NEW WAYS Some years ago, I recall, I needed a blotter and said so urgently. I had spilled a bit of art-coloring on the desk surface.
My fellow worker, young and innocent, in the ways of office routine, looked puzzled and quickly replied: "What you need is a paper towel!" She turned away and promptly returned with several paper towels and hurriedly wiped way the stains.
"There!" She said proudly. "Like new! You didn't hurt a thing. It won't show at all." She glossed over the area with a clean towel and held it up to reassure me.
I had no idea she, and most of the other young workers in the area, would not know what I had meant when I demanded a "blotter."
I, suddenly, realized they were gone! Blotters no longer exist in offices anywhere today.
Not too ago the blotter was an essential part of the office setup, along with rubber bands and thumb tacks. We used pen and ink for many office jobs before typewriters and, then, ball point pens came into style. The blotter was usually about the size of a dollar bill - which was a tad larger than those in use today, as well. Most would have been, oh, perhaps 8-1/2 by 4 inches, as I recall. They were mainly made of a thin sheet of very absorbent paper covered with a slicker sheet on which advertisements were printed. Most towns had small print shop which specialized in such advertising, match book covers, calendars, key chain tags of heavy cardboard and a stock of signs for utility purposes.
I have seen the working side of some blotters take on a design of reversed writing in blue, red and black which formed a pattern such as Jackson Pollock, the painter, might well have been proud. But the use of the blotter went out of existence with Penmanship, I suppose. The pencil, for some reason, was always there and it has been vastly improved but the fact that its work could be so easily erased and edited made it useless in keeping company books and other records.
Occasionally, the stained blotter would turn up as clue in detective stories. The sleuth and present a written confession from the vile criminal.
There must be, somewhere, a museum of blotter designs. They had other not-intended uses, as I remember. I have used them as bookmarks and know of others and during the days of the Great Depression I can remember them being used as inner shoe soles where a hole had developed. If any blotters exist today the must be treated as curios more-and-more as the years go by.
Andrew McCaskey Sr. amccsr@.comcast.net 2-23-07 [c448wds
