I’ve got one and you may too. Especially if you’re a gent and in the habit of wearing shirts with breast pockets. For me it all started when I was probably in my mid twenties. I was cowboying at the time and I noticed some of my older riding mates carried a notebook and pen or more likely a stub of a pencil in one of their breast shirt pockets, typically the one on the left if they were right handed, and often a can of PA in their right shirt pocket. In case you are wondering, PA is short for Prince Albert which is a smoking tobacco.
The typical notebook that was in fashion
at the time had a brightly colored flip cover and was spiral bound with ruled
pages. They were, and still are, widely available. The spiral was particularly
handy because one could tuck a pen in there or a short, yellow, number two
pencil. A pencil was the instrument of choice for many reasons but mainly
because during the winter it wouldn't freeze up when removed from the shirt
pocket. I noticed these older hands would often jot things down in their
notebooks and there were any number of sheaves of loose paper stuffed in them.
In order to keep it all held together, it was common to use a wide thick rubber
band.
My curiosity finally got the better of
me and one day I asked the foreman, who I highly admired and aspired to be like, what all he kept in
his notebook. He looked down at his pocket and removed the tattered little
bundle. Holding it out in his grizzled hand he looked up at me and said that it
was his “pocket desk”. He went on to explain that it was really a handy place
to keep receipts, jot down unfamiliar brands, tally numbers, business cards for
saddle makers and any other important information he needed to remember like
the phone number for the vet and his wife’s birthday or their anniversary.
Right then and there I decided next time I went to town I would pick one up.
Today I favor the Moleskin Pocket Notebook. My current one is rather tattered and I really should consider getting a new one but this one still has a few blank pages in it and I'm not ready to transfer the important notes I have collected in it. As an artist today, I no longer use mine to record brands and
the vet’s number but more for sketching out an idea when nothing else is handy,
a fellow artist’s website address, prescription refill numbers, or something I
need to remember to do and of course, receipts. It does require a bit of
housekeeping from time to time however, as just the other day I found a missing
gas receipt from our Harley ride to Idaho last summer. That made the bookkeeper
happy.
Of course for those who almost live in their pickup trucks there's the handy dash desk . We'll take a look at that next time. Thanks for tuning in and do stop by if you get a chance.
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