Big, Fat, Yellow Pencils By Abraham Lincoln

Big, Fat, Yellow Pencils By Abraham Lincoln

I can still remember that big, fat, yellow pencil I had to take to school when I entered the 1st grade at Gordon. I had a big yellow tablet with lines spaced far apart that was required and the big yellow pencil made big letters that fit between the green guidelines.

I looked around the school and all grades from the 2nd to the 8th had tablets with narrow lines and nobody but us first graders had the big, fat, pencils. And, the 7th and 8th graders used white notebook paper and #2 yellow pencils. I was so envious. I think, my buddy, Dwight Ressler was envious too.

It would be towards the end of World War II before the new fangled writing instrument came out; but we had heard of “ball-pointed-pens,” and wondered what they looked like.

Those were the farthest thing from my mind. It was hard to sharpen my big, fat, yellow pencil. It didn’t fit in the hole in the pencil sharpener so I had to ask the schoolteacher, Miss Beatrice Brown, to sharpen it for me. And, she would, but she just wouldn’t stop teaching a class to sharpen your big, fat, yellow pencil.



I have tried to find a big, fat, yellow pencil like those that we used in the early 1940s but nobody seems interested in stocking pencils. If you need a ballpoint, they stock them and the shelves are thick with displays of ballpoint pens made everywhere in the world. I just got one from San Jose, California today and the company I ordered it from had imported them from Japan.

They are called a “uni-xgel in 0.5” writing size. Different. Totally different. The finger grip area is super soft rubber material of some sort. The rest of the pen is chromed. It is called a “Shaker” gel pen that writes like a ball point. You have to click it to get the point section to come out. Once the point is out you can shake the pen until the line you make is as dark as it gets.


I gave up on yellow, wooden, pencils a long time ago. I can’t find one in the house. But a writing friend of mine, told me about the pencils she uses, called, “Palomino ‘Blackwing’” and I ordered a box of those. These are super special pencils. You would waste too much using an electric pencil sharpener. You need one of those that are often given away with boxes of colored pencils. It makes a shorter point but sharp as a needle.

The nice thing about these pencils is that it only takes about half of the pressure to get the darkest line possible And the pencil glides over the paper like a sled on an icy hill. The Blackwing name comes from the wide ‘black’ eraser on the end. As it is used you can pull more out. You can even buy boxes of new black erasers. People must use these pencils until they are so short they can’t write with them.

The days of the wooden pencil seemed to be over for me until I got these pencils. Now, it is just starting over and that “feeling” reminded me of the big, fat, yellow pencils I carried to 1st grade.