The evolution of a knife nut.
I’ve been a knife nut all my life. An obsessed one at that. From an early age, I wouldn’t dream of walking out the door without my pocket knife. At least when I was in school, a boy having a pocket knife was pretty normal. Things did change though later. At home I watched my old man go through everyday with his little Case peanut in his pocket, and he’d cut whatever he needed with that little slip of a knife. Being young and full of ideas swirling in my head, I was sure the peanut was just too small a knife to go out the door with.
Many times I carried multiple knives. You can never beside what’s going to happen in th course of the day right? I mean that one knife in a pocket could go dull, or lost, or it just may be inadequate if marooned in the arctic, or lost in the mountains in a blizzard. What all that had to do with a boy living in suburban Maryland, I’m not really sure. But an excuse to carry another knife was not really needed to be a good one.
Boy Scouts. This was a period in my life where I learned what a knife was really capable of. We had this scoutmaster, a man named Mr. Van. He was a retired marine that has been in some very bad places in WW2. When he took his shirt off on some of our canoe trips or swimming in the river, he had some interesting scars on him. Small puckered ones in front that matched the larger puckered ones in the back where they exited. A livid ridge of scar tissue running along his ribs where it looked like a bayonet has skidded. We didn’t ask about the other guy.
So what kind of knife did this retied career battle scarred Marine carry? A simple little two blade jack about 3 1/4 inches closed. Jigged bone handles and carbon blades stained a dark gray, with that bright little ribbon of razor sharp edge running up the blade. But Mr. Van did have a special knife he’d carry. His old Remington scout knife was clipped on his belt. A real Remington from the 1930’s. To us scouts, it was the excalibur of knives in our life. Us kids carried our scout knives everywhere.
Later in life I enlisted in the army and my knife addiction took off. I got into SAK’s, a Buck stockman, and even a Randall. The army had given me a nice new Camillus MK2 when we arrived in Vietnam, and it got shoved down in the duffle bag as we were a Engineer outfit, and the big Camillus was just too much on a job site. The squad tool box had two machetes in there, so we just used them when big cutting was needed. But we all had our pocket knives. The army issue TL-29 and the so called demo knife in good supply, as was private bought Buck knives and SAK’s. Buck had come out with the 110 by this time, and by the time I got out of the army, every swinging Richard had the black pouch on his belt. It was THE knife everyone carried.
Going through civilian life after my discharge, I continued to carry at least two knives every day. Mostly is was a full size Buck Stockman with a SAK in the other pocket. Never can tell what’s gonna happen. I continued to try other patterns, like sodbusters, lockblades, small fixed blades. Always looking for that perfect knife and buying more than I needed.
But a curious thing did take place. I noticed as I aged and made the trip into middle age, my carrying knives got smaller. I’m not exactly sure why, I was doing the same thing for a living, a machinist. Working in machine shop every day, you need a sharp tool on you. There was plastic banding to cut as well as that grimy fiber reenforced tape that held the bundles of lathe stock. Heavy duty cardboard boxes to open that held parts to be modified on the mill, and other things. For a knife nut, you could say it was a target rich environment.
When I got out of the army with a 50% disability from injuries occurred while on active duty, I was eligible for the educational training program. This led me to the apprenticeship as a machinist, and most of the guys who worked with and were my teachers were older guys. The all carried a knife, but were not knife nuts. It’s just like they knew a sharp blade was needed, but they were didn’t really care about it. They all carried a small pen knife or even a box cutter. On the shops work benches there was Stanley utility knives laying around for use. I think this was the start of my downsizing. I saw all these older guys who did all this manual hands-on kind of work, using small blades that I had never would thought of. Kind of like echoes of watching my father with is little Case peanut. It made me think, always a semi dangerous thing for me.
By this time I was a minivan driving soccer dad, getting the kids to soccer, Lacrosse, softball, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, .22 rifle league and a lot of other activities. With three kids close in age, it was a hectic time. Even seeing combat in Vietnam, I was never felt feeling quite as shell shocked and disoriented as hustling the kids to their many activities. During it all, there was always need of a sharp knife for something. But I also made another discovery out of necessity. That my dad had been right all along; it didn’t have to big, just sharp. Raising three kids, there had been an increasing amount of stuff in pockets. Spare bandana’s, folded up paper towels, hand sanitizer, small fist aid kit and bandaids, rubber bands, small coil of twine, and lots of other stuff kids need while out and about. This on top of my own stuff like pipe, tobacco pouch, lighter, small flashlight, pocket knife, car keys, pencil and pad. Pocket real estate got to be a premium.
This was also the time when I went on a hunting trip with a co-worker. Andy was a big old country boy from down in Virginia by Mount Rogers. Andy got his deer, and I offered him my fixed blade Randall, but he just remarked that he wasn’t skinning a brontosaurus, and he proceeded to field dress his deer with his everyday pocket knife, a Buck 303 cadet. He made a bonafide surgeon look sloppy. That little 2 1/2 inch blade in his hand did the neatest job of field dressing I’d ever seen. Again, it made me think of my father and his little Case jackknife.
Time went on and I continued to downsize my stuff. Everything got smaller. I was on a quest to find the smallest item that could still do the job it was designed to do. Being an ultra light backpacker was part of it. Being partly disabled and needing a cane from my right foot getting mangled in the army, I needed to cut every ounce I could. The smallest flashlight, the smallest knife, that smallest lightest stove, and so on. It bled over to my day to life. One day, I dropped my dad’s old Case peanut in my pocket. He had passed away and I kept is little knife on my dresser for sentiment. I told myself it was an “experiment.” I tried it for a week, and then a month. Then I deliberately left all my other knives home. Nothing bad happened. The world didn’t stop, Russian paratroopers didn’t drop out of the sky, and no buffalo’s needed skinning in my neck of the woods.
Now as an old fart, I’ve found a very pragmatic outlook on life. A Big scare a month ago also made me think about things. Waking 5 o’clock in the morning with chest pains and pain running down both arms was startling to say the least. None of my thoughts were wasted on things. I woke my better half next to me and told her I loved her. At that moment I had deep regrets that if this was the big one, and my life was going to end in the next few minutes, I wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people I loved the most. My kids and grandkids. No ’things’ mattered to me. The things I owned didn’t mean Jack shite, and Jack was on vacation in ‘Vegas. At the ER they hooked me up to machines that beeped and clicked. As it turned out, it was just a muscle spasm, but it made me think.
I’m still a knife nut, but it has taken a very distant back seat to life in general. I still would not think of walking out the door without a pocket knife on me, but I’m not that particular anymore. A small sharp blade is all that’s needed for most of our urbanized suburban life. Most days my only used knife is the little Victorinox classic on my keyring. Sometimes I even use the 3 inch Boker pen knife with the rosewood scales. But it really doesn’t matter what knife I have on me anymore. My dad was right, it dosn’t have to be big, just sharp.
These two have done great etc pocket knife duties. My youngest granddaughter has my Remington peanut now. The Boker pen is still a great carry.
I’ve been a knife nut all my life. An obsessed one at that. From an early age, I wouldn’t dream of walking out the door without my pocket knife. At least when I was in school, a boy having a pocket knife was pretty normal. Things did change though later. At home I watched my old man go through everyday with his little Case peanut in his pocket, and he’d cut whatever he needed with that little slip of a knife. Being young and full of ideas swirling in my head, I was sure the peanut was just too small a knife to go out the door with.
Many times I carried multiple knives. You can never beside what’s going to happen in th course of the day right? I mean that one knife in a pocket could go dull, or lost, or it just may be inadequate if marooned in the arctic, or lost in the mountains in a blizzard. What all that had to do with a boy living in suburban Maryland, I’m not really sure. But an excuse to carry another knife was not really needed to be a good one.
Boy Scouts. This was a period in my life where I learned what a knife was really capable of. We had this scoutmaster, a man named Mr. Van. He was a retired marine that has been in some very bad places in WW2. When he took his shirt off on some of our canoe trips or swimming in the river, he had some interesting scars on him. Small puckered ones in front that matched the larger puckered ones in the back where they exited. A livid ridge of scar tissue running along his ribs where it looked like a bayonet has skidded. We didn’t ask about the other guy.
So what kind of knife did this retied career battle scarred Marine carry? A simple little two blade jack about 3 1/4 inches closed. Jigged bone handles and carbon blades stained a dark gray, with that bright little ribbon of razor sharp edge running up the blade. But Mr. Van did have a special knife he’d carry. His old Remington scout knife was clipped on his belt. A real Remington from the 1930’s. To us scouts, it was the excalibur of knives in our life. Us kids carried our scout knives everywhere.
Later in life I enlisted in the army and my knife addiction took off. I got into SAK’s, a Buck stockman, and even a Randall. The army had given me a nice new Camillus MK2 when we arrived in Vietnam, and it got shoved down in the duffle bag as we were a Engineer outfit, and the big Camillus was just too much on a job site. The squad tool box had two machetes in there, so we just used them when big cutting was needed. But we all had our pocket knives. The army issue TL-29 and the so called demo knife in good supply, as was private bought Buck knives and SAK’s. Buck had come out with the 110 by this time, and by the time I got out of the army, every swinging Richard had the black pouch on his belt. It was THE knife everyone carried.
Going through civilian life after my discharge, I continued to carry at least two knives every day. Mostly is was a full size Buck Stockman with a SAK in the other pocket. Never can tell what’s gonna happen. I continued to try other patterns, like sodbusters, lockblades, small fixed blades. Always looking for that perfect knife and buying more than I needed.
But a curious thing did take place. I noticed as I aged and made the trip into middle age, my carrying knives got smaller. I’m not exactly sure why, I was doing the same thing for a living, a machinist. Working in machine shop every day, you need a sharp tool on you. There was plastic banding to cut as well as that grimy fiber reenforced tape that held the bundles of lathe stock. Heavy duty cardboard boxes to open that held parts to be modified on the mill, and other things. For a knife nut, you could say it was a target rich environment.
When I got out of the army with a 50% disability from injuries occurred while on active duty, I was eligible for the educational training program. This led me to the apprenticeship as a machinist, and most of the guys who worked with and were my teachers were older guys. The all carried a knife, but were not knife nuts. It’s just like they knew a sharp blade was needed, but they were didn’t really care about it. They all carried a small pen knife or even a box cutter. On the shops work benches there was Stanley utility knives laying around for use. I think this was the start of my downsizing. I saw all these older guys who did all this manual hands-on kind of work, using small blades that I had never would thought of. Kind of like echoes of watching my father with is little Case peanut. It made me think, always a semi dangerous thing for me.
By this time I was a minivan driving soccer dad, getting the kids to soccer, Lacrosse, softball, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, .22 rifle league and a lot of other activities. With three kids close in age, it was a hectic time. Even seeing combat in Vietnam, I was never felt feeling quite as shell shocked and disoriented as hustling the kids to their many activities. During it all, there was always need of a sharp knife for something. But I also made another discovery out of necessity. That my dad had been right all along; it didn’t have to big, just sharp. Raising three kids, there had been an increasing amount of stuff in pockets. Spare bandana’s, folded up paper towels, hand sanitizer, small fist aid kit and bandaids, rubber bands, small coil of twine, and lots of other stuff kids need while out and about. This on top of my own stuff like pipe, tobacco pouch, lighter, small flashlight, pocket knife, car keys, pencil and pad. Pocket real estate got to be a premium.
This was also the time when I went on a hunting trip with a co-worker. Andy was a big old country boy from down in Virginia by Mount Rogers. Andy got his deer, and I offered him my fixed blade Randall, but he just remarked that he wasn’t skinning a brontosaurus, and he proceeded to field dress his deer with his everyday pocket knife, a Buck 303 cadet. He made a bonafide surgeon look sloppy. That little 2 1/2 inch blade in his hand did the neatest job of field dressing I’d ever seen. Again, it made me think of my father and his little Case jackknife.
Time went on and I continued to downsize my stuff. Everything got smaller. I was on a quest to find the smallest item that could still do the job it was designed to do. Being an ultra light backpacker was part of it. Being partly disabled and needing a cane from my right foot getting mangled in the army, I needed to cut every ounce I could. The smallest flashlight, the smallest knife, that smallest lightest stove, and so on. It bled over to my day to life. One day, I dropped my dad’s old Case peanut in my pocket. He had passed away and I kept is little knife on my dresser for sentiment. I told myself it was an “experiment.” I tried it for a week, and then a month. Then I deliberately left all my other knives home. Nothing bad happened. The world didn’t stop, Russian paratroopers didn’t drop out of the sky, and no buffalo’s needed skinning in my neck of the woods.
Now as an old fart, I’ve found a very pragmatic outlook on life. A Big scare a month ago also made me think about things. Waking 5 o’clock in the morning with chest pains and pain running down both arms was startling to say the least. None of my thoughts were wasted on things. I woke my better half next to me and told her I loved her. At that moment I had deep regrets that if this was the big one, and my life was going to end in the next few minutes, I wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people I loved the most. My kids and grandkids. No ’things’ mattered to me. The things I owned didn’t mean Jack shite, and Jack was on vacation in ‘Vegas. At the ER they hooked me up to machines that beeped and clicked. As it turned out, it was just a muscle spasm, but it made me think.
I’m still a knife nut, but it has taken a very distant back seat to life in general. I still would not think of walking out the door without a pocket knife on me, but I’m not that particular anymore. A small sharp blade is all that’s needed for most of our urbanized suburban life. Most days my only used knife is the little Victorinox classic on my keyring. Sometimes I even use the 3 inch Boker pen knife with the rosewood scales. But it really doesn’t matter what knife I have on me anymore. My dad was right, it dosn’t have to be big, just sharp.
These two have done great etc pocket knife duties. My youngest granddaughter has my Remington peanut now. The Boker pen is still a great carry.
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