While staying at my late parents' old house, I found in a bureau drawer a moderate size flat yellow box. I knew immediately what it was - a box of folding knives.
They didn't look like much. They were all worn down from sharpening and use until they looked like flat ice picks. But they are hugely meaningful to one who knows the story and knew the man.
He was a cotton-mill hand with an eighth grade education, interrupted by the great depression. He was put to work and never returned to school. But he was intelligent and well-educated through reading, a love he instilled in me. But he had some unshakeable ideas about some things, including knives.
They were his old work knives. The reason so many knives were worn to nubs is that he used them hard in his work, and they primarily were used for cutting loosely twisted ropes of yarn. He believed that a wire edge was the most efficient edge for this as it would "grab" the yarn. A wire edge also dulls quickly when worked, and keeping one involves removing significant metal from the blade.
In an old trunk that passed to me I have his WWII dress uniform, his old safety razor, my maternal grandfather's straight razor, brush, cup and razor hone. I also have my grandfather's old three-bladed stockman that as far as I know was the only one he carried in a lifetime of sustenance farming. It too is worn to nubs. The small knife that my maternal grandmother used until she died in her eighties to trim her toenails is also there, along with my grandfather's brass knuckles from his stint as a deputy sheriff.
Sometimes I wonder what they would think of my collection of Busse knives and my stable of EDC folders. They would most likely shake their heads as if to say, "I don't know about that boy."
They didn't look like much. They were all worn down from sharpening and use until they looked like flat ice picks. But they are hugely meaningful to one who knows the story and knew the man.
He was a cotton-mill hand with an eighth grade education, interrupted by the great depression. He was put to work and never returned to school. But he was intelligent and well-educated through reading, a love he instilled in me. But he had some unshakeable ideas about some things, including knives.
They were his old work knives. The reason so many knives were worn to nubs is that he used them hard in his work, and they primarily were used for cutting loosely twisted ropes of yarn. He believed that a wire edge was the most efficient edge for this as it would "grab" the yarn. A wire edge also dulls quickly when worked, and keeping one involves removing significant metal from the blade.
In an old trunk that passed to me I have his WWII dress uniform, his old safety razor, my maternal grandfather's straight razor, brush, cup and razor hone. I also have my grandfather's old three-bladed stockman that as far as I know was the only one he carried in a lifetime of sustenance farming. It too is worn to nubs. The small knife that my maternal grandmother used until she died in her eighties to trim her toenails is also there, along with my grandfather's brass knuckles from his stint as a deputy sheriff.
Sometimes I wonder what they would think of my collection of Busse knives and my stable of EDC folders. They would most likely shake their heads as if to say, "I don't know about that boy."
