A Kid's Pocket!

I would have had a pocket knife of some sort - I only vaguely remember most of them, but I always carried one since about 3rd grade. I probably had some change, a stubby pencil, an interesting rock I picked up, maybe a small toy. I used to like “parachute men” a lot (army man figures with plastic parachutes) a lot, so I might have had one of those. There was a small store at the nearby mall which sold gags and magic tricks, so I may have had one of those fake packs of gum which snapped the fingers of unsuspecting victims who thought they were being offered a stick. I remember always having one of those vinyl wallets made to look like tooled leather which, if I remember correctly, closed with a zipper.

Here are some things I might have had with me (except the knife, strangely enough - I didn’t carry it much because it was too hard to open!), on a stool I made in shop class in middle school:
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Good idea for a thread, Charlie!
I grew up in a small town, of about 500 people, in Saskatchewan. I don't know when I started carrying a pocket knife, but, by the time I was old enough to go to school, I always had one in my pocket. As did most of the boys at school. It was usually a shell handled Imperial or Richards. Occasionally a bareheaded, wood handled German knife, usually single bladed. It was always a discussion as to which steel was better, Solingen or Sheffield. I have no recollection of how I acquired my knives, but, I went through quite a few. As I got older, Premier and Old Timers became available.
As a boy I could have firecrackers, marbles, green plastic soldiers (fodder for the firecrackers), matches, a pocket knife, the silver dollar my Grandpa gave me when I was 5 or 6 years old, small rocks and fossils in my pockets. I still have a lot of the glacial polished chert pebbles I found in the local gravel pit I liked to play in. A small piece of petrified wood or a fossil was a real find.

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You asked for it so here we go, I was born... just kiddin, I won't go that far back but almost. Seriously I grew up on a farm with tenants who lived frugally to say the least. My grandfather and his right hand man (tenant) taught me how to hunt, fish, ride a horse, shoot straight, sharpen a knife, chop wood, farm, animal husbandry, strong work ethics, good morals, Christianity, drive a car and any other skill needed to survive. We had plowed fields, wooded land, pasture land, and one of my earliest memories is looking for arrowheads in the plowed fields. I kept a cigar box under my bed with my finds, a treasure chest to a farm boy. Henry was my grandfather's right hand man, he gave me my first knife, a Case XX hunter which is now long gone but 54 years later I still have the scar on my left thigh from it slipping off the stick I was whittling:confused:
I remember lying in the driveway in the gravel combing it for crinoids, I still have a bunch of them but didn't get a chance to dig them out for a picture.

The arrowhead in the top row, 2nd from left I vividly remember seeing it in a turn row as I was blasting through a field on my Yamaha dirt bike, I slammed on the brakes, grabbed it and took it home to my cigar box. I was 13 at the time. Fast forward to my first year of college. I come home one weekend to find out someone had burglarized our home, my room was trashed. I found the arrowhead previously mentioned at the foot of my bed where it landed after the crooks tossed it aside, thanks guys:):thumbsup:. Those fellows were arrested later because a bank reported them for cashing in about 100 lbs of pennys I collected :D(another early collecting habit;)) Arrowheads and knives have been lifelong pursuit and hopefully will be until my last breath :thumbsup::thumbsup:

The tested hunter is currently mine but not the one that I cut my leg with but very similar and as mentioned top row 2nd from left arrowhead is still with me. Thanks for a great thread Charlie:thumbsup::thumbsup:
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danno50 said:
green plastic soldiers (fodder for the firecrackers),
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And BB guns and slingshots!
rockman0 said:
You asked for it so here we go, I was born... just kiddin, I won't go that far back but almost. Seriously I grew up on a farm with tenants who lived frugally to say the least. My grandfather and his right hand man (tenant) taught me how to hunt, fish, ride a horse, shoot straight, sharpen a knife, chop wood, farm, animal husbandry, strong work ethics, good morals, Christianity, drive a car and any other skill needed to survive. We had plowed fields, wooded land, pasture land, and one of my earliest memories is looking for arrowheads in the plowed fields. I kept a cigar box under my bed with my finds, a treasure chest to a farm boy. Henry was my grandfather's right hand man, he gave me my first knife, a Case XX hunter which is now long gone but 54 years later I still have the scar on my left thigh from it slipping off the stick I was whittling:confused:
I remember lying in the driveway in the gravel combing it for crinoids, I still have a bunch of them but didn't get a chance to dig them out for a picture.

The arrowhead in the top row, 2nd from left I vividly remember seeing it in a turn row as I was blasting through a field on my Yamaha dirt bike, I slammed on the brakes, grabbed it and took it home to my cigar box. I was 13 at the time. Fast forward to my first year of college. I come home one weekend to find out someone had burglarized our home, my room was trashed. I found the arrowhead previously mentioned at the foot of my bed where it landed after the crooks tossed it aside, thanks guys:):thumbsup:. Those fellows were arrested later because a bank reported them for cashing in about 100 lbs of pennys I collected :D(another early collecting habit;)) Arrowheads and knives have been lifelong pursuit and hopefully will be until my last breath :thumbsup::thumbsup:

The tested hunter is currently mine but not the one that I cut my leg with but very similar and as mentioned top row 2nd from left arrowhead is still with me. Thanks for a great thread Charlie:thumbsup::thumbsup:
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Nice post, Rob. Love those arrowheads. :thumbsup:
 
I dig the thread waynorth waynorth Charlie.
Lots of cool and interesting posts from everyone.
I don't have any knives from my childhood but the one in the pic of me as a kid was a lot like this ol' Imperial Diamond Edge jack knife.
Marbles, firecrackers, Crescent wrench ( I was always working on something, mostly my bicycles. ), plastic elephant key ( operated the "talking boxes" that told you about the animal ) and the red quarter ( There was little neighborhood market that gave the kids 5 quarters for $1.00 to play video games... He painted them red.

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flatblackcapo said:
I dig the thread waynorth waynorth Charlie.
Lots of cool and interesting posts from everyone.
I don't have any knives from my childhood but the one in the pic of me as a kid was a lot like this ol' Imperial Diamond Edge jack knife.
Marbles, firecrackers, Crescent wrench ( I was always working on something, mostly my bicycles. ), plastic elephant key ( operated the "talking boxes" that told you about the animal ) and the red quarter ( There was little neighborhood market that gave the kids 5 quarters for $1.00 to play video games... He painted them red.

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ah balisongs were a fun part of my childhood indeed! the junk shop would sell these pot metal things that would last about a week. i think id haggle and get 3 for about $20
 
Unfortunately, don't have the possibility to assemble pictures of the pocket sagas. All got chucked out, some as unhygienic, the rest as 'junk' but it wasn't:cool: So, a description will have to suffice.

Always had a small cheap knife, probably German or English but my house was not knife friendly-there were a few old busted ones laying around in the shed or cellar but my parents (and brothers, who were very much older than I) were not interested. I liked foreign coins so would have one or two, marbles yes, some kind of lighter-but teachers frowned on these if they were found. When older, a teacher gave me a watch chain, he said it had been in the lost property section for over 30 years so he let me have it. Turned out it was silver, wore it from belt to pocket for a while they gave it to my father as a present, he had an old pocket watch. After he died, my eldest brother awarded himself the watch&chain, claiming they had always been together, frankly it still annoys me:rolleyes: I liked pocket watches as they were odd, the ones I had were all broken but I still liked having one about me sometimes. As a kid I was very keen on wrist-watches and remember one birthday getting a black faced watch, worshipped that!

Different bits of twine seemed important at the time ;) Polished stones too, a friend's mother used to polish stones for ornament, really fascinated me. Pocket dice, early gambler:D But what I and some mates liked to do was visit the dump, or scrap yard. In those days, things weren't too environmental (well, there were less people and less crap to throw out....) people often just used to start dumping stuff in pits or forest areas. One place had a load of old cars and I suppose it was a private dump/business. Sometimes an irate adult with a hostile dog could be there but not too much. We hoped to get badges off the wrecks or instruments-that never happened we lacked skill in extracting speedos etc. But small badges etc. VW Volvo SAAB all common enough the SAAB had a nice aeroplane symbol, some odd Russian cars with incomprehensible script (Cyrillic Moskvitsch Volga) British cars too, I had a Morris badge, one kid had a Rover badge a very cool Viking head and we all dreamed of finding a leaping Jaguar motif but that never materialised:D The other thing from car wreck hunting -most were just shells- was I developed an interest in coloured glass fragments in the pocket- Found a very old car with RED GLASS tail lights which became 'rubies' bits of blue glass from busted medical bottles and shades of greens, all treasures and incomprehensible filth to adults ;) One kid at school used to keep a hamster in his pocket which appeared to sleep most of the time and another one liked keeping toads or even a small snake-well it's a blindworm a legless lizard, these could be produced to scare girls (and boys!!) at selected times:eek::D Final treasure I had aged about 10 or 11 an uncle gave me a very small magnifying glass that was not only powerful but it folded away, you could burn stuff with that on boring days- desks, bits of paper, girl's hair in front of you, brunettes worked better than blondes....but inevitably it got confiscated by some teacher and never returned, handy tool mind :D Then I had a pen torch (flashlight) these days you can get wonderful small torches but the Pen Torch was a variant of what doctors flashed in your eye and a cool must have.

Old habits die hard, I never leave the house without at least one knife in the pocket maybe others in the bag (Otherwise, what are we doing on a knife forum??;)) several small 'lucky' coins and a piece of blue gem or is it a glass bead? Only I know. Nor would I leave without a watch, ever. Often leave the phone at home-if I switch it on that is-much to the annoyance of dull colleagues or frustrated well wishers. But, such phones didn't exist when I was small, and in the real soul we all want to remain a child in some way, at some time :thumbsup: So no room in my pocket for a phone! Bag or car carries that, not me :)
 
This is a duplicate of the first good knife I bought. The original is long gone, but a friend of mine found this one in the 'bay. I was almost 50 years ago when I paid the princely sum of $4 for it at a hardware store. I've had a thing for toothpick patterns ever since.

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My first knives and constant companions were a knock off SAK and a similarly dubious Sodbuster

I recall having a thing for old pre-decimal penny coins, rubber bands and string too

I'd have a box of matches in my pocket if I could get away with it.

It would go missing when I forgot to take it out of my pockets on laundry day - mum must have had a cupboard full of them...but I never did find it!
 
Thank you Charlie for starting this thread. Great stuff hear.
They didn't have backpacks when I was a kid, and thus the pocket was the means.
The only knife I have is this Swiss Army knife which I got when I was 10 I believe. It was my Scout knife too.
I managed to hang on to some trinkets some how. My dad did keep all my baseball & trading cards (forgot to put a Silly Cycle or Wacky package card). Red/Orange car is a Sizzler, and would beat everyone else's all the time. Babe Ruth 3D card is from Pop Tarts in 1972. Loved trading cards for older ones. I loved cap guns & things that explode or make loud noises. Firecrackers were hard to come by were I lived (that one is almost 40 yrs old). Spearmint gum gag only worked a short time till all your friends & family figured you out.

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