Thanks for the link, Bill. The Metropolitan was a neat little car. I never had one, but a lady friend did. Ahh, that brings back memories…..

Speaking of pens, how about the Reynolds Rocket? They were, I think, the first ball-point pens. It took about ten starts to get the ink flowing (it was real gummy and you had to press hard), and then you'd write about two words and it would start to skip. Sometimes they would go to the other extreme and turn your shirt-front blue (pocket protectors got real popular about then). When you could get a pretty decent fountain pen (e.g., Parker 45) for about $5.00, they wanted $12.00 for those things. "Put a Rocket in your pocket" was the advertising blurb. That could have killed the ball-point pen right there, but then everybody went to work on it and the ball-point pen took off.

I've always loved fountain pens. I still have two Parker 45s, and they still make ink cartridges for them, but these days a five-pack costs your first-born and the deed to your ranch and you can't get them very many places. Hard to get a decent fountain pen these days. A good one costs at least fifty bucks and you have to buy them at a specialty store. The ones you can get in the drug store, sealed in a plastic bubble, for a couple of bucks really stink. Penmanship is a thing of the past. Pity.

Don Firth