That's not a bad idea Kix... Thanks for the suggestion.  I think in the short-term just to get the job done I'm probably going to use the animated texture reveal technique and just keyframe the alpha movie to match the movement of the separate object (tip) that moves on a motion path.  I love trying to solve these little problems, so I'll give the particle idea a try and see if I can get it to work.  Thanks for taking a shot at it!

Chucker