When I on occasion have the opportunity to look at documents from the past, there are times that I am impressed with the penmanship written by those who have long since departed this earth.
When I was in Miss Hazel Walters’ (later Butcher) first grade, I remember writing with an oversized # 2 lead pencil. (Actually, “lead” pencils do not contain lead, but graphite.) It has been many years since I have seen one of those writing instruments, and how I wish I had saved one from my earlier years. As first graders we spent endless hours printing the alphabet, both capital (big) and small letters on those oversized, lined newsprint tablets, sometimes in crayon on wipe-off sheets. I was an excellent printer on those big lined sheets, and this carried over to the second grade when we were required to do our work on regular notebook paper.
Nevertheless, even though I was an excellent printer, I had some writing difficulties. For one thing, I was afraid of the pencil sharpener. There were no electric pencil sharpeners in those days, and even if there had been, I’d probably have been afraid of them as I was the manual kind. These were the old hand-cranked portable ones that were attached to the blackboard frames in almost every classroom. Sometimes a block of wood was attached to the wall and the sharpeners were mounted there, as some teachers revered their blackboards so much that no nail or screw was allowed to mar the perfection of the varnished wooden frames. For the really savvy, in later years there were pencil sharpeners with suction devices on the base operated by a lever, allowing them to be temporarily mounted on almost any flat surface, resulting in no unsightly blemishes left on wood by mounting screws.
How, you ask, did I sharpen my pencils? Since I feared pencil sharpeners, it would have seemed logical to ask one of my classmates if s/he would do it for me, but I guess I had a little streak of independence even then. Actually, I was ashamed for anyone to know I was afraid of something they used every day with no fear. I certainly was not going to ask the teacher, for I knew she would make me face the pencil sharpener and overcome my fear. It’s sad to be so afraid and ashamed that you’re even afraid of overcoming a fear!
I used my teeth. I knew that people were supposed to die of lead poisoning (we country folk didn’t know about graphite then), but I faced that possibility rather than the horrifics of that noisy, little grinding machine that would grind a finger just as easily as it would a pencil. I sharpened countless pencils with my teeth. (Perhaps I should have had the nickname “Beaver”, just like little Mr. Cleaver on the old television sitcom.) It was a messy business, as saliva mixed with pencil lead resulted in an eternally dirty face and shirt. In an effort to punish my pencil, I suppose, for the indignities of fear to which it pushed me by requiring sharpening, I not only chewed the base to get to the lead, I spent quite some time chewing all up and down its pretty painted surfaces. For some reason, no one ever seemed to want to borrow or steal my pencils.
Though I had beautiful printing, in spite of my struggles with pencil sharpeners, I was plagued with two other curses. First, I was left-handed. In the early years of my public school education, being a left-handed writer was a plague that must be corrected as early as possible, so my first few teachers tried to convert me to right-handedness. (“Right” in this case was synonymous with “correct”.) Miss Hazel tried in first grade. Ms. Leah Wolfe tried in second. The late great Florence Chesney tried in third.
The other curse was that I never learned how to hold my pencil correctly. (To this day I have only encountered two other people who are left-handed and hold their pencils like I do. One was the legendary Joseph Franklin Day, former principal of Horace Maynard High School. The other was a student I taught in fifth grade.) In first grade, when Miss Hazel told us to pick up a pencil, I picked mine up in the way that seemed “right” to me. I have never been able to this very day to change the way I held that pencil the very first time. Even though my early teachers experienced no luck with getting me to change to the “right” hand, they also tried to get me to hold my pencil correctly. Miss Hazel tried in first grade, Ms. Leah in second, Ms. Chesney in third. When I got to fourth, Ms. Wanza Sharp asked me, “Mincey darling, didn’t Ms. Florence ever try to get you to hold your pencil right?” I replied that she did indeed, and Ms. Wanza said, “Well, if she couldn’t fix you, I’m not going waste my time trying!”
Even with these extenuating circumstances, my writing grades in first and second grade were for the most part “A”s. Even when we switched to regular # 2 pencils in second grade, I was able to print extremely well. The next mountain to cross came in third grade when we began writing in cursive. My style of holding a pencil did not give me the control needed to form all the curves used to make cursive writing pretty. My lovely writing grades dropped to “C”s in third grade, and those were for the most part gifts of mercy from the teacher. I wrote in cursive because we were not allowed to print after second grade. I did the best I could at the time, but my cursive was pretty pitiful. This effect was highlighted by the fact that my left hand smears everything I write as I move left to right on the printed page.
This changed in the sixth grade, when I encountered another legendary Union County educator—Mrs. Bobbie Marie McPhetridge Lynch, “Miss Marie”, wife of the wonderful former principal of Maynardville Elementary School, Charles H. Lynch, Jr.
Ms. Marie was upset the year I had her in sixth grade. She was what we now call an “old line” teacher. She had taught many years in one or two room schools before eventually coming to Maynardville Elementary. All I knew of Maynardville Elementary was the building I attended. Ms. Marie moved into the building when it was new in 1960 and never changed grades or classrooms. For those who remember her well, Ms. Marie, even though her husband was principal, was a strong force in the school’s operation.
Ms. Marie was not one for change. I was in her class the last year she taught, 1976-77. Dwain G. Burke had just been elected superintendent of schools, and one of his changes was to implement departmentalization (changing classes) in Maynardville Elementary’s sixth and seventh grades. I still remember Ms. Marie telling our class in very blunt terms how terrible this was. She told us to go home and tell our parents what was happening.
The eventuality was that I was in Ms. Marie’s homeroom class, though she only taught me spelling and writing. Possibly Ms. Marie’s last educational success was teaching Ronnie L. Mincey how to write in cursive so that it was presentable. How did Ms. Marie succeed when none before her could? One simple word—fear.
There have been three entities in my life that I have feared, both literally and with the awesome measure of respect. One is God Almighty. The other was my father, Frank Mincey. The third was Marie Lynch. Which entity I feared most during school year 1976-77 depended on whether I was at church, home, or in school. Ms. Marie had a disposition much like my father at home, so I understood her nature. Her growl might have been worse than her bite, but I had seen my father at home both growl and bite, and I knew that Ms. Marie’s growl was enough for me. I sure didn’t want to experience her bite!
Probably no other teacher I ever encountered put more stock in the importance of penmanship. I remember she used to walk up and down the aisles with a ruler, measuring our cursive writing to make sure that all our capital letters only went to three-quarters of the top of a line, that the letters that had “tails” below the line only went down half, that small cursive “t’s” and “d’s” only went to one half of the line.
Ms. Marie did have one meaningful conversation with me about the proper way to hold my pencil. I tried to hold my pencil the way she showed me, but I reverted to my “normal” way when she wasn’t looking. I’m sure she was observant enough to know that I only tried to hold my pencil correctly when she was looking, but also smart enough to accept the fact that my penmanship was improving and that she didn’t need to “push the issue”. This was evidence of the stubborn nature inside me that said, “Old woman, I’ll do it your way while I’m in here, but I’ll do it the way I want when I’m not around you.” Well, Ms. Marie took care of this. She let us know that she would be looking at the work we submitted to our other teachers and that if it wasn’t right that we’d be hearing from her. Also, we practiced every day. This, mixed with the pride in my newfound ability to actually do something correctly that I was never able to do before, resulted in my lifelong habit of writing cursive the way Ms. Marie taught.
If God would give me the opportunity, I would like to talk face to face with Ms. Marie and tell her how much I appreciate her teaching me to write legible cursive. Of all the things I ever learned in school, cursive writing was one of the most practical and useful. Unfortunately, Ms. Marie passed away when I was in eighth grade. Looking back, I doubt that Ms. Marie felt well the last year she taught, though a little sixth grader like me was oblivious of the fact.
In closing, I will tell of the church secretary whose grandson went to get a passport about fifteen or so years ago. He could not sign his name in cursive and was accordingly denied a passport. He had to leave, learn to sign his name in cursive before returning to obtain this important document. It saddens my heart that so little emphasis is placed in today’s public education on such a necessary, practical skill as penmanship.
My own difficulties with learning to write with lead pencils instill a sense of reverence in me when I see the beautiful, flowing penmanship of those from long ago who wrote beautiful cursive with quill and ink. I fear that if the lead pencil had not been invented that this ol’ boy would be unable to write today.
My email friend once sent me this witticism, so true for me, that I leave you with today.

Writing my name in cursive was my signature move.

I further leave you with a little bit of worthless knowledge to make you smarter.
The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

One final observation:
Broken pencils are pretty much pointless.