I also got my first knife on my 8th birthday. Actually it was a knife and hatchet set from Sears. (In hindsight---what was my dad thinking)
This was in 1961 growing up in central Florida. We lived in a neighborhood that backed up to the Orlando Air Force Base (later converted to the Naval Training Center Orlando).
This was a neighborhood full of rambunctious little boys and we used to sneek through the fence and build forts in the woods on the base. That knife and hatchet saw alot of action; each carried in a leather sheath on a canvas belt around my waist.
Well -- one afternoon, around a small campfire we had built, one of my buddies spots a small plane flying overhead. We decided to send up smoke signals by pulling some spanish moss off a tree and placing it on the fire. Unfortunately, the moss was a long strand and was still attached to the low hanging branch of this dryed out dead tree. WOW......that tree went up in flames quick. All my buddies scattered and ran for home.
Me? My hatchet was still under that tree..................and I wasn't going to lose it. Well......I hear the sirens coming from the base and within a couple minute the airbase fire department shows up. There is a huge crowd on the other side of the fence watching.......including my Mom. After filling out a report they turn me over to my horrified and embarrassed Mother. She drags me home by the shirt collar and tells me "Wait til your father get home". Dad got home, I got the belt and my knife was confiscated (never did find the hatchet).
I never saw that knife again until I was helping my Dad clean out his work shop. I was in my late 20s and it was still in the leather sheath up on a high shelf. We had a laugh about old times and he handed it back and said maybe someday I'll give it to my son. The Florida humidity and being in that leather sheath really rusted it up. I've cleaned it as best I could...it is still pitted pretty bad. I still have it....had two daughters (no sons) and now have two grandsons (both under two). I think I'll wait a while...........this was an awfully wicked knife for an eight year old to be roaming the neighborhood with.

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