In yesterday’s post on the spelling of ‘grey’ (even I can’t believe the things I talk about sometimes) I was going to mention how I finally cemented that ‘gray’ was the US spelling only by calling to mind the wrapper on my Crayola confederate gray crayon.

I searched for a picture of this crayon, thinking that, such is the capacity of the internet for nostalgia and even indignation over necessary change that there was a chance someone would have snapped a picture of a surviving crayon. Behold, I could find no picture, and almost no mention of the thing (and the comments at the free republic aren’t the most reliable source.) Finally I looked at the Crayola history of crayon colors and discovered it was not listed. Other changes, like the change of Indian red (after a colorful soil in India) to chestnut? Yes. “Flesh” to “peach”? Certainly. But the axing of confederate gray? Nowhere to be found. Wikipedia, where lost information goes to find itself, does not mention it either.

Now, I suppose one could impugn the honesty of the Crayola company, but I find it hard to imagine that they would be more ashamed of having ‘confederate’ on a pretty genuinely confederate-uniform-colored crayon than of thinking all skin was peach-colored. Was there ever a “confederate gray” crayon? I had hazy memories of it being canceled amid a contest to name new colors. I’m sure the contest happened, but is this just the mutability of memory? Is “confederate gray” an urban myth that attached itself to my strangely capacious Crayola memory space?

Does anyone else remember this crayon?