the last days of ethan a. hitchcock on 12 march 2002, i bought a pack of monorchid roller micro pens and a label maker. i decided, for reasons uncertain, to name each of the twelve pens after the various secretaries in william mckinley’s cabinet. to date, i have either lost or exhausted all the pens save ethan a. hitchcock: attorney general, philander chase knox: was confiscated by a house of lords security guard whose day i made when i told him that none of the house of commons guards had detected it. secretary of the interior, cornelious bliss: i used him to sign a good buddy’s marriage certificate. the priest also used it. the bride asked if she could keep it as a memento, noting that her marriage was made official by a pen called bliss. secretary of war, elihu root: i took elihu with me on a 66 day hiking trip and used him to write every single journal entry. he held out until the last week. i buried him on the eastern slope of a mountain with a view overlooking a peaceful valley and a patchwork of pinot noir vineyards. he would have wanted it that way. secretary of the treasury, lyman gage: was lost forever at some point on a road trip from philly to miami. to this day, nobody knows exactly what happened to him. perhaps a north carolina innkeeper used him to sign checks. perhaps a clerk in savannah is still using him to write letters to friends. perhaps a group of bored youths smashed him to tarry bits long ago. secretary of the interior, ethan a. hitchcock: just last night, i noticed his once majestic streams of jet had withered away to graying scratches. he was my grocery list pen, my taking-down-notes-while-on-the-phone pen, my doodling-in-boring-meetings pen, and my goto pen for other inglamorous day-to-day drudgeries. he lasted so long because my use of pens was slowly being outsourced to computers and palm pilots and cell phones—i rarely wrote with him at all in the last few months. while he didn’t go out in a blaze of glory like his colleagues, he is the winner of the mckinley tontine and his final, stately end shall be curlicues on yellow paper on this blog. this post in memory of ethan a. hitchcock pen (3/12/2002 - 2/24/2009)

the last days of ethan a. hitchcock

on 12 march 2002, i bought a pack of monorchid roller micro pens and a label maker. i decided, for reasons uncertain, to name each of the twelve pens after the various secretaries in william mckinley’s cabinet. to date, i have either lost or exhausted all the pens save ethan a. hitchcock:

  • attorney general, philander chase knox: was confiscated by a house of lords security guard whose day i made when i told him that none of the house of commons guards had detected it.
  • secretary of the interior, cornelious bliss: i used him to sign a good buddy’s marriage certificate. the priest also used it. the bride asked if she could keep it as a memento, noting that her marriage was made official by a pen called bliss.
  • secretary of war, elihu root: i took elihu with me on a 66 day hiking trip and used him to write every single journal entry. he held out until the last week. i buried him on the eastern slope of a mountain with a view overlooking a peaceful valley and a patchwork of pinot noir vineyards. he would have wanted it that way.
  • secretary of the treasury, lyman gage: was lost forever at some point on a road trip from philly to miami. to this day, nobody knows exactly what happened to him. perhaps a north carolina innkeeper used him to sign checks. perhaps a clerk in savannah is still using him to write letters to friends. perhaps a group of bored youths smashed him to tarry bits long ago.
  • secretary of the interior, ethan a. hitchcock: just last night, i noticed his once majestic streams of jet had withered away to graying scratches. he was my grocery list pen, my taking-down-notes-while-on-the-phone pen, my doodling-in-boring-meetings pen, and my goto pen for other inglamorous day-to-day drudgeries. he lasted so long because my use of pens was slowly being outsourced to computers and palm pilots and cell phones—i rarely wrote with him at all in the last few months. while he didn’t go out in a blaze of glory like his colleagues, he is the winner of the mckinley tontine and his final, stately end shall be curlicues on yellow paper on this blog.

this post in memory of ethan a. hitchcock pen (3/12/2002 - 2/24/2009)

February 25, 2009
∞ 32 notes
tags
1800s being raynor early 1900s history horatio popular
disclaimer