Do You Guys Remember.....

JK Knives

JK Knives

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when you were a kid and used to build forts and clubhouses in the woods or prairies! Maybe you are too young (I`m 55 :eek:), but when I was a kid any open prairie or small clump of woods was fair game to build a fort in. We used to chase small game with our bow and arrows or BB guns (never got anything :confused:), but we had a ball doing it! Everybody carried a pocketknife in those days, and nobody got excited when you pulled it out. As long as one of your parents were with you, the little hardware store in town would let you paw through the knives on display, even if you didn`t have the money to buy it right then, old Ed the owner would know you would be coming back to get one sooner or later.This place reminds of those clubhouses, everybody gets along, no arguements or junk like that. Let`s here your stories.
 
I remember my Dad taking me to the Army Surplus store when I was eight to buy my first BB gun. I still love those stores, but as a kid that place was pure magic. We always carried a pocket knife, usually a Barlow or something similar, and no one thought it was the least bit strange. Our street backed up to farm field with a line of old oaks at the perimeter and we had a great tree house that was always being torn apart and rebuilt with old "found" plywood and 2 x 4's. The thing I remember most though, was staying outside ALL day long. Leaving in the morning with a sack lunch and showing up back at home just in time for dinner. Things are just a little different now.

Jeff
 
I'm getting closer to 40 and am glad that I was born when I was. My folks weren't paranoid and had to have me and my brothers in their line of sight 24/7. We would say "see you later Mom!" and head out the door. As long as we were back by dinner, we were ok. Bikes, treehouses and games we made up consumed our time. I often had a knife in my front pocket and used it for lots of things, none of them threatening.

I agree that this place is a calm location to chat from time to time. I'm glad to hang out here from time to time.
 
My son is 16 and a Jr. in high School. He didn't believe me when I told him that I carried a pocket knife to school almost every day. Growing up, every patch of woods in our neighborhood was turned into an adventure.
 
I do remember digging a foxhole in the side yard that my Mom wasn't too thrilled about. The big rainstorm that made it into a mosquito berreding ground wasn't so cool.

Working with young kids (2nd graders) I see how parents, for the most part, are trying to shelter their kids from nearly every challenge, negative consequence and disappointment out there. I sometimes marvel at how my parents wouldn't bat an eye if I cut myself while whittling or had a fight or argument with a neighborhood friend. I think lots of parents weren't "helicopters" hovering about their kids and fighting all of their battles for them. I learned so much from working and playing with my childhood friends. I knew about winning and losing and seeing something through. I also had time to think, dream and play in an unstructured environment. It was expected of kids to make their own fun. Today it's very different and I worry that my son won't get to experience lots of what I did as a kid. I plan on exposing him to lots of things, but then again, that's part of the problem. I want him to be able to learn for himself. Such is this day and age...
 
Tree dens were more me and my buddy's gig. During the schools hols we would be out at first light in our gum boots, slingshot and pebbles in one pocket and SAK and whistle in the other. We'd follow streams for hours collecting minnows and tadpoles in a jam jar snacking on blackberries and crab apples as we went.We were also quite dumb back then and thought collecting bird eggs was ok so that was another of our aims as we went on our adventures.
We'd race back home to wolf down our dinners and then run back down the woods till it started to go dark !!!!

Thinking about it I've not really changed other than my buddies are now 2 dogs and I don't collect eggs !!!!!
 
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Yes I remember.... I grew upon a farm in eastern Nebraska, the oldest of 5 kids. One brother, 3 sisters. I will be 60 this year. I was lucky enough to have a father that hunted, fished and trapped. It seems we always had a pocket knife in our pocket, until that one got lost. :confused: Usually a stockman of some sort, usually an Imperial. My brother and I were always building forts and playing with the neighbor kids. Of course tho there were always chores, feeding the hogs, chickens and milking cows, not to mention putting up hay in the summer.

But in the fall we would go hunting, usually small game and pheasants. I remember my first deer hunt with my dad. He had an old Army rifle, 1903 A3 Springfield 30-06. I remember cleaning the deer with his large bone handled stockman. Later on he picked up a stag handled Case hunting knife which he still has.

I'm lucky enough now to live on a farm myself and raise my family in the same way. We don't trap much any more but we do deer hunt. My daughter and my wife always rifle hunt. I have kind of taken up muzzleloader hunting and my daughter muzzleloader hunts some too when she can get out of college. She's working toward a degree in forensic entomology at UNL. I hope some day she can carry on the family tradition here on the farm, and her career too. I remember telling her that we used to all carry pocket knives in school. And in our teens we would even throw our shotguns and .22 in the cars we drove to school so we could go hunting when we got out.

For now my traps hang in the shed, don't do much of that any more. But I enjoy messing around with knives and guns and look forward to ordering my next JK. ;)
 
I'm a bit younger than all of you, but I'm glad that I still got a taste of the things you all are describing. I grew up around Detroit in suburbia, but I'm lucky enough to have both of my sets of grandparents living in Michigans UP. One set is on 80 acres that was his fathers, and my summers were spent running around the woods with my cousin, making forts, shooting our BB guns and the like. There was a little country corner store/gas station up the road and my cousin and I would walk up there any buy more BBs or some penny candy. We could do whatever we wanted as long as we got home and washed up for dinner. Those were some great times.
 
i did about the same thing. i had some pretty extravegant camps that i have pictures of, maybe, if i can find them, i post them.
 
Used to build clubhouses and forts all the time! Had all kinds of groves around the farmstead and on various pastures and pieces of ground Dad farmed. Lots of times I'd go romp in the trees while Dad was checking cows or farming. Carried a SAK a lot once I was old enough, used the crap out of the saw on that thing. Dropped it in a pothole in a pasture one day, that was a very sad day. Found it sitting there two years later, when the pothole was dry. Still have the corroded, gunked-up blade sitting in a drawer somewhere.

Sorry to make you guys feel old, but I'm only 22 years old. I must have really been raised backwards for my time. No video games, not many movies or TV. I liked spending time outside better.
 
rocketbomb said:
...I'm only 22 years old. I must have really been raised backwards for my time.
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Same here, except the 22 year old part. I'll turn 29 this month, but looking back I can't believe all the things my parents used to let me do. At around 5 or 6, I started tooling around our property with a dull hatchet, literally beating down poplar trees to build forts. My favorite was built in the 6th grade, on a forked tree that grew nearly horizontally. It was about 15 ft in the air, but with a buddy's help, we managed to build a platform about 5ft x 8ft, complete with a rope ladder. By then I was using a full sized ax, but the Victorinox SAK was standard from the beginning.
 
rocketbomb said:
Used to build clubhouses and forts all the time! Had all kinds of groves around the farmstead and on various pastures and pieces of ground Dad farmed. Lots of times I'd go romp in the trees while Dad was checking cows or farming. Carried a SAK a lot once I was old enough, used the crap out of the saw on that thing. Dropped it in a pothole in a pasture one day, that was a very sad day. Found it sitting there two years later, when the pothole was dry. Still have the corroded, gunked-up blade sitting in a drawer somewhere.

Sorry to make you guys feel old, but I'm only 22 years old. I must have really been raised backwards for my time. No video games, not many movies or TV. I liked spending time outside better.
Click to expand...

im even younger than that, so i must have been raised way out there! but it was a pretty rural area, and it didnt take me long to find out that i liked meeing around outside more than wasting my time indoors.
 
When I was in high school, every pickup in the school parking lot had a gun rack with a shotgun or 22 in the back window. 90 percent of them were not even locked. I walked right into school one day with my 22 rifle. The shop teacher told us we could bring our guns in and refinish stocks and reblue them if we wanted to. Nobody even gave it though. I shot lots of bull frogs for frog legs with my bb gun. My dad would send us out to shoot swallows in the hayloft. Our forts were in the shelter belts and in the snowbanks in the winter. I made lots of bows from the big willow by the corner of the barn. I used to make arrows buy splitting the old wood shingles that blew off the barn. Make them about 1/2 inch wide and they would do crazy thing when you shot them through the air. I can't say how old I am but FDR was the president when I was born. (Not for long though) He died.
 
When I was in high school (graduated in 1971) we actually had a Gun Club through the school! Every Wednesday we would bring either our shotgun (for trap shooting) or .22 rifle (target shooting) to school and put them in the science teacher`s closet. After school we would go shooting. Just try that nowadays! :eek:
 
I remember carrying a Buck 110 all thru High School, with no problems.
The Buck Esquire was another popular model. No one thought twice about carrying a blade.
 
I also remember kids coming to class after hunting, still dressed in camo, with the guns often out in their cars.
 
Didn't some kid get kicked out of school a while back for drawing a picture of a gun?
 
when i was younger i spent all my summer vacations in hayward wisconsin on my grandparents property. they have a house on windigo lake and a few acres of woods around them. The neighbors next door were a little older then me, but they didnt seem to care. we played war everyday. I remember we split up into two teams. phil and me were on one, and sarah(my cousin), and the tony were on the other. I got stuck in this little chunk of woods divided by drive way. Its funny though we really built a great fort. We went down to the swamp and grabbed a bunch of tall grass and even waterproofed that. Pretty cool if you ask me for two kids with no training i think i was 8 or so. I wish i could go play up there in the woods again.good times though
 
Im 37. In south FL were I grew up we carried blow guns, sling shots, bows, BB guns, .22 and anything else we wanted to. Use hunt rabbits and gators. Mostly suger cane field were I grew up. I always had some sorta pocket knife. Mostly cheap stuff, but I do remember having a Case Sodbuster Jr. at one time till it was stolen.
 
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