Pencils

He flipped open the metallic lid of a new boxed set of Staedtler sketching pencils - the one with 12 Mars Lumograph pencils, 8B to 2H - and a flood of warm, earthy fragrance filled his nostrils, hitting his brain, which triggered an expanse of memories from childhood.  

Mother worked for an architect, and it was his task to walk from junior high to the architect’s downtown office, which was perched above a women’s clothing store, of all things, and wait until 5 p.m. so they could go home. 

The office was spartan, just a desk where his mother sat, and another room set off to the right (storefront side) that was dimly lit, save for the natural light that spilled from the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows (three of them) and the twin architect lamps, both black, that were attached to the twin drafting tables that faced one another (the architect’s apprentice worked three days a week, and only until noon, so as not to interrupt his studies). 

The architect used mechanical pencils of course, stylish metal things with lead he shook from slender plastic tubes and loaded into the pencil’s barrel that was accessed by popping off a silver cap and then removing the tiny soft white eraser he never used, since scattered about on his table were large rectangles of soft white’s in various stages of decay. 

 After a snack Mother provided from a gigantic closet she had to access by going out of the office and into the hallway (Lance Toast Chee sandwich crackers with peanut butter), the architect allowed him to do his homework on the apprentice's drafting table, and when he finished the architect would have him practice writing in architectural lettering - those uniform, easy-to-read block letters that architects established so as to not have costly construction errors from contractors reading blueprints - with his very own mechanical pencil gifted to him the previous Christmas.

Two weeks before the Christmas of 1973, he ate his crackers in Mother’s office, washed his hands and went to “his” drafting table to practice his letters (to this day, he no longer knows how to write the cursive the nuns taught him at Catholic elementary school - well, save for his signature), and there on the table was a small gift, wrapped in blueprint, of course. The architect nodded for him to open it, and he ripped into it as if it was Christmas morning.

And the heady smell of freshly sawed wood and lead filled his head. His own box of Straedtlers, the Mars Lumographs, blue-painted barrel, black tip (no erasers), the 24-pack (!) 12B to 10H already sharpened to perfection and ready to touch paper. 

“I think it’s time,” the architect said, “that you move past lines and block letters and draw the world as you see fit.”