The old man had just wanted to eat his bowl of chili in peace.
A fishing trip to the mountains, some fly casting on the high mountain lake, and time away from the city, was all the old man had wanted. And he had gotten it for a couple days. Now, driving down to the little diner down the road from the campground by the lake, he had just wanted a sit down meal and some food he didn't have to make himself. It was a run down little diner in a down at the heels little crossroads of a town in the foothills of the Sangre De Cristo mountains west of Trinidad Colorado. The old man had been planing to break camp the next day for the drive back north to Denver. Until his supper was interrupted by the bully boy and his little gang. They had arrived at the diner with loud talk and a half ton of bluster.
"Gimme a beer." the leader of the little band yelled at the man behind the counter.
"Don't come in here to cause trouble, Jim. I'll call the sheriff, I mean it!" the counter man said.
"Yeah, and before he gets here I'll boot your sorry butt all over the place like I did last time!" the bully shouted back.
The intimidated counter man slapped a bottle of beer down in front of the big young man without any comment.
'Every wide spot in the road has them,' the old man thought. There's always one who gathered a little crew of followers, those too scared or too dumb to not go along. Now the three of them and targeted the old man for some rude fun. The old man set out to ignore them, but that proved to be impossible. A few minutes earlier the old man had opened the little plastic single serving of butter for the bread that had come with his bowl of chilli, and now wanted to open another of the little plastic envelopes of the hot sauce for the chill. But with his fingers a little slippery, even after using the paper napkin, the plastic proved too much for the old man to rip open, so he fished out his little pocket knife from the Filson wool vest he wore. Opening the little knife, he neatly slit open the hot sauce.
"Hey old man, how's the chili?" the big one asked the old man.
"Not bad." said the old man in a carefully neutral tone of voice.
"Yeah, well it looks like something in the toilet bowl!" said the bully with a laugh, and one of the two young men with him laughed at his leaders joke. But one was looking a little abashed.
"Come on Jim, that old man ain't worth bothering with." he said.
The bully looked at the young man and scoffed at him.
"You're real wuss, Billy boy. I don't know why I let you hang around with us." the lead bully said.
Meanwhile the old man was using the paper napkin to carefully wipe off the blade of the little pen knife he'd cut open the hot cause packet with. The blade was a light gray with a patina of years, and bone handles were smooth from decades of handling. But it was noticed by the second bully.
"Hey Jimbo, he's got a knife. Maybe he's a dangerous hombre. " he giggled.
The old man payed no mind to him, and just carefully placed the little knife back in the pocket of the Filson vest. But the leader slowly walked over to the old man's table.
"Hey old man, you like knives? I got one for ya!" he said and pulled out a very large knife and made a show of flipping it open, waving it in front of the old man.
"Knock it off now, Jim, I'll call the sheriff on ya." the counter man said.
"Shut up Lyle, before you annoy me." the lead bully said without taking his eyes off the old man he was standing over. Then he grabbed a handful of the hot sauce packets and sliced them all open, and spilling them into the old man's bowl of chili.
"Aww, I didn't spoil your dinner did I?" the bully asked laughing, "It didn't look worth eating anyways!"
He turned a walked back to the counter and took a long swig from the bottle of beer. All the other customers in the diner were concentrating on looking down at their plates, not wanting part of the trouble from a well known local low life. The diner was quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop. Then the sudden scrape of a chair being pushed back on the worn cracked linoleum floor, and everyone looked up to see the old man standing and looking at the lead bully boy. He picked up a cane and moved a little way away from the table.
"Yes, you have ruined my supper, but it's very kind of you to pay for it." the old man said.
Shocked silence was a heavy pall in the diner, as the locals knew the "Big Jim" Walker had a fierce and violent temper. Now he turned to the old man and took a step towards him.
" I ain't paying jack for you, old man," said Big Jim, "But I will put your old ass through the door head first if you don't watch your mouth. Don't you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said the old man, " A lousy no account bully that probably never had a real fight in his life. You grew up to be a big fish in a little pond, and ever since elementary school when you were the biggest kid in the class, you've been used to pushing people around that were smaller than you. But inside, you're just a cowardly tub of lard."
For a frozen moment of time, Big Jim the bully stood looking at the old man with his face going a deep crimson. Then in a yell of rage, he came at the old man. He reached out and grabbed the old man's throat in his left hand drawing back his right fist to punch, but never made it. In a blink of an eye, the old man whipped the cane up right between the bully's legs, impacting his family jewels a mighty blow. With an inarticulate scream of agony, Big Jm doubled over and then the old man brought his left elbow down on the back of Big Jim's right shoulder. Big Jim ended on the floor in a tight fetal position still making inarticulate sounds of pain, with his right arm looking like it didn't work too well and was sticking out limp at his side. Then the old man did the unthinkable. He looked at the bullys followers, and said a single word.
"Next?"
Both of the young men looked shocked, both at Big Jim ending up vomiting on the floor while doubled over in pain, and the old man asking who's next. This had never happened before in all the times Big Jim had picked a fight with someone. Then a new sound broke the silence. A middle aged man and his wife, who had been sitting toward the front of the little diner had stood up and started to applaud. Their clapping sounded loud in the silence, and in a few seconds two older ladies who were at a table in the back stood and joined in the clapping. Then the sheriff arrived, called by the counter man from in back of the diner where the bully couldn't see him on his cell phone. Slowly things got sorted out, and the sheriff asked the old man if he wanted to press charges, and the old man said yes. The sheriff was a big man, who had grownup in the little mountain town.
"Mister, this bad apple has been running rough shod over the people here for years, and nobody had the guts to stand up to him too often. A few here and there, but bad things seemed to happen to them or their property before they could testify, and they'd change they're minds. Thank you giving us the start to put an end to this guy." the sheriff said.
Hours later the old man was back at his camp by the mountain lake, sitting on a folding chair enjoying a slow pipe and a plastic cup of whiskey. He didn't pay any attention to the person creeping around the woods trying to get closer to his tent. After a while though, he smiled and called out.
"If you want to talk, don't waste my night by sneaking around. Come on in and have a drink."
Not to any surprise, it was the young man who had held back and seemed a reluctant member of the bully boy trio. He seemed a normal young man, nothing conspicuous in his appearance, other than being well dressed and groomed. He was looking at the old man in a quizzical way. The old man pointed to the cooler.
"There's ice and a cup. Pour yourself a shot if you want. " the old man told him.
The young man did so, and sat down on the cooler, there being only one folding chair.
"How did you do that? the young man asked.
The night wore on and the old man and the young man had a long talk. The young man's name was Bill, but he was called Billy boy because that was what Jimbo called him. So he was stuck with the name.
"So why did you hang around with that guy? Just go elsewhere." the old man said.
"Ain't a lot of places elsewhere in this little town. And there in't a lot of people here to hang with, when it's not tourist season."
The old man thought for a moment and made a choice. He bought about what father had told him growing up. He looked at the young man who seemed to be decent young man in need of more choices. The old man thought about what his father had told him, about leaving the world a little better than he found it by helping people when they needed it. As he watched him, the young man had picked up a Slim Jim to eat while they were talking, and he took out a large knife that looked like the kind that Big Jim as he was called, had carried. The young man was going to slice off the plastic wrapper, and the old man stopped him.
"Whoa, hold up a second partner. Let me see that knife."
The young man handed over his knife, and the old man looked it over for a moment. Then he stood up and walked over to the edge of the lake, and heaved the knife out over the water. It glinted once in the moonlight before splashing into the lake.
"Hey old man, what the hell are you doing?!" Billy yelled at him. " That was my knife!"
"I'm going to give you choices. Go over to my truck and look in the glove box. There's knife on the left side, take it it's yours. I took a knife from you, so I'm giving you one back."
Billy was mystified at this turn of events, but he went over to the old pickup he'd seen earlier and admired. It was a classic old Chevy from decades ago, but restored perfectly. He looked in the glove box and took out the only knife he found. It was old style slip joint with three blades and a smooth wooden handle. He pulled open the main blade and saw that it was a carbon steel blade, and when he felt the edge, it was razor sharp. His old knife had never had that kind of thumbprint grabbing edge, and as he returned to the seat on the cooler, he examined the other blades by the light of the battery lantern the old man had sitting on a small folding table. All the blades were shaving sharp but one, and that was dull as a putty knife.
"What the heck is this?" he asked the old man.
"It's knife that gives you choices. A knife is a cutting tool, and this one gives you three choices of tools, You look over what you have to do, and make a choice of how you are going to do it. Which tool to use, and how. It's a lot like life, making a choice of what you're gong to do."
Billy was quiet for a moment, and then smiled. The old man saw that he'd got the point.
"it's a lesson in metaphor, isn't it.? " asked Billy. Then he smiled, "Do you want me to wax your truck? Wax on, wax off?"
The old man smiled and knew what Billy was referring to.
"No, I don't need my truck waxed right now, maybe later. But the big question is, do you want choices, Do you want to learn and leave this stuff behind?"
Billy looked down at the old stockman pattern knife in his hand, and was quiet for a long spell, thinking. The old man didn't say anything, just slowly reloaded his pipe for another smoke. Then Billy looked up.
"Yes, I want to learn, and I want to leave this place behind. But I don't know what to do, and I don't even have a job. I guess that's why I've stayed, I'm not sure how to leave." Billy said. "But one thing I'm sure of. I don't want to be called Billy anymore."
The old man nodded.
"Okay Bill. You can work can't you? I mean your not a cripple or something, right? You can lift and carry? I'm a retired contractor, but some of my friends in the trades are still going. Here's what you're going to do." the old man took a card from his wallet." Here's my card, you're going to move to the city, and you're going to get a job with a friend of mine. You are going to learn a trade and find employment far from this little town and the bad beginning you almost made here. And along the way you are going to make choices. Every morning we all get out of bed and make choices. The trick is to try to make good ones. You make choices just like with the three blade knife, what tool to use, how to go about it. In life you think about what you're going to do, and what effect it will have on the rest of your life and those around you. In the end, life is all about the choices we make. Big Jim was stupid, and made bad choice, so now he's off to jail after he gets out of the hospital. Once in a while just look at that knife, and think about three choices to make. "
And so Bill did. He moved to Denver, the old man got him a job, and he went strait. He had moments of doubt, but the metaphor of the knife stayed with him, and he learned to build. He'd slide his hand into his pocket and feel the smooth wood, and the backs of the three blades, and think about three possible choices to make whatever his current problems was. He married and their first child was a healthy boy. He and his wife were discussing names, and she asked him what about anyone in his family. Bill had never known his father, the man abandoning his family early in Bill's life. He was an only child, so there was no brothers. Then he looked at his wife and said, "Jake, as in Jacob."
"Jake?" his wife asked him with a quizzical look. "Who is named Jake?"
Bill just smiled.
" A teacher." was all he said.
A fishing trip to the mountains, some fly casting on the high mountain lake, and time away from the city, was all the old man had wanted. And he had gotten it for a couple days. Now, driving down to the little diner down the road from the campground by the lake, he had just wanted a sit down meal and some food he didn't have to make himself. It was a run down little diner in a down at the heels little crossroads of a town in the foothills of the Sangre De Cristo mountains west of Trinidad Colorado. The old man had been planing to break camp the next day for the drive back north to Denver. Until his supper was interrupted by the bully boy and his little gang. They had arrived at the diner with loud talk and a half ton of bluster.
"Gimme a beer." the leader of the little band yelled at the man behind the counter.
"Don't come in here to cause trouble, Jim. I'll call the sheriff, I mean it!" the counter man said.
"Yeah, and before he gets here I'll boot your sorry butt all over the place like I did last time!" the bully shouted back.
The intimidated counter man slapped a bottle of beer down in front of the big young man without any comment.
'Every wide spot in the road has them,' the old man thought. There's always one who gathered a little crew of followers, those too scared or too dumb to not go along. Now the three of them and targeted the old man for some rude fun. The old man set out to ignore them, but that proved to be impossible. A few minutes earlier the old man had opened the little plastic single serving of butter for the bread that had come with his bowl of chilli, and now wanted to open another of the little plastic envelopes of the hot sauce for the chill. But with his fingers a little slippery, even after using the paper napkin, the plastic proved too much for the old man to rip open, so he fished out his little pocket knife from the Filson wool vest he wore. Opening the little knife, he neatly slit open the hot sauce.
"Hey old man, how's the chili?" the big one asked the old man.
"Not bad." said the old man in a carefully neutral tone of voice.
"Yeah, well it looks like something in the toilet bowl!" said the bully with a laugh, and one of the two young men with him laughed at his leaders joke. But one was looking a little abashed.
"Come on Jim, that old man ain't worth bothering with." he said.
The bully looked at the young man and scoffed at him.
"You're real wuss, Billy boy. I don't know why I let you hang around with us." the lead bully said.
Meanwhile the old man was using the paper napkin to carefully wipe off the blade of the little pen knife he'd cut open the hot cause packet with. The blade was a light gray with a patina of years, and bone handles were smooth from decades of handling. But it was noticed by the second bully.
"Hey Jimbo, he's got a knife. Maybe he's a dangerous hombre. " he giggled.
The old man payed no mind to him, and just carefully placed the little knife back in the pocket of the Filson vest. But the leader slowly walked over to the old man's table.
"Hey old man, you like knives? I got one for ya!" he said and pulled out a very large knife and made a show of flipping it open, waving it in front of the old man.
"Knock it off now, Jim, I'll call the sheriff on ya." the counter man said.
"Shut up Lyle, before you annoy me." the lead bully said without taking his eyes off the old man he was standing over. Then he grabbed a handful of the hot sauce packets and sliced them all open, and spilling them into the old man's bowl of chili.
"Aww, I didn't spoil your dinner did I?" the bully asked laughing, "It didn't look worth eating anyways!"
He turned a walked back to the counter and took a long swig from the bottle of beer. All the other customers in the diner were concentrating on looking down at their plates, not wanting part of the trouble from a well known local low life. The diner was quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop. Then the sudden scrape of a chair being pushed back on the worn cracked linoleum floor, and everyone looked up to see the old man standing and looking at the lead bully boy. He picked up a cane and moved a little way away from the table.
"Yes, you have ruined my supper, but it's very kind of you to pay for it." the old man said.
Shocked silence was a heavy pall in the diner, as the locals knew the "Big Jim" Walker had a fierce and violent temper. Now he turned to the old man and took a step towards him.
" I ain't paying jack for you, old man," said Big Jim, "But I will put your old ass through the door head first if you don't watch your mouth. Don't you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said the old man, " A lousy no account bully that probably never had a real fight in his life. You grew up to be a big fish in a little pond, and ever since elementary school when you were the biggest kid in the class, you've been used to pushing people around that were smaller than you. But inside, you're just a cowardly tub of lard."
For a frozen moment of time, Big Jim the bully stood looking at the old man with his face going a deep crimson. Then in a yell of rage, he came at the old man. He reached out and grabbed the old man's throat in his left hand drawing back his right fist to punch, but never made it. In a blink of an eye, the old man whipped the cane up right between the bully's legs, impacting his family jewels a mighty blow. With an inarticulate scream of agony, Big Jm doubled over and then the old man brought his left elbow down on the back of Big Jim's right shoulder. Big Jim ended on the floor in a tight fetal position still making inarticulate sounds of pain, with his right arm looking like it didn't work too well and was sticking out limp at his side. Then the old man did the unthinkable. He looked at the bullys followers, and said a single word.
"Next?"
Both of the young men looked shocked, both at Big Jim ending up vomiting on the floor while doubled over in pain, and the old man asking who's next. This had never happened before in all the times Big Jim had picked a fight with someone. Then a new sound broke the silence. A middle aged man and his wife, who had been sitting toward the front of the little diner had stood up and started to applaud. Their clapping sounded loud in the silence, and in a few seconds two older ladies who were at a table in the back stood and joined in the clapping. Then the sheriff arrived, called by the counter man from in back of the diner where the bully couldn't see him on his cell phone. Slowly things got sorted out, and the sheriff asked the old man if he wanted to press charges, and the old man said yes. The sheriff was a big man, who had grownup in the little mountain town.
"Mister, this bad apple has been running rough shod over the people here for years, and nobody had the guts to stand up to him too often. A few here and there, but bad things seemed to happen to them or their property before they could testify, and they'd change they're minds. Thank you giving us the start to put an end to this guy." the sheriff said.
Hours later the old man was back at his camp by the mountain lake, sitting on a folding chair enjoying a slow pipe and a plastic cup of whiskey. He didn't pay any attention to the person creeping around the woods trying to get closer to his tent. After a while though, he smiled and called out.
"If you want to talk, don't waste my night by sneaking around. Come on in and have a drink."
Not to any surprise, it was the young man who had held back and seemed a reluctant member of the bully boy trio. He seemed a normal young man, nothing conspicuous in his appearance, other than being well dressed and groomed. He was looking at the old man in a quizzical way. The old man pointed to the cooler.
"There's ice and a cup. Pour yourself a shot if you want. " the old man told him.
The young man did so, and sat down on the cooler, there being only one folding chair.
"How did you do that? the young man asked.
The night wore on and the old man and the young man had a long talk. The young man's name was Bill, but he was called Billy boy because that was what Jimbo called him. So he was stuck with the name.
"So why did you hang around with that guy? Just go elsewhere." the old man said.
"Ain't a lot of places elsewhere in this little town. And there in't a lot of people here to hang with, when it's not tourist season."
The old man thought for a moment and made a choice. He bought about what father had told him growing up. He looked at the young man who seemed to be decent young man in need of more choices. The old man thought about what his father had told him, about leaving the world a little better than he found it by helping people when they needed it. As he watched him, the young man had picked up a Slim Jim to eat while they were talking, and he took out a large knife that looked like the kind that Big Jim as he was called, had carried. The young man was going to slice off the plastic wrapper, and the old man stopped him.
"Whoa, hold up a second partner. Let me see that knife."
The young man handed over his knife, and the old man looked it over for a moment. Then he stood up and walked over to the edge of the lake, and heaved the knife out over the water. It glinted once in the moonlight before splashing into the lake.
"Hey old man, what the hell are you doing?!" Billy yelled at him. " That was my knife!"
"I'm going to give you choices. Go over to my truck and look in the glove box. There's knife on the left side, take it it's yours. I took a knife from you, so I'm giving you one back."
Billy was mystified at this turn of events, but he went over to the old pickup he'd seen earlier and admired. It was a classic old Chevy from decades ago, but restored perfectly. He looked in the glove box and took out the only knife he found. It was old style slip joint with three blades and a smooth wooden handle. He pulled open the main blade and saw that it was a carbon steel blade, and when he felt the edge, it was razor sharp. His old knife had never had that kind of thumbprint grabbing edge, and as he returned to the seat on the cooler, he examined the other blades by the light of the battery lantern the old man had sitting on a small folding table. All the blades were shaving sharp but one, and that was dull as a putty knife.
"What the heck is this?" he asked the old man.
"It's knife that gives you choices. A knife is a cutting tool, and this one gives you three choices of tools, You look over what you have to do, and make a choice of how you are going to do it. Which tool to use, and how. It's a lot like life, making a choice of what you're gong to do."
Billy was quiet for a moment, and then smiled. The old man saw that he'd got the point.
"it's a lesson in metaphor, isn't it.? " asked Billy. Then he smiled, "Do you want me to wax your truck? Wax on, wax off?"
The old man smiled and knew what Billy was referring to.
"No, I don't need my truck waxed right now, maybe later. But the big question is, do you want choices, Do you want to learn and leave this stuff behind?"
Billy looked down at the old stockman pattern knife in his hand, and was quiet for a long spell, thinking. The old man didn't say anything, just slowly reloaded his pipe for another smoke. Then Billy looked up.
"Yes, I want to learn, and I want to leave this place behind. But I don't know what to do, and I don't even have a job. I guess that's why I've stayed, I'm not sure how to leave." Billy said. "But one thing I'm sure of. I don't want to be called Billy anymore."
The old man nodded.
"Okay Bill. You can work can't you? I mean your not a cripple or something, right? You can lift and carry? I'm a retired contractor, but some of my friends in the trades are still going. Here's what you're going to do." the old man took a card from his wallet." Here's my card, you're going to move to the city, and you're going to get a job with a friend of mine. You are going to learn a trade and find employment far from this little town and the bad beginning you almost made here. And along the way you are going to make choices. Every morning we all get out of bed and make choices. The trick is to try to make good ones. You make choices just like with the three blade knife, what tool to use, how to go about it. In life you think about what you're going to do, and what effect it will have on the rest of your life and those around you. In the end, life is all about the choices we make. Big Jim was stupid, and made bad choice, so now he's off to jail after he gets out of the hospital. Once in a while just look at that knife, and think about three choices to make. "
And so Bill did. He moved to Denver, the old man got him a job, and he went strait. He had moments of doubt, but the metaphor of the knife stayed with him, and he learned to build. He'd slide his hand into his pocket and feel the smooth wood, and the backs of the three blades, and think about three possible choices to make whatever his current problems was. He married and their first child was a healthy boy. He and his wife were discussing names, and she asked him what about anyone in his family. Bill had never known his father, the man abandoning his family early in Bill's life. He was an only child, so there was no brothers. Then he looked at his wife and said, "Jake, as in Jacob."
"Jake?" his wife asked him with a quizzical look. "Who is named Jake?"
Bill just smiled.
" A teacher." was all he said.
Last edited:
Thanks Jackknife.
