It was summer vacation and the high school kid had needed a summer job. He found one at a local mail order outlet. They assigned him to the warehouse and the boy found himself working with some older men, stacking boxes, cutting open boxes, filling orders. And there was breaking down the boxes for the re-cycle bin out back. Most of the men used a utility knife, but the boy had discovered knives not long before and had bought some folding knives over the internet. Large hard use knives that felt like they could do anything. The first day on the job, he noticed that his large knife was not cutting through the cardboard well, but the thinner blade of the utility knives that were laying around on benches for anyone to use did far better. Then he noticed the old man.
He was a gray haired old timer, with a close trimmed gray beard, and walked with a slight limp, who worked part time to augment a pension. He never seemed to rush, but worked with a measured deliberate pace. When he needed to cut open a box, he didn't bother to look around for one of the brightly colored utility knives, but reached into a pocket and took out an old fashioned pocket knife. One that needed to be pulled open rather than a quick flick of the thumb. The knife seems too small to be of any real use, but the more he watched the old man, the more the old man seems to have an easy time slicing through what he needed to cut. Then he noticed a few other of the older men doing the same thing.
This seems odd to the boy, and he wondered why someone would choose to carry such an old fashioned knife. The company had provided some brightly colored utility knives that were spaced around, and his fellow employees seemed to use them. But the boy had his own knife and he'd paid a fair amount of money for it, so he tried to stick with it.
"Hey kid, go out back and break down some of the boxes to go in the recycle bin." the Forman told him one day.
The boy went out back to where some employees had just tossed the boxes over agains the bin without breaking them down first. Annoyed at being made to do someone else's work, he took out his thick bladed knife and tried to run down the seams of the boxes to flatten them to stack neatly in the bin. The blade bound up and squeaked as it sawed through the thick cardboard. The boy sawed back and forth as the blade rubbed against the material.
'Here kid, try this." a voice said behind him and a hand holding a small pocket knife was in front of his face. Feeling a bit put off by the old man, he grudgingly took the offered knife and laid the blade in the cut he had started with the big folder. Putting pressure in the blade, the boy was actually a little shocked by how easy the thin little blade of the pocket knife whispered through the cardboard. In spite of being barely two inches long, if that, he sliced down the entire side of the box. He reached out and held the knife to the old man.
"Wow, thanks man!. That is a sharp little sucker," he said.
The old man just smiled a bit, but didn't take the knife back but fiddled with a briar pipe and held a match to it and puffed a bit of gray aromatic smoke.
"It's not really that much sharper than your knife, it's just thinner. The blade profile is nice and flat all the way down to the edge, and you don't have all that drag in the material you're cutting. Especially cardboard." the old man said. "Sometimes I'll use one of the companies utility knives, if one is handy, if not I just use my pocket knife."
The boy thought about that for a moment, and then asked the old man a question.
"Isn't it a real pain in the butt to have to reach into a pocket and use two hands to pull open a blade?"
The old man smiled a little.
"Not at all, it's my mini break." he said, "It gives me a small moment to slow down and think about what I'm doing, and maybe even admire my knife."
The boy thought abut that, and looked down at the knife still in his hand. For the first time he noticed the handles were a material he wasn't sure of, with strange indentations in the surface. It was smooth to the touch, with a worn friendly feeling, and he noticed the other two blades still folded in the handle. He ran his thumb up and down on the textured surface and it felt good, a kind of beguiling feeling.
"What is this stuff?" the boy asked
"That's some old jigged bone that's been handed a a lot and smoothed down over the years. You might say that's a good example of what they call pocket worn." the old told him. "The jigging was a good deal crisper when I got it a whole bunch of years ago."
They broke down the boxes and stacked them neatly in the bin and went back to work. The next time the boy needed to open a box, he picked up one of the utility knives off a work table and slid it along the seam of the box top. He was amazed at how much more easily it cut than his expensive thick bladed folder. Over the next few days, he asked the old man some questions, and the old man was forthcoming with information on knives. There was nobody at home for him to ask, he didn't see much of the man who was his father, and his mother worked a lot and didn't have a a lot of time to spend at home. When she wasn't working, she was going out with people and the boy was home alone a lot. He'd learned about knives on the internet, but the kind of knives the old man carried was a new area for him. He noticed a few other of the older men at work carried similar kinds of knives. On breaks and lunch time he started to ask the older men men questions, and was surprised at how they took the time to answer him in a thoughtful way. Once, he said he had a dumb question, but the old man said the only dumb question was the one that wasn't asked. Slowly, the boy's knowledge grew, and he realized that knives were a cutting tool first, and for most.
He watched the way the old man took care of his knife, always taking a moment to look over how he was going to use it. Cutting carefully, and examining the blade after. The almost casual way he reached into a pocket and took it out, tang a moment to feel the knife and orient it in his hand. The old man was always ready to reply to the boys many questions. Then one day, the old man surprised him. He walked up t the boy and handed him a knife. It wasn't a big knife, but it was chunky in a nice way, with three blades nested neatly in the handle of black synthetic material.
"What's this?" he asked the old man.
"Consider it a loaner experiment." the old man replied. "Try it for a week and see if you find out anything."
The boy did so, Over the next week he used the little multi bladed knife from the old man. At first, he was bugged a bit by the slow operation of the knife. Having to use two hands to open a knife seemed to be counter productive. Old fashioned. Just plain weird. But one thing he couldn't deny, the knife cut well. Once he almost ran the blade over his thumb, narrowly missing it, because the thin blade of the old man's loaner went right through the material being cut so easy. But he was a bit bothered by the knife not having a lock on the blade. He questioned the old man on that.
"But what it I have to stab something? he asked. "I'll cut my finger off if it folds over on me!"
The old man looked at him for a long moment before answering.
"First off, that knife is a cutting tool, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a combat weapon, nor an assignation weapon. Just a tool. It opens boxes, cuts twine or rope, even whittles a bit if you're so inclined. It's a daily companion for the little cutting jobs that life is fond of tossing in your way. It can even save a life in an emergency. If you use it right, it won't fold over on you because the forces that occur when you cut are actually keeping the blade open. If you think you need a weapon, use something else."
The boy thought about that for the rest of the day. By the end of the week, he was so used to the little stockman pocket knife that he found himself not wanting to give it back. He liked the way it slid down in his pocket out of the way. He was surprised at how he didn't miss the bigger knife clipped to the top of his pocket. Then a surprising thing happened. The old man didn't want it back.
"Give me a quarter." the old man told him.
The boy was mystified so the old man told him about the custom. He handed over the quarter, and suddenly felt good about it. It wasn't a gift, it was paid for in some small way, and in some small way it felt right. Over the next couple of weeks, the boy used the knife everyday. He took pains with it, and then realized why a few blades in one pocket size package was a good thing. He tried to use the company utility knives to save wear and tear on his knife, but they weren't always around him. So he used just one of the blades on the pocket knife as his heavy duty blade. The old man showed him how to put a steeper edge on the one blade and 'save' the others. The boy found himself using the knife more than his single bladed knife that could be flipped open with little effort. He loved the fart that with three blades he had reserve cutting on tap if one blade got dull. The old man taught him about the knives he'd never heard of. One day after work, the old man took a cigar box out of his truck. It had knives in it. Knives like the boy had never handled before. Some had two blades, some had three, some even had four. The old man called them by names. Stockman, jacks, pens, congress. There were muskrats, and trappers. It was a world of knives that the boy had not known to exist. But one thing still bothered him a bit.
"But none of these knives would any use if, " the boy hesitated, not sure how to say it, "if someone was on me. You know, if I had to defend myself."
The old man looked at him for a long minute.
"Do you know much about knife fighting?" he asked the boy.
"No, but "
"You don't want to!" The old man cut him off.
"But what if I'm attacked and "
"Did your father ever teach you anything?" the old man asked.
"No," the boy said," He left not long after I was born, and I never saw him much. "
"Uncles, an older brother?"
The boy shook his head.
So began the education of the boy. The next day after work, the old man drove them down to a shabby warehouse in an industrial park. Inside was a gathering of some older people that seemed to be a strange collection of retirees. There was some tables with collections of odds and ends of sticks, mrarking pens, spoons, a few screw drivers, a few canes, and other things. Some wrestling mats covered a section of floor. The old man was greeted warmly and he introduced the boy.
"He needs our help." was all the old man said to the group.
They introduced themselves to the boy on a fist name basis, but only that. The boy though it a bit odd, but a kindly looking silver haired woman who looked like someones grandmother came up and shook his hand and told him her name was Jenny. Then she told the boy to put his hands around her neck tight and not to let go no matter what. The boy took her neck gently in his hands.
"No, tight!" the silver haired old lady told him.
"Look ma'am, I don't want to hurt you, but ."
He never got to finish his statement before the lady yelled at him, "Tight you little.. " and slapped him hard across the face. The boy got angry and tightened how grip on the ladies throat.
"Okay, you want a nice tight grip you old " then screamed as his wrist felt like it being torn out and he found himself flat on his back with the ladies knee in his neck and a thumb pressed into the corner of his eye.
Stunned, he lay there and they helped him up, and the silver haired woman hugged him and told him she hoped he was okay. He was.
"How the heck, I mean, what did you do "
"You will learn how I did that, as well as much more. Just give it some time. Rome was not built in a day." she told him.
Over the next few months, the boy came to the dilapidated warehouse three times a week. After each session, he got instructions on how to practice some things at home. Slowly, the boy became a man that summer, with the help of some strange characters he never would have guessed were as dangerous as he saw. He was shown how to use things around him. The big heavy set man who looked like an out of work Santa Claus taught him something called environmental fighting.
"Hell son, you don't need to carry a weapon, we're surrounded by weapons every day." the fat man said. 'Any object can be used."
By the end of the summer, the boy had taken to carrying a traditional pocket knife, and even had picked up a few nice Case and GEC's. Going back to finish his senior year in high school, he said goodbye to his co-workers, and after work asked the old man again who the people at the warehouse were. The old man was quiet, fiddled with his pipe, and finally told the young man.
"You'll never know unless they want to tell you. They all retired because they lived long enough to do so, in a very dangerous trade. They still get together to keep in shape and practice because they know the world is not Mr. Rogers neighborhood. But there's this, they like you, and said you can continue to train with them." he handed the young man a blank card with only a handwritten phone number on it.
The young man was quiet for a moment.
"What about you, were you one of them?
The old man didn't reply, just took a puff on his pipe and blew out a cloud of gray smoke. He turned and walked away towards his truck, paused and called back to the young man, "Remember, it doesn't have to be big, just sharp. See ya around kid."
He was a gray haired old timer, with a close trimmed gray beard, and walked with a slight limp, who worked part time to augment a pension. He never seemed to rush, but worked with a measured deliberate pace. When he needed to cut open a box, he didn't bother to look around for one of the brightly colored utility knives, but reached into a pocket and took out an old fashioned pocket knife. One that needed to be pulled open rather than a quick flick of the thumb. The knife seems too small to be of any real use, but the more he watched the old man, the more the old man seems to have an easy time slicing through what he needed to cut. Then he noticed a few other of the older men doing the same thing.
This seems odd to the boy, and he wondered why someone would choose to carry such an old fashioned knife. The company had provided some brightly colored utility knives that were spaced around, and his fellow employees seemed to use them. But the boy had his own knife and he'd paid a fair amount of money for it, so he tried to stick with it.
"Hey kid, go out back and break down some of the boxes to go in the recycle bin." the Forman told him one day.
The boy went out back to where some employees had just tossed the boxes over agains the bin without breaking them down first. Annoyed at being made to do someone else's work, he took out his thick bladed knife and tried to run down the seams of the boxes to flatten them to stack neatly in the bin. The blade bound up and squeaked as it sawed through the thick cardboard. The boy sawed back and forth as the blade rubbed against the material.
'Here kid, try this." a voice said behind him and a hand holding a small pocket knife was in front of his face. Feeling a bit put off by the old man, he grudgingly took the offered knife and laid the blade in the cut he had started with the big folder. Putting pressure in the blade, the boy was actually a little shocked by how easy the thin little blade of the pocket knife whispered through the cardboard. In spite of being barely two inches long, if that, he sliced down the entire side of the box. He reached out and held the knife to the old man.
"Wow, thanks man!. That is a sharp little sucker," he said.
The old man just smiled a bit, but didn't take the knife back but fiddled with a briar pipe and held a match to it and puffed a bit of gray aromatic smoke.
"It's not really that much sharper than your knife, it's just thinner. The blade profile is nice and flat all the way down to the edge, and you don't have all that drag in the material you're cutting. Especially cardboard." the old man said. "Sometimes I'll use one of the companies utility knives, if one is handy, if not I just use my pocket knife."
The boy thought about that for a moment, and then asked the old man a question.
"Isn't it a real pain in the butt to have to reach into a pocket and use two hands to pull open a blade?"
The old man smiled a little.
"Not at all, it's my mini break." he said, "It gives me a small moment to slow down and think about what I'm doing, and maybe even admire my knife."
The boy thought abut that, and looked down at the knife still in his hand. For the first time he noticed the handles were a material he wasn't sure of, with strange indentations in the surface. It was smooth to the touch, with a worn friendly feeling, and he noticed the other two blades still folded in the handle. He ran his thumb up and down on the textured surface and it felt good, a kind of beguiling feeling.
"What is this stuff?" the boy asked
"That's some old jigged bone that's been handed a a lot and smoothed down over the years. You might say that's a good example of what they call pocket worn." the old told him. "The jigging was a good deal crisper when I got it a whole bunch of years ago."
They broke down the boxes and stacked them neatly in the bin and went back to work. The next time the boy needed to open a box, he picked up one of the utility knives off a work table and slid it along the seam of the box top. He was amazed at how much more easily it cut than his expensive thick bladed folder. Over the next few days, he asked the old man some questions, and the old man was forthcoming with information on knives. There was nobody at home for him to ask, he didn't see much of the man who was his father, and his mother worked a lot and didn't have a a lot of time to spend at home. When she wasn't working, she was going out with people and the boy was home alone a lot. He'd learned about knives on the internet, but the kind of knives the old man carried was a new area for him. He noticed a few other of the older men at work carried similar kinds of knives. On breaks and lunch time he started to ask the older men men questions, and was surprised at how they took the time to answer him in a thoughtful way. Once, he said he had a dumb question, but the old man said the only dumb question was the one that wasn't asked. Slowly, the boy's knowledge grew, and he realized that knives were a cutting tool first, and for most.
He watched the way the old man took care of his knife, always taking a moment to look over how he was going to use it. Cutting carefully, and examining the blade after. The almost casual way he reached into a pocket and took it out, tang a moment to feel the knife and orient it in his hand. The old man was always ready to reply to the boys many questions. Then one day, the old man surprised him. He walked up t the boy and handed him a knife. It wasn't a big knife, but it was chunky in a nice way, with three blades nested neatly in the handle of black synthetic material.
"What's this?" he asked the old man.
"Consider it a loaner experiment." the old man replied. "Try it for a week and see if you find out anything."
The boy did so, Over the next week he used the little multi bladed knife from the old man. At first, he was bugged a bit by the slow operation of the knife. Having to use two hands to open a knife seemed to be counter productive. Old fashioned. Just plain weird. But one thing he couldn't deny, the knife cut well. Once he almost ran the blade over his thumb, narrowly missing it, because the thin blade of the old man's loaner went right through the material being cut so easy. But he was a bit bothered by the knife not having a lock on the blade. He questioned the old man on that.
"But what it I have to stab something? he asked. "I'll cut my finger off if it folds over on me!"
The old man looked at him for a long moment before answering.
"First off, that knife is a cutting tool, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a combat weapon, nor an assignation weapon. Just a tool. It opens boxes, cuts twine or rope, even whittles a bit if you're so inclined. It's a daily companion for the little cutting jobs that life is fond of tossing in your way. It can even save a life in an emergency. If you use it right, it won't fold over on you because the forces that occur when you cut are actually keeping the blade open. If you think you need a weapon, use something else."
The boy thought about that for the rest of the day. By the end of the week, he was so used to the little stockman pocket knife that he found himself not wanting to give it back. He liked the way it slid down in his pocket out of the way. He was surprised at how he didn't miss the bigger knife clipped to the top of his pocket. Then a surprising thing happened. The old man didn't want it back.
"Give me a quarter." the old man told him.
The boy was mystified so the old man told him about the custom. He handed over the quarter, and suddenly felt good about it. It wasn't a gift, it was paid for in some small way, and in some small way it felt right. Over the next couple of weeks, the boy used the knife everyday. He took pains with it, and then realized why a few blades in one pocket size package was a good thing. He tried to use the company utility knives to save wear and tear on his knife, but they weren't always around him. So he used just one of the blades on the pocket knife as his heavy duty blade. The old man showed him how to put a steeper edge on the one blade and 'save' the others. The boy found himself using the knife more than his single bladed knife that could be flipped open with little effort. He loved the fart that with three blades he had reserve cutting on tap if one blade got dull. The old man taught him about the knives he'd never heard of. One day after work, the old man took a cigar box out of his truck. It had knives in it. Knives like the boy had never handled before. Some had two blades, some had three, some even had four. The old man called them by names. Stockman, jacks, pens, congress. There were muskrats, and trappers. It was a world of knives that the boy had not known to exist. But one thing still bothered him a bit.
"But none of these knives would any use if, " the boy hesitated, not sure how to say it, "if someone was on me. You know, if I had to defend myself."
The old man looked at him for a long minute.
"Do you know much about knife fighting?" he asked the boy.
"No, but "
"You don't want to!" The old man cut him off.
"But what if I'm attacked and "
"Did your father ever teach you anything?" the old man asked.
"No," the boy said," He left not long after I was born, and I never saw him much. "
"Uncles, an older brother?"
The boy shook his head.
So began the education of the boy. The next day after work, the old man drove them down to a shabby warehouse in an industrial park. Inside was a gathering of some older people that seemed to be a strange collection of retirees. There was some tables with collections of odds and ends of sticks, mrarking pens, spoons, a few screw drivers, a few canes, and other things. Some wrestling mats covered a section of floor. The old man was greeted warmly and he introduced the boy.
"He needs our help." was all the old man said to the group.
They introduced themselves to the boy on a fist name basis, but only that. The boy though it a bit odd, but a kindly looking silver haired woman who looked like someones grandmother came up and shook his hand and told him her name was Jenny. Then she told the boy to put his hands around her neck tight and not to let go no matter what. The boy took her neck gently in his hands.
"No, tight!" the silver haired old lady told him.
"Look ma'am, I don't want to hurt you, but ."
He never got to finish his statement before the lady yelled at him, "Tight you little.. " and slapped him hard across the face. The boy got angry and tightened how grip on the ladies throat.
"Okay, you want a nice tight grip you old " then screamed as his wrist felt like it being torn out and he found himself flat on his back with the ladies knee in his neck and a thumb pressed into the corner of his eye.
Stunned, he lay there and they helped him up, and the silver haired woman hugged him and told him she hoped he was okay. He was.
"How the heck, I mean, what did you do "
"You will learn how I did that, as well as much more. Just give it some time. Rome was not built in a day." she told him.
Over the next few months, the boy came to the dilapidated warehouse three times a week. After each session, he got instructions on how to practice some things at home. Slowly, the boy became a man that summer, with the help of some strange characters he never would have guessed were as dangerous as he saw. He was shown how to use things around him. The big heavy set man who looked like an out of work Santa Claus taught him something called environmental fighting.
"Hell son, you don't need to carry a weapon, we're surrounded by weapons every day." the fat man said. 'Any object can be used."
By the end of the summer, the boy had taken to carrying a traditional pocket knife, and even had picked up a few nice Case and GEC's. Going back to finish his senior year in high school, he said goodbye to his co-workers, and after work asked the old man again who the people at the warehouse were. The old man was quiet, fiddled with his pipe, and finally told the young man.
"You'll never know unless they want to tell you. They all retired because they lived long enough to do so, in a very dangerous trade. They still get together to keep in shape and practice because they know the world is not Mr. Rogers neighborhood. But there's this, they like you, and said you can continue to train with them." he handed the young man a blank card with only a handwritten phone number on it.
The young man was quiet for a moment.
"What about you, were you one of them?
The old man didn't reply, just took a puff on his pipe and blew out a cloud of gray smoke. He turned and walked away towards his truck, paused and called back to the young man, "Remember, it doesn't have to be big, just sharp. See ya around kid."
