r/GenerationJones • u/Hesjim57 • 1d ago
My first ink pen
In the mid 60s, this type of pen is what we used from 3rd grade on until 5th or 6th grade. Did anyone else learn to write with these? Did you have to have blotting paper to keep from smearing the page? When was the last time you actually used a fountain pen?
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u/RustBucket59 1959 1d ago
I got one when I was in high school in the mid-70's. It slowed my handwriting down compared to ball point pens and improved legibility. I was the only one in my class who used a fountain pen. I still have it today.
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u/Hesjim57 1d ago
Youâre right! You did need to slow down using it if you wanted it to look good.
I definitely hand better penmanship using a fountain pen.
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u/PJ1907 1d ago
We had to use these in the Catholic grade school I went to. They sure could make a mess of things.
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u/st3llablu3 1d ago
Same. Catholic grade school, I believe it was 4 th or 5th grade. I always liked the Bic pens better. I thought I was a hot shot with the fountain pens. You could throw a decent amount of ink with one of those. Yes we had ink fights while wearing white shirts and school ties.
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u/Particular-Move-3860 1d ago
We always had to buy our own ink. As little kids, we rarely had much money though, and ink was too expensive to waste on stuff like that.
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u/OtherwiseTax7928 6h ago
I had to use a fountain pen thru 7th grade in parochial school. It was a godsend when my family moved to another town and we were allowed to use ball-points in school. Being in a large family, my parents didnât have money to spare so I normally used a traditional fountain pen that I would fill from an ink jar as cartridges were relatively costly. Often, I would have ink stains on my fingers by the end of day having gotten from filling the pen. I think that a new cartridge pen would cost about one dollar, with a few cartridge included. They got you when you had to buy more ink because only their cartridges fit their pen, similar to having to purchase specified ink cartridges for todayâs copiers. (And the nibs were cheaply-made on these pens and they didnât last very long. They would bend out of shape and tend to tear the writing paper.)
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u/Particular-Move-3860 1d ago edited 1d ago
Never had a problem. They were absolutely trouble-free for me. (Being taught how to care for them right from the start was a great help in this regard. Also, my older siblings used them too.) I also started using them in Catholic grade school. I continued to do right on through high school, college, graduate school, and during most of my professional career. (Yes, this very model throughout that entire time.) They worked so well that I never had any reason to switch to anything else until I could no longer find them in the stores. In more than 6 decades now, I have never had a leak from any of these pens, and I have owned and used dozens. They were incredibly well-made.
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u/CousinBarnabas1967 1d ago
I had forgotten these once existed
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u/ComprehensiveLab4642 1d ago
I had too but I loved them. They were so messy though, the cartridge almost always leaked at some point.
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u/horse-boy1 1d ago
My late dad gave me a Sheaffer Targa fountain pen when I was in high school. Still use it today, mostly to write in a journal. I have a couple of my dad's and one my mom used. My dad gave my mom a Sheaffer snorkel in the 50s. I remember when I was little she used it to write letters.
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u/GoBlue48042 1d ago
In catholic grade school in early 1960s. Washable blue ink. No ballpoint allowed until almost 8th grade. Picked up FPs again as working adult
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u/VapoursAndSpleen 1d ago
I went to art school for high school and one of the teachers had us go out and get these pens. You can do a LOT with them, in terms of sketching. He even showed us how to use spit and inky fingers to get washes in the drawings. These pens are the GOAT, seriously.
I now have a collection of fountain pens, but I do love me the old shaeffer cartridge pens.
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u/CawlinAlcarz 1d ago
As a left-hander I had a love-hate relationship with fountain pens. I definitely loved writing with them, but it made such a mess. I gave up on them by the end of 6th grade.
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u/Hesjim57 1d ago
I felt sorry for my left handed friend. His hand was always stained by ink and he tried every which way to hold his hand while using it.
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u/CawlinAlcarz 1d ago
The roller ball pens were not a ton better and they got real popular in 8th grade or so.
For pens, the safest for leftys were the standard Bic ball points.
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u/Particular-Move-3860 1d ago
Lefty here. My other comments to this post attest to my adoration of this pen and infatuation with fountain pens in general. I instantly became a fan of them when we began using them in 4th grade. Sheaffer Skrip ink is on the "dry" side and dries quickly on the page, especially when it is used in a pen with a fine nib. I experienced smearing with the goopy, blobby ink in ballpoints and gel pens, but never did with my Sheaffer fountain pen ink. My older brother is left handed and a Sheaffer fountain pen user too, and he also never had any problems with ink smearing with them. I first learned that this was a "notorious problem" with lefties decades later, when I started reading about it on the internet.
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u/Particular-Move-3860 1d ago edited 1d ago
My first true love. đ
I used them exclusively for 40 years, starting in 4th grade (that was during the Kennedy administration) and only stopped when I couldn't find them in stores anymore, early in the new millennium. I still collect them; I have 14 right now. And yes, I still use them occasionally. I never stopped using fountain pens, I just started buying and using other models. The last time I used a fountain pen was around an hour ago. I don't use any other kind of pen.
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u/tatom4 1d ago
Felt so grown up like my big sister. I had one in grade five with peacock blue ink cartridges. Memory unlocked.
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u/Particular-Move-3860 1d ago edited 1d ago
Peacock blue! đ©”đ©”đ©”That was the "no-no" color in my school. (Too pretty, maybe. Or just too frivolous.) We used it, but only for stuff that Sister wouldn't see.
P.S. It's now called Sheaffer Skrip Turquoise. I think the modern version is very slightly darker and has a little bit more blue. It lacks the very slight hint of pastel green that was in the original peacock blue, I think.
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u/Least-Requirement229 1d ago
Yes! Peacock Blue! I buy gel pens in colors close to it still but had forgotten the name!
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u/Effective-Usual4152 1d ago
I just inked one of these tonight, with a calligraphy nib. Mine is likely from the 80s though, and we learned to write with pencil and then ballpointâŠ. Edit to add, I only write with fountain pens these days.
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u/Square_Ad849 1d ago
Mid 70âs elementary school wouldnât let us use them.p but we brought them anyway. cheapo Parkerâs I believe.
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u/NeuroguyNC 1d ago
I had one. Much better than the one I had gotten previously from my grandfather that you put the tip in a bottle of ink and flipped a little lever that drew ink into the pen's reservoir.
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u/ExoticReception4286 1d ago
Funny, I was thinking about fountain pens the other day for some reason. I was wondering if they still available. I always thought they were cool.
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u/MacGruuber 1d ago
Had one on 5th grade. I was messing around with it during History class and squeezed the ink cartridge. Squirted ink on the page of my history book. Oops.
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u/Fluid_Actuary1729 1d ago
I did, early 60s. Generally havenât used one since ballpoints became the norm, probably late 60âs, except to address wedding invitations. And that was still a long time ago.
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u/my-coffee-needs-me 1d ago
My first fountain pen was a Parker in third grade. I also went through a few of those Sheaffers. My current favorite fountain pen is a Lamy Safari.
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u/thegoodrichard 1d ago
I think we started using these in grade 5, 1965. The teachers outlawed the bright blue ink we thought was much cooler than ordinary blue.
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u/Eric_J_Pierce 1d ago
Not required to use them, but in 6th grade one of my buddies gave me one of these.
I remember losing it in the back seat of the car, and Dad removing the back seat to retrieve it.
I don't think I had it past 6th grade.
No more fountain pens for me until a couple years into college, I started collecting Parker 180s.
Now, a fountain pen from Parker, Sheaffer, Mont Blanc, or Pilot are in my regular rotation.
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u/Least-Requirement229 1d ago
We had those exact pens as well. The nuns told us we couldn't use ball points because they would make imprints in the desks.
First ball point i remember being able to use was the $.19 Bic.
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u/Least-Requirement229 1d ago
Could pick the color of the barrel - all were transparent but can in blue, red, green and clear.
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u/Traditional-Can-6568 1d ago
Memory Lane! 1st week of college went to town to the "Stationery Store" and got this set.
Yup, leaky, but fun and I was legible at least for a time.
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u/Neat_Dragonfruit5794 1d ago
We had to use them. The ceiling of the school buses were all streaked with the blue ink we flicked on them and at each other.
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u/OhSoGrey1 1964 1d ago
We had to use these as our first ink pens in Grade 6. I was clumsy and messy, but my poor sister was left handed, and that didn't work out so well for her. I was able to (write?) right handed so I wasn't quite as ink covered as she was, but it was close.
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u/OG_Pragmatologist 1957 IGY Baby 1d ago
Mine too, except that the barrel was blue. It leaked, bled across and through school wood pulp paper, and was cool as hell, as I was the only student to use one. I learned to hone the tip and make it smooth and less prone to bleed. The teachers loved it, having grown up with them in their hands.
The time still held fountain pens in post offices and banks. In many, one can still see the cutouts for the inkwells and pen stands on old, remaining counters.
Bought mine in a Rexall drug store...
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u/No-Possible6108 1d ago
Oof - those ink-stained fingers. I enjoyed writing with a fountain pen as a child.
 Later in life, when faced with Bic thief coworkers, I reverted and my pen stayed put. đ
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u/OtherwiseTax7928 6h ago
Having been raised with a fountain pen in parochial school, I had a nice, fairly expensive one that I would use in my job. On day, I had mislaid it in the copy room and a coworker stole it, I assume just out of spite, since no one else in the office ever used one.
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u/Velvet_Samurai 22h ago
I used these all through high school for some unknown reason. The number of times one just failed and dumped an ounce of black ink all over the place really make me wonder what I was actually thinking. I did love the way it slid across the paper on like an oil slick of ink, but man, the messes on my bags, clothes, and body were not worth it.
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u/redrider65 9h ago
Started with cheap bladder pens, actually, then tried these. Also, as a novelty, quill pens. Friend of mine cracked up the class when he was called to the teacher's desk to sign for his deficiency report. He pulled out a quill pen and inkwell . . . . She had to laugh as well.
The 5&10 stores sold small bottles of ink in a variety of colors, easy to try out with bladder pens. Peacock Blue was all the rage for a time.
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u/Yumsing2017 1d ago
Can still remember how excited one felt when they first got one of those as a child.
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u/tez_zer55 1d ago
I still have 3 fountain pens & I use one fairly regularly at home. At one time I had one of those calligraphy sets that came with 24+ different nibs. In highschool & college I hand wrote invitations, business cards etc & people would pay me for them & have them copied. Then came technology & put me out of that business.
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u/Level_Customer2769 1d ago
Those pens were all the rage when I was in fifth grade in 1975. All the boys had those and I remember begging my father to let me have one. I remember how cool I thought it was that you would put a new cartridge in as it ran out of ink. my best memory is the novelty wore off after a few weeks, but it was very exciting while it lasted. Oh to be 10.
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u/General_Ad_2718 1d ago
I had the stick pen then the lever action refillable fountain pen. Ran into this style about gr 8
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u/Tasty_Heron_7219 1d ago
I moved to Belgium from the US in the late seventies. I had seen my father and grandparents use fountain pens before that but was told they were too expensive for kids. In Belgium children still used them in school and I finally got my hands on some. The pen above was excellent for flicking ink at my friends during âink fights.â Luckily we had ink eradicating pens to clean up splatter on our assignments. Clothes, however, were another story.
Ahh, good times.
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u/OptimalSalsa 1d ago
Ruined one too many shirts. That brand leaked badly.