A tale about the red Parker pen that carries family values and memories, connecting the past and the future.
My parents were engineers. Fire and water, the boiler operator, then the locksmith master became a mechanical engineer, accustomed to iron discipline, and the architect engineer, almost an artist, whose imagination must always soar freely, who must be able to outline his ideas with a few definite sketches, but who, if necessary, presents the plan in the form of the most precise technical drawing to the one who has to work from it.
As a small child, I encountered their work less directly, but I did come into contact with their tools and lifestyle. It was natural to see the stretched technical drawing paper on the table, the T-square, various pencils, hard, soft, and kneadable erasers, ink bottles, technical pens, and those wonderful compass sets. The incomprehensible, yet always admired slide rule with its hair-thin grooves and glass window.
Back then, there was no „undo.” A complete technical drawing, whether the size of a desk or not, always had to be made flawlessly. There were drawings that could take weeks to complete, first with various pencils, then came the special scented inks with the ink pens.
The technical drawing is a complex language, a form of expression. Every line thickness, line ending, and shading has its own meaning, and the ink is merciless: once it's on the snow-white drawing paper, it is indelible. Each line had to run perfectly intact, with straight edges and constant line thickness along its entire length: it couldn't wobble, it couldn't thin out, and there could be no smudges.
In elementary school, we learned to write with colored felt-tip pens. For me, the teaching perhaps didn't achieve its goal because I already knew how to read and write, so I considered the practice of beautifully rounding the letters a pointless burden, especially since my handwriting wasn't even nice. Back then, ballpoint pens were available everywhere, but we couldn't use them at school; we had to learn to write with fountain pens. We were happy when it was no longer mandatory, and we could put down the fountain pen and write with various colorful plastic ballpoint pens. Due to my family background, I always treated the pens as important, valuable tools of work, which, if broken, wouldn't easily be replaced.
By the time I reached high school, I had developed an acceptable handwriting style, and I was always proud of my perfect pen. Indeed, that Parker ballpoint pen resembled my classmates' ballpoint pens, but I knew it was a completely different world. The ballpoint pen had an extra fine refill that only needed to touch the paper to write; no pressure was required. I loved to dazzle (actually bore) my classmates with the trick of writing on a piece of typewriter paper hanging from one corner without any support underneath. This pen clarified my handwriting, and in a certain sense, my mind as well. It brought order, just as the fountain pen demands order, as does the use of the drafting pencil. I began to enjoy the sight of beautiful writing and the act of writing itself. The XF refill's hair-thin line, along with my then sharp eyesight, stabilized my letter size at two to three millimeters in height; there was no assignment that I couldn't detail on one side of an A4 paper. Indeed, there was much to write; we didn't use textbooks for several subjects, we had to learn from our own notes, and in mathematics and physics, we had eight hours a week filled with a lot of writing and problem-solving.
My pen was a peep hole into the world. I had several other peep holes as well; due to my family background, I had access to the masterpieces of Scandinavian and Japanese architecture of the time, followed in magazines where science and technical development stood in the world, and I sensed how far we were from all this and how hopeless it was to ever taste the fruits of the then flourishing technical perfectionism. I photographed with Soviet Chaika and Zenit cameras, which I could fortunately repair and service myself due to their simplicity, but in the meantime, I saw what the world was dealing with.
Polaroid had just completed its instant mirror reflex camera, which measured the distance to the object using sonar technology applied in submarines, dolphins, and bats, and when a person began to press the shutter button, it first activated all the electronics, measured the distance, rotated the focus ring to ensure the object was perfectly sharp, measured the light, and set the aperture and shutter speed.
By the time the shutter button reached the bottom stop, the huge, double-sided mirror changed position, illuminating the automatically unpacked photo paper from the integrated (battery, paper, developing chemicals) cassette, then the motor revved up, the gears started moving, and while the machine rolled the paper out, the rollers released the chemicals, spreading them evenly so that by the time the image came out of the machine, the photo was almost ready. At the same time, Pentax created its (compared to Zenit) miniature camera, which could take equally perfect pictures in the desert as in the Arctic.
So I knew, I felt that there was another world, but my only tangible proof was the ballpoint pen. The pen that an untrained eye could not notice anything special about. Almost everyone had a Pax pen, it was easily accessible and not expensive. In my closer environment, only I could feel that the pen did not need to be pressed against the paper, it never needed a refill, not a single ink drop accumulated on the pen tip, there was no blot. Its function was absent, but for me, the difference between the Parker's precise, brushed steel upper part and the haphazard workmanship of all other pens screamed. The inscriptions on the Parker were perfectly cut letters. Normal, like a technical drawing. Uniform line thickness, uniformly deep engraving. The top of the push button was bordered by a perfectly embossed outline surrounding the flat circular plate, into which the emblem was engraved: an ellipse pierced by an arrow. This pen provided security, in more ways than one. It was safe because I knew it would always work reliably, it wouldn't skip, it wouldn't leave a blot. And it was safe in the sense that it was always a piece of that world with me, the one I read about in reports, but which I was not fortunate enough to experience. My high school notes remain clean, legible, and organized to this day.
After I lost my Parker, I did not feel it was a loss. I always found gems among the not too expensive but decent quality writing instruments. For a long time, I wrote with the slender, stainless steel pen from the Spanish Inoxcrom, into which I always put a Parker refill, and that’s how I went through university. Although it was not designed for handwriting, I wrote a lot with fountain pens as well, my favorites were the 0.18 and the 0.25. Then the pen became less important as a writing instrument, besides, the successors of the fountain pen, the felt-tip pens, were born, and I enjoyed that they provided perfect, uniform line thickness and perfect coverage without any maintenance.
Today I have many more pens than a person needs. And I love them, without exception, each one. Wherever I traveled in the world, I tried to find those pens that are characteristic of that place, that country. I watch the fine technical solutions and beautiful designs with unchanged pleasure. Meanwhile, my eyesight has deteriorated, and continues to deteriorate, I can no longer read my once hair-thin writing without aids, so I have switched to pens that write with increasingly thicker lines, and returning to my elementary school days, I mainly write with fountain pens.
I drifted apart from Parker. It caused me endless disappointment when a kind financial director informed me that the era of perfectionism was over. It has passed, it's over, there’s no more. The goal is no longer to develop perfect structures designed for eternity, but to operate efficiently at the system level. Even in the late eighties, it was taught in the engineer training that a product's life cycle is shorter than its physical lifespan. Manufacturing must be optimized at the entire system level. The more complex a structure is, the more expensive a specialist is needed for troubleshooting and repair, moreover, within a few years, the standards of electronic systems also become obsolete, no longer fitting into new systems. It is more economical to design devices so that they are not repairable: if they break down, we prefer to replace the otherwise mass-produced parts, and we do not waste valuable engineering hours on troubleshooting and device repair.
The new world, the new system changed everything. No longer was mechanics the main player. Let’s take our oldest instrument, the clock, as an example: until the 1970s, the accuracy of the clock was determined by precise mechanics and careful maintenance. With the advent of digital devices, the task of time measurement fell to electronics, precision no longer played a role in the measurement result, consequently, it was no longer worth using noble materials or precise work on it. Our Kienzle alarm clock, made in the late seventies, still works flawlessly, in which the rattling, wobbling injection-molded plastic gears are controlled by a quartz crystal and digital electronics. It has surpassed one billion ticks, thirty years, and it still measures time accurately.
Many companies went bankrupt, ceased to exist permanently. Many of those companies that we knew for their uncompromising technical perfection. Companies that manufactured timeless, aesthetically pleasing, and artistically usable tools. Minolta is no more, Rollei is no more, and Parker, along with Rotring, operates as a division of a plastic injection molding giant focused on efficiency and economy. Perhaps this is how it should be, I understand, and I can explain it. Still, I miss the precisely polished metal rings, the perfectly engraved inscriptions, the flawlessly fitting screws.
And above all, I miss my parents. I have never been able to process their loss, and I never will. Family members rarely grasp the greatness of those who do not work for their own gain but seek the good of others. Those who create community value, establish schools, preserve traditional values even against the wind, and at the same time seek the new, the better. I cannot comprehend the greatness of my parents, but I can somewhat sense it. Uncovering and preserving their legacy is a hopeless endeavor; we can only look for peep holes into their former lives, like a passerby trying to peek into the building metro through the gaps in the fence. My peep holes are the photographs and those tools that still bear my parents' touch, their scent. The thread comb, the complicated, hundred-blade knife, with which one could determine what pitch screw to turn for the broken screw of the steam plow. The rulers, the slide rule, the Pelikan Graphos pen barrel, and the small, blue-transparent box for the Graphos nibs. The knives of my grandparents and parents, the mother-of-pearl handled, the curved, the bacon knife, and the slowly approaching hundred-year-old little masterpiece that my grandfather made as a courting gift for his partner, who kept it until the end of her long life.
In 2012, I showed my ancestors' knives on an internet knife enthusiast forum. And although it did not fit the topic, I asked if anyone had a Parker ballpoint pen from the seventies. In recent decades, I have received several Parker pens as gifts and have also bought some for myself. But none of the Jotters returned the experience that my lost pen after high school provided. Yes, with the decline of perfectionism, Parker also got into big trouble, and it was close to ending up in the abyss like other big names. Saving always comes at a price: profile cleaning, increasing efficiency, giving up old gentlemanly airs. New owners came and went at Parker, where the simplest but oldest type, the Jotter, was continuously modified to be cheaper to produce. There were series where the inscriptions looked as if they had been written with a trembling hand and a scratch needle. The thread was no longer as precise as when it was still cut from brass, and the famous Parker emblem on the top of the button increasingly looked like it had been stamped with a worn brand into a dented metal plate instead of precise engraving. During another change of ownership, the emblem also had to be given up (it was probably more expensive than the company itself), so a new emblem was born, a bent arrow shaped like the letter P, but it also looked like a cheaper injection-molded plastic object at the end of the button. Parker lost a lot of its reputation, occasionally they tried to bring back something of the old quality, but cost-effectiveness is a powerful lord, its absence has brought down huge companies.
I was looking for a suitable aged Parker ballpoint pen to refresh my memories of high school, and by chance, I posted my question in that particular knife forum. An unknown person to me answered under the name „Grószfater”:
„In 1959, when I became an apprentice in Budapest, I found a Parker on tram 44.
For some inexplicable reason, I still have it.”
I hesitated for almost a month about whether to reply. On one hand, I was very excited, on the other hand, I know that I should no longer accumulate objects, but rather organize and part with everything that is not necessarily needed. I wanted to know if I really wanted another Parker so much that I would ask „Grószfater,” the unknown forum user, if he would part with that pen for my sake. And I really wanted to.
The unknown Pál Huszár offered the pen with unimaginable kindness, and he was already on his way to the post office with it, having packaged it with the utmost care, yet indicating its invaluable worth with a (understandable for the postman) nominal value. I stood in line at the Budafok Main Post Office with my wife, Zsuzsi, with great excitement. We were tempted several times by the thought of giving up the hopeless wait in line, but the desire to see the package immediately was stronger. When the padded envelope appeared, I felt better already. Then, upon opening the package, the first surprise was the color. Wow, this is a red Parker! I immediately looked for the arrow-pierced ellipse on the top of the push button, which for years either wasn't there or was printed in such unworthy poor quality on the modern Jotters. And neither the arrow nor the ellipse was there. This pen is certainly not like the one I wrote with for half a decade during my teenage years. Moreover, the push button does not even have a straight wall; it resembles the former Pax with a thicker cylinder transitioning into a narrowing truncated cone outside the upper part of the pen.
Let's quickly check the internet to see how the Parker Jotter story went, what its variations were? It quickly turned out that this version was made from 1958, and the young Pál Huszár found it on tram 44 in 1959. So this was quite a new pen, a Parker „made in USA” in the country of János Kádár. Who could have used such a pen back then? This pen surely did not remain from the distant past, as it could have been manufactured at most a year ago. And where did that tram 44 even go? It didn't take many clicks to see: tram 44 ran from March 15th Square through Thököly Road to Rákos Stream. My mother had recently moved to Hungary from Tartu, the Estonian city where she worked as an urban planner. In Budapest, she worked at VÁTI, learning the Hungarian language with fantastic speed to the extent that she completed essay-type tasks, writing a lot by hand. Their residence, where I was soon (in early 1960) born, was on Róna Street. It is easy to guess that tram 44 was the most practical way to reach the site of the now-demolished Elizabeth Bridge, and she likely crossed over to Buda via the Kossuth Bridge.
At that time, it was unlikely that one could get a Parker pen at ÁPISZ; it was more likely that quality work tools were available to the employees of the design institutes working on the country's reconstruction. Dear Pál Huszár, due to your generous offer, I did not receive what I expected. I did not receive either an ellipse or an arrow on the top of the button, but I received a pen that, based on the location and the time, my mother could have lost on tram 44 while being preoccupied with problems related to my arrival. Thank you very much; I could hardly have received a more valuable gift from you.
