Old School Is Cool

The other day, a friend of mine referred to some of my ways as "old school." He's a great guy, and I accepted what he said (and he said it with a good-natured laugh) as a compliment.

   I am, indeed, old school when it comes to favoring some old devices. My favorite old school device is my fountain pen. I've covered the fountain pen in a couple of other posts on this blog, but I'll give you a few bullet points of why it's my favorite writing instrument:

• It looks cool. Different from most pens in use today.
• It uses a liquid ink that doesn't smear when my hand passes over it as I write.
• The first ones came into use a long time before we started using A.D. after the year.

I love the taste and texture of homemade bread. In 1999, I got a bread machine for Christmas and thought it was cool. It was! All I had to do was dump the ingredients in the square metal pan and the machine did the work. It made a decent loaf of bread, but I wasn't that thrilled with the bread because the paddle that kneaded the dough was still in the bread when I pulled it out of the device. I had to dig the paddle out, and was left with a hole in the bottom of the oddly-shaped loaf. I didn't like that. So...I started letting the machine make the dough, then I would pull it out and stick it in an old fashioned--old school--bread pan for the final rise. Then I baked it.

   That bread machine died eventually and I was going to buy a new one. On a lark, I looked at how to make bread old school. What I found (to my joy) was that the bread machine took longer to make one loaf than it would take me to make two loafs  by hand! I ran out and spent $3 on wooden spoons. I already had a rolling pin, for reasons (KARMA!) I didn't understand Started making bread Old School. Now I give away the spare loaf of bread and still have one to eat. Someone gets a nice little gift, and I get my sandwich.

 I make almost all the bread my wife and I eat. I also make rolls of different shapes. My cloverleaf rolls are, if I do say so myself, outstanding! Hard rolls are one of my specialties too, but I don't make them very often. The key to those is letting the dough sit at least overnight, and I don't usually like to wait that long.

I like to shine my shoes, and have always preferred to have my dress shoes look, well, dressy. I used to use the kind of shoe polish that comes in a bottle with a built-in sponge on top. I would squeeze the bottle and smear that liquid stuff all over my shoes. It was glossy, it was easy...and eventually the build-up of it would make the leather crack.

   I got old school with that one and picked up a tin of Kiwi shoe polish. It takes longer to shine my shoes. I have to smear the black gunk on each shoe, let it dry, wipe the excess off, and buff each shoe with a soft cloth until I see a glow I can appreciate. It doesn't crack the leather. It helps keep it supple in addition to shining it. Yeah. I like my old school shoe polish.

   I used to be an electric razor kind o' guy. It was easy. It was electric! I plugged it in and felt the power while I ran it over my face in any direction that suited my fancy. It did an okay job, but I wondered if I couldn't get a better shave some other way. When I was in college, my grandfather gave me an old shaving brush. I had a shaving mug, and would make my own lather. It felt good to put it on my face, and I was able to get a great shave. After I graduated from college and started working as an executive, I went back to the electric razor. I used it every day, and had several of them over the years.

   A couple of years ago, I dug out the old shaving brush. Maybe my electric razors were just getting old (I have three of them kicking around the house somewhere), or maybe my beard was getting tougher. I'm not sure I care what the reason is, but I started shaving with the brush and a cake of shaving soap. The difference is amazing! The brush, the lather (as opposed to the easy stuff that shoots into my hand from a can) makes for a smooth, extra-close shave. I won't go back to the electric razors, and I think I'll save my stock of shaving cream for water fights I want to win. Hint: if you want to use shaving cream in a water fight, just pop the top off a can of shaving cream and replace it with a spray nozzle from an aerosol can. You can turn shaving cream into spray paint that way...but you didn't hear that from me!

   I get a great shave with that old brush. Know what the best part is? The shaving soap I get from Rite Aid for 25 cents, lasts about six months of daily shaving.

I like pizza. I like thick crust, and thin crust, deep dish...and even frozen pizza sometimes. No pizza is bad to this man's taste, unless they do something criminal with it like putting pineapple or dead fish on it, and even then I'll roll with it and eat the pizza.

   Then I took a look at the old school way I make bread dough, and wondered if I could make a killer pizza crust The difference is for a good pizza dough--one that's firm enough to hold any topping--you need to let the dough sit for at least four hours before you add toppings and bake. Even then, using a metal pizza pan or cookie sheet, I couldn't get the crust to be crisp on the bottom (to hold the stuff) and soft on the top.

   Voila! The answer presented itself old school style. I spent ten bucks on a pizza stone. I make the dough, let it sit four hours or so, heat the stone on the bottom of my oven, and build the pizza on the hot stone. Stick it back on the floor of the oven for 10 minutes, and I get one helluva good pizza.

   It looks like this:

That's old school. I like it.

Of Shaving Brushes and Fountain Pens...

I like modern conveniences. I wouldn't trade my car for a horse and a carriage, and I like my refrigerator with the automatic ice maker. I like my coffee maker, and use the automatic function to make sure I can pour a cup in the morning without having to draw water from an old well and boil it on the stove... Velcro and Saran Wrap are pretty cool, too. I enjoy writing using a computer, and I love the internet.

In short, I like life in this day and age. We have it pretty good compared to our ancestors, and I have a feeling the children of this generation will have it better than we do.

But there are a couple of old-fashioned things that have reached a point of obscurity where we forget (or never knew) just how good they are.

My shaving brush is one of those. I got it from my grandfather. Perhaps you've never seen one. It's a short brush with a cylindrical handle, with soft bristles about 3" long. The brush is designed to be swished around inside a mug with a small bar of shaving soap at the bottom. I put a little warm water in the brush and whip it around inside the mug until I have a nice warm lather to smear on my face.

I don't get that thick, rich foam I could get from a can. That's okay by me. That thick rich foam the manufacturers like to brag about can actually get in the way of a good shave. If the razor blade doesn't come very, very close to the skin, the shave isn't a great shave...and I don't care how many Gillette marketing guys try to tell me otherwise. That warm lather I make with my little brush is just enough to soften my whiskers, and the brush bristles lift them so the razor can do its job.

I like to write with a fountain pen. I'll admit I started using a fountain pen because everyone else I knew was using ballpoint pens. There's nothing wrong with a ballpoint pen, by the way.  They're utilitarian, they're affordable, they can write at any angle, they can be made to be inexpensive or expensive or somewhere in between, and the ink in the little tube inside the ballpoint pen lasts a really long time.

I'll stick to my fountain pens, thank you very much, and not just because I think they look cool. I like that the fountain pen is an ancient device (the first ones were developed in India about a thousand years when Romans were the Big Kids on the Block).

I like the look of a fountain pen nib. I like the liquid ink that soaks into the paper. I like the sound of the nib as I write, and I like the way the letters look. I have terrible handwriting no matter what kind of device I use to mar the paper...but a good pen makes me feel better about the act itself. I like to fill the fountain pen with ink from a bottle. I like the way young people who have never seen a fountain pen marvel at the design, and I like the way older people who were taught to write with fountain pens and who danced on their desks when they finally were allowed to use ballpoint pens shake their heads when they see me wield my ancient word-scritchin' device.

I also like the way the nib wears... A fountain pen, after a while, will shape itself to the user's handwriting. It's like breaking in a good pair of shoes. Once they're yours, they're yours.

Shaving brushes. Fountain pens. I'll keep using mine.

Shaving brushes. Fountain pens. Oh, and real books...the kind made of paper, whether paperback or hardcover. Kindles are fine. Nook readers are fine. But give me a real book any day.

Speaking of books... I've written a few. You should buy them, and I don't care what format: paperback, hardcover, epub, or Kindle. (Wink) They're linked here...

Sometimes I love the old ways, like shaving soap & mug

Shaving cream is alright. It's a time saver. Just a shot of the stuff in the hand, smear it on the face, and you're ready to shave. I use it sometimes and get satisfactory, but not great results.

Like shaving cream, the new ways of doing things have their advantages, and most of the time the advantages are enough to win popular support and all but kill off the old ways.

This morning, and yesterday, and tomorrow, I shaved the old fashioned way.

You can still buy shaving soap in most places. It comes in a little box, about half an inch high, by three inches, by three inches. In the box is a little round cake of soap. I have a cake of that soap in a mug on the shelf in the bathroom and a shaving brush--an old one from my grandfather--with long, soft bristles. I get the brush wet and swish it around in the mug. I like the clink, clink, clink of the handle of the brush hitting the sides of the mug. I like the feel of the soft bristles as I paint my face with the thin layer of foamy, warm soap. I use a moden twin-blade razor. The razor does a good job, and the thin layer of soap is just enough to lubricate the bristles, but not so much that it clogs the razor.

When I'm done, I have a soft, smooth face. Sure, sometimes I still use the shaving cream. Sometimes I just don't feel like I have the three minutes or less that it takes me to make the lather in the mug. When I'm really feeling pressed for time, I use an electric razor. It's not the same, though. I can feel the difference all day and feel like I cheated myself out of a simple pleasure (and better shave.)

My fountain pen is another example of a thing of the past (mostly) that has been replaced by an inferior, but more convenient device. The ballpoint pen has trumped the fountain pen. It's cheaper, even if you buy a nice one that requires refills. The ballpoint pen doesn't spatter ink of you drop it. You're not going to bend it out of usefulness if you drop it. It can write on almost any surface.

It also smears ink on my left hand when I write, unless I handicap myself by bending my wrist unnaturally and obscure my already bad handwriting. No thanks.

I like the pleasure--yes, I said pleasure--of writing with a fountain pen. You can really feel the contact with the paper through the sound of the nib (the point, for the uninitiated) on the paper. The ink flows from the nib and sinks into the paper. There is no smear on my left hand.

For a couple of years now, I've been using my Cross fountain pen. I bought it with my first royalties check for about $60, and I don't let anyone else use it. It's my pen.

At first I bought modern ink cartridges that fit in the pen. No muss, no fuss with those ink cartridges. They're a modern contrivance for an ancient device. Yes, ancient. The first fountain pens appeared in Persia before the death of Christ. I discovered those little ink cartridges get expensive. I was going through about three a week.

So I went back to the old way. I fill my fountain pen from a bottle of ink now. That takes a little practice. At first I got ink on my forefinger and thumb when I filled the reservoir from the bottle. Now I don't.

Shaving soap and mug. Fountain pen and bottle of ink. I love them. I'll tell you what else I miss, for what it's worth. I miss writing on a typewriter. I don't do that anymore.Writing on a computer is much better (for me at least) in every way than writing on a typewriter. But... I do miss the sound of the keys clacking on the paper on the roller. If I could find a program that made those sounds to go along with my word processor, I'd be happier when I wrote. That would take some doing--I'm happiest when I'm writing.