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墨書 Inktalez
I have always dreamed of having my own fountain pen. As the amount of homework increases and the teacher's demands become stricter, this dream becomes more and more urgent. Because I don't have a fountain pen, using a simple pencil or brush seriously affects the neatness of my homework and tests, and more seriously affects my interest in learning.
However, reality stands firmly in front of me: due to relatively scarce material conditions, the number of classmates who have fountain pens is limited. My family's financial situation can only be considered average. Based on past experience, even though my academic performance has always been among the best in the class, there is probably no hope if I ask my parents for money to buy a fountain pen.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Since I can't buy a fountain pen, I will find another way. I have started the journey of making a homemade fountain pen.
The initial attempt was inspired by the shape of a brush tip. I found that the stamens of the pine trees on the mountain behind my house were naturally an endless and inexhaustible "brush tip." Unlike a real brush tip, it wasn't as soft. If used for writing, it definitely wouldn't split or shed like the low-quality brushes we use, and the writing would surely look very nice.
One clear afternoon, I quietly went to the back of the mountain alone, climbed a tall pine tree, and carefully selected more than ten aesthetically pleasing and moderately hard stamens according to my imagination, then went home to try them out.
At first, I directly held the stamens with my thumb and index finger, dipped them in ink, and started doing my homework. The effect was just as I had imagined. Although the writing was a bit larger than regular penmanship, it already resembled pen writing. But after writing only two or three lines, I discovered a fatal weakness in this "pen." It was too short, making it difficult to hold with my fingers. I had to take a break after writing a few words, and my fingers were too close to the tip, causing my hands to get covered in ink, which would easily dirty the surface of the homework.
After discovering this problem, I immediately made a new attempt. I tightly wound the pistil with a thread around a small stick, which immediately solved the above problem. There wasn't much homework that day, so I quickly finished writing with my homemade fountain pen.
A few days later, this homemade fountain pen encountered a real disaster. Their problems were exposed one by one. The thread wrapping the pistil to the stick often loosened, and if not careful, the entire pen tip would fall onto the homework paper. The lifespan of the pistil was extremely limited; it would deform after writing a few dozen words, requiring a new pen tip. The time spent on replacement was even longer than doing a homework assignment. The writing was too large, consuming too much ink.
The failure of the first attempt did not stop the progress of my homemade fountain pen. The second attempt began immediately.
One day, I suddenly had a high fever. My mother took me to the Field Medical Station, where a Barefoot Doctor used a strange pen to write me a prescription. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was actually using a piece of bamboo!
I quietly observed and noted the appearance of that pen, without asking him how it was made. I just thought about rushing home to try making one myself. My condition improved a bit; I didn't need an injection and just took a few pills before heading home.
Once I got home, I started rummaging through drawers and found three leftover pieces of bamboo from my parents. I immediately grabbed a hatchet and began crafting the pen I imagined: first, based on a fleeting glance, I cut the bamboo into flat, long strips. Then, I carefully sharpened one end to create a pointed edge and repeatedly smoothed the body of the bamboo with the hatchet to avoid cutting my fingers and palms while using it.
Due to the tools being somewhat unwieldy and not very sharp, and since it was my first time working with bamboo, I made many adjustments to the shape and size of the bamboo strips. My fingers, palms, and even wrists were marked with fine scratches from the bamboo as I finally shaped the "pen."
Once I used it, I found that this pen was much more functional than the first one I had made. However, its lifespan was still quite limited. Before long, even though I hadn't used up all three bamboo strips, I stopped using this "pen."
This was because I had already planned to work hard to own a real fountain pen.
In the village, there was a consignment store where villagers could spend money to buy simple supplies, and one of those items was a pen. I had visited and inquired about it several times, but at that time, there was only one type of pen available for sale, priced at six cents and five mills, which was about the same as a pound of pork. Unlike buying meat, there was no need for a meat coupon, nor did one have to travel four or five miles to the commune to make the purchase.
With a clear goal in mind, I faced the question: where would I get the money? Six cents and five mills was not a small amount even in the eyes of adults back then. I had no intention of asking my parents for money to buy the pen; I had to find a way on my own. Fortunately, the development of the times had gradually led to an increase in available goods and an improvement in living standards. In recent years, my father had started giving us three children lucky money during the New Year celebrations, usually two or three dimes each time. Unlike my younger siblings, who would rush off to buy candy or firecrackers as soon as they received their money, I quietly saved most of my lucky money. Sometimes, I would even employ a few tricks to get a coin or two from my siblings—one or two pennies here and there.
After the idea of buying a fountain pen struck me, I gathered all my savings and counted them carefully three times. I had four dimes and two cents, but I was still short by two dimes and three cents.
To quickly raise the money for the fountain pen, I thought of many ways. First, I considered picking tea leaves to sell at the tea factory located in the commune. The purchase price for tea leaves ranged from eight cents to one dime and five cents per pound. Although the production team had several plots of tea trees, I couldn't touch those; instead, I had to search for wild tea trees on the nearby mountains. These trees often yielded only a few dozen leaves each, and with so many people picking, most of what I found were coarse and damaged leaves that wouldn't fetch a good price. After several days of this and multiple trips to the tea factory, I only managed to gather twelve cents.
Next, I turned my attention to selling scrap materials. Items like sandalwood, chicken feathers, duck feathers, peach pits, peach pulp, and scrap metal were collected by my mother for sale, so I couldn't touch those. Instead, I rummaged through garbage piles to find discarded fertilizer bags. These items could be sold at the consignment store located next door in Chang Tang Chong Courtyard.
I rummaged through the piles of garbage around the yard, and whenever I found something that could be sold, I would immediately run to the consignment store. Each time, I managed to exchange it for two or three cents. There were two occasions when I simply couldn't resist the temptation of candy; not only did I spend the money I had just earned on sweets, but I also used a few cents from my previous savings.
It wasn't until one day when I piled all my money on the table to count it that I realized I had accumulated seventy-eight cents. Finally, as a new semester was about to begin, I took sixty-five cents to the consignment store and bought my very first fountain pen.
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