Mont Blanc Fountain Pen, Part 2

A few days ago I did a post here about my 1997 impulse purchase of this Mont Blanc fountain pen in the Portland, OR, airport. A sweet $375 that took me, oh, quite a long time to pay off.

And I wrote about how that pen had failed recently to ... perform ... the way a fountain pen should (i.e, it failed to write).

So, I wrapped it up and mailed it off to their service center in Fort Worth, TX (which seems an odd place for a Mont Blanc service center!), and yesterday I heard back from them with an estimate.

The repair cost will be ... a lot (I'm too ashamed to post the amount).

But I approved it all. Gotta have that pen. I've been using it most every day since 1997, and I feel, well, dysfunctional without it.

Besides, what are credit cards for except to allow us to do things we can't really afford?

Which reminds me ... I am really grateful that early in my teaching career (I began in Aurora, Ohio, in 1966) I had no credit card except one for Sohio (now BP). My salary was pathetic my first year: I got paid a net $168.42 on the first and the fifteenth. I had rent to pay--a car pmt.--utilities. Sometimes I had enough left for some food. And so I developed deep friendships with Aurora people who could feed me--especially near the end of a pay period when my bank balance would often be below one dollar (I kid you not).

If I'd had other credit cards back then, I'd still be paying them off.

Anyway, today I'm sending in my approval to Fort Worth (via snail mail), and now I'm going to have to wait 2-3 more weeks, they tell me, until they snail-mail it back to me. I'm bereft.

And, oh, last night? In bed I was taking notes on some reading with my favorite mechanical pencil. It died. I don't mean it ran out of lead--I mean: IT DIED.

I loved that mechanical pencil.

And so I wonder: Am I getting some message from some mystical place? Some message that is hinting, not too subtly, that the demise of my beloved writing instruments is but the opening chord in a dark dirge for ... (three guesses).

And I don't think there's any service center in Fort Worth for me!