounds like an advertisement.

Which leaves one classic pencil, a Venus Velvet #2. On the back it says "Property of the State of Michigan," which suggests I inadvertently brought it home from work. For many years I read driving records for a living, and always had a pencil in hand while I did so.

Not here: Joan's got a degree in drafting. Somewhere in the house is her set of excellent pencils. I didn't look for those.