Binghamton Press Article - Published 9/11/2016

An old coot earned ink privileges in third grade the hard way.

By Merlin Lessler

It’s that time of year again; school is back in session. It was over 60 years ago when I was a kid heading back to start my prison sentence in 3^rd grade at Longfellow Elementary School on Binghamton’s south side. It was with mixed feelings that I left the playground and ran to the side door as the morning bell rang. I was sorry, because summer vacation had come to an end, yet excited to see my fellow classmates and to make the transition from pencil to pen & ink. We’d been working toward this transition for two years, filling pages and pages with letters of the alphabet, various size loops, endless coils and other shapes, imprinting writing skill patterns into the cortex of our brains. Those exercises were carried out under close supervision of the teacher who roamed the aisles, observing and correcting our pencil holding technique, and "tsking" when the coils or loops started to wander outside the lines. We did this every day, working toward the payoff that would ultimately come in 3^rd grade. Ink day!

It started one month into the term. Our teacher, Mrs. Babcock, walked over to Alex Palmer’s desk holding a quart bottle of black ink, a tiny nozzle protruding from the top. She slipped open the flap on an inkwell recessed into the upper right hand corner of Alex’s desk and filled it with that black magic. We sat in awe as she handed Alex a wooden penholder, a pen point, a small wiping rag and a blotter with an advertisement for Gardner Motors, the Olds dealer on Front Street. Alex’s face was bright red with embarrassment. Our faces were dark green with jealousy.

Alex now did her schoolwork in ink. All of a sudden, those loops became important; we wanted ink! Little by little, the inkwells around the room began to fill up. Finally, came my turn. By that time, the ink filling duties had been handed over to the students. It joined hall monitoring, eraser cleaning, blackboard washing and other classroom tasks on the chore list by the door. Teacher’s aides didn’t exist in that era. The school staff consisted of a single teacher for each classroom, a principal and a janitor (Mr. Vanick) who took care of the three-story building, inside and out by himself, except for the chores we handled in the classroom.

Blots and spills were common sights on the papers handed in from the boy’s side of the room. The girls, on the other hand, proved yet again, that moderation is best. Like the rest of the boys, I dipped deep and filled my pen point to the max. I didn’t want to bother dipping it into ink every few seconds. As a result, my paper was decorated with a variety of blobs and blots. I didn't know that ink privilege could be withdrawn if I was too messy. I wasn’t the last kid to get ink, but I think I was the first to have my ink well removed and told to use a pencil again. I’d spent too much “discipline” time standing in the hall, the cloak roam and the principal’s office to make the required progress in my pen and ink skills.

I still remember the thrill of dipping the pen point into ink that first time, and even more, the agony I felt when I lost the privilege. I couldn’t produce a single page that didn’t contain at least a blot or two. And, when I tried to use an ink eraser to remove the evidence, it usually tore a hole in the paper. I eventually mastered the technique and by the time I graduated from 6^th grade and entered West Junior I was pretty proficient. But, that’s when we put the inkwell, wooden penholder and steel pen point behind us; we moved on to fountain pens. My first one was an Esterbrook. Later that year I ascended to fountain pen “nirvana. I bought the “Cadillac” of pens, a Sheaffer Snorkel. You didn’t have to dip it into an ink bottle and have the point become a dripping mess; you manipulated a mechanism that pushed a snorkel out the end of the pen point, and then dipped that into the ink, pushed a small lever on the side and the ink was sucked into an internal bladder. My messy days were behind me.  

Writing with was a big deal back then. It wasn’t called cursive or script. It was just called writing, an important aspect of public education. The Binghamton School System employed a Penmanship Director, Elizabeth J. Drake. She oversaw and audited the writing curriculum in all six of the Binghamton elementary schools. At the end of each semester we submitted our best writing sample for evaluation. It was pasted in a "Penmanship Progress Folder and sent to Mrs. Drake.  When we graduated from Longfellow we received a diploma for class work and a penmanship certificate. We also got to keep our writing progress folder showing how much we’d improved from 3^rd grade to 6^th grade. I stumbled upon mine a few weeks ago and all those ink memories flooded back. My proudest accomplishment was getting the highly prized gold seal on my writing certificate. Today’s kids don’t need to bother with what was once an educational requirement. Keyboard skills have replaced writing skills. I’m so jealous. School life would have been so much easier.