Knives
On my tenth birthday, dad slipped this into my pocket and said “don’t tell your mom about this”
I was reading about gravveling potatos at Rob’s blog, and thought about carrying a pocketknife.
It’s a uniquely male thing, though more women are beginning to do so, but in my generation, you were nobody if you didn’t have a knife to play mumbletypeg or whittle or skin the occasional squirrel.
There were four kids my age in my neighborhood, and I was the last to get his own knife. I kept mine sharper than anyones, though.
The knife I carry, the knife above, is an old timer. I never liked stainless knives, because the edge isn’t easy to produce or keep. I prefer the little extra work to keep a carbon steel knife clean.
Anyway, that little knife never left my side until I was twenty seven, when I bought it’s brother, a three bladed old timer (clip, sheepfoot, spey) again in carbon steel, and with hardwood scales instead of the imitation stag.
Three days after I started carrying that knife, Dad died. At his funeral, alone in the room with him just before the closed the coffin, I took that shiny new knife (I’d just sharpened it sharp enough to shave with) and put it in the breast pocket of Dad’s suit. Yeah, more for me than him.
After we buried Dad, I came home and took the old knife and put it back in my pocket. It hasn’t left me (other than on business trips) in nearly twenty years. Sometimes I also carry a swiss army, sometimes also a leatherman in a sheath, but this knife is with me always.
Anyway, I’ve used that knife to peel potatos, to clean my fingernails, cut steak, clean fish, clean squirrels, trim hair away from burs in the dog’s tail, and a million other things.
Yes, I clean the knife between those things.
A knife is a man’s jewelry.
I acquired my first pocket knife at the age of six. My Dad gave it to me to put in my pocket for my first day at school. We couldn’t afford for me to go to kindergarten. Every male in that school had a knife, it was as necessary as pants and shoes. I have carried a knife every day of my 61 years except on airplanes since my new mommy, Ms. Tommy Ridge, decided I was too dangerous when armed with a Scout knife. As soon as I escape from whichever airport I happen to land in, I buy a cheap knife to have for however long, before I have, once again, to surrender my citizenship to one of Ridge’s Retards.
Gerry N.
Helluva good read. You’re a better man than me, because I’ve lost about five or more good knives in my life (I’m 59..which is no excuse).
It’s not easy to do, og, but you brought a tear to my eye…
I’ve had a pocket knife since I was about 5 or 6 – found an old Barlow knife in my uncle’s ’57 Chevy (it sat in our backyard for many years quietly rotting away. My parents still blame my uncle for the three or four junkers I’ve left to rot on our land over the years because of that Chevy…)
Don’t carry one as often as I should; of course, in the Volksrepublik of MA it’s probably a Class 1 felony to carry anything larger than toenail clippers (and you need a permit for those)… When I can, it’s either a Ken Onion Black Scallion or a Shrade clip-point lock blade.
That was a helluva good read, Og. I would give my left nut to have the old Buck knife my Dad got me. I lent it to a friend to clean his first deer with, and the fellow lost it in the snow during the excitement. I was heart sick at the time of losing it, but have later come to think about it as a sacrifice to the hunting gods. Like yours, that blade always had a razor on it. Pop also bought me a top notch hatchet, and one of HIS friends borrowed that and lost it. When the hunting gods smile on you this fall, remember that it is Jim up in Canada that is keeping them happy for you! :)Now I carry a sweet little Kershaw clip knife, and I know goddamn well I am going to lose this beauty too. If God hadn’t put my balls in a bag I would lose those too.
Keep the knife close, Og, and your Dad even closer.
Cheers,
Jim
I thought I was all that when I got my Scout Woodsman’s card and my folks allowed me to carry a pocketknife.
Of course, if the Scoutmaster caught you playing mumbletypeg, he’d rip a corner off the card, and if you lost all four corners you’d have to requalify.
Naturally, I just made sure I never got caught (and I was good, too).
Thanks for a trip down memory lane, Og.
I describe knives as the most generally useful and most personal of tools, and it’s a damn shame the pc crowd has made it a ‘dangerous thing’ in the public eye for kids to have one.