Vulcanized, but Not a Vulcan

Arthur

Between one and two decades ago, I met Arthur. I forgot his last name, I forgot his wife's name, I forgot his two daughters' names, I might remember where they lived: Colonia, NJ. I probably wouldn't have given Arthur, or his wife, or his daughters the time of day, or noticed them on the street, except that Arthur's daughters and my sons were in the same play groups.

Arthur looked like a character out of an Arthur Miller play. He was big and kind of dumpy. He was almost bald and wore glasses with big, thick lenses, and fat black frames. He smiled with these plastic lips that seemed infinitely stretchable. His laugh was forced. He seemed vaguely angry at the world.

His wife was a good deal less vague about her anger towards him. And, the girls fought a lot. Maybe his wife's name was Dottie. She was not a happy lady. She didn't see the glass as half-full, or even half-empty. She would wonder why you need a freakin' glass anyway, can't you just drink it out of the bottle?

Arthur died of cancer.

Getting Cancer

I don't know what type of cancer Arthur had, or what caused it. Of course, I have my theory. I think Arthur's job killed him. Let me tell you about Arthur's job.

Most of us really don't think about much about the stuff around us. Sitting at my desk, I am surrounded by paper clips, pencils, staplers, various pens, envelopes, PostIt Note pads, and such. I never gave much thought about who made them, how they are made, or where they come from.

Did you ever wonder where pencils come from? Did you ever wonder how they get the lead inside that hexagon of wood? Have you looked at that nice orange eraser tip and wondered how it got there? Well, I can answer the last question: Arthur's job was to make those eraser tips you see on those yellow, wooden pencils.

Arthur once told me about his job. He was in charge of a huge vat. They imported the sap from rubber trees growing in South America. This rubber sap was gooey, opaque, and not the stuff you would imagine sitting on top of your pencil. However, when you add elemental sulfur to the mix and heat it up under highly-controlled conditions, you get rubber eraser.

The hot, thick eraser goo gets extruded into long cords of eraser material, cut into pieces, and then affixed on your pencil for your erasing, chewing, biting, and any other things you can imagine using an eraser for.

The process of adding sulfur to rubber sap is called Vulcanization. This is a term I believe to be a of an exaggeration. Vulcan refers to hell. We all know the expression: Fire and brimstone; well, brimstone is sulfur. Sulfur-containing molecules can smell pretty bad. Swamp gas is hydrogen sulfide. That natural gas smell is from sulfur.

When you are continually exposed to sulfur-containing odors, the organics from the rubber sap, and whatever nasty chemical by-products of Vulcanization, you are at risk for cancer. That's why I think Arthus's job was the cause of his death.

When Arthur was Alive

I frequently thought about Arthur and his job before I learned he had cancer. On the one hand, I didn't think I could ever devote my life making eraser tips for pencils. It just seemed too odd, strange, and inconsequential. On the other hand, I thought about all those mistakes, errors, omissions, and misspellings deleted by Arthur's handiwork with just a couple swipes of his eraser tips. From how many misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mistakes has Arthur's eraser saved us?

Alas, today, Arthur's eraser has been replaced by the backspace and delete keys. Arthur died at a time when computers were in their infancy, when serious writers, students, and holders of clipboards had armies of erasers at the ready. They had those big gum erasers for large-scale erasures, erasers instead of lead in things that looked like pencils for precise, surgical erasures Half the earth's population kept sharpened, eraser-tipped pencils behind the ear, in their pockets, or hanging from a string attached to those clipboards. Everywhere you looked, there was one of Arthur's creations. Most of the pencils are gone today. Arthur is gone today.

Maybe it's just as well.