How I got here. The making of a Busse fan-boy.

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it was June of 1950. My dad, the kind every kid ought to have, gave me a real, honest to goodness knife for my 4th birthday. It lies here within reach as I type. Now, it was made in Japan when those words were synonomous with "junk", had plastic imitation stag handle slabs, a pot metal blade and a compass in the handle, but it was sharp pointed and had a sharp enough edge, although it wouldn't stay that way. I asked my mother a few years back if they had let me use it only under close supervision, and she said, "Oh, no. Your daddy turned you loose with it."

It seems that I always had a thing for knives. I wanted a knife like Tarzan had. Big, wide-bladed. Not a lion or croc in our South Alabama neighborhood would be safe if I had a knife like that. Early on, though, my big knife was always a wooden one carved by my dad. Later, I spent most of my meager childhood funds on cheap hardware store bowies and destroyed all of them, usually by throwing them. I killed two large Chinaberry trees and got to be pretty good. Dad never said anything about the severely pockmarked outhouse door, either, as long as he wasn't in it when I was throwing.

Throwing is how I broke the tip off my boy scout sheath knife. Dad took it to the cotton mill with him and reground it, turning it into something wonderous in the process.
I had a razor sharp, carbon steel semi-skinner 40 years before I ever heard or read the term. It dressed a truckload of rabbit and squirrel over my teen years, as well as my first deer. I wish I still had it, but it has vanished into the mists of time. I still have a thing for stacked leather washer handles because of that knife.

Fast forward to about 1992. I turned a page in a gun magazine and there was my Tarzan knife! It was next to a picture of some yankee-looking young fellow and was called a Steel Heart. Busse was his name. Yup, had to be a yankee. (Of course, where I was from, anyone from north of Birmingham was suspect of being a yankee.)
But I couldn't see spending over a hundred dollars for a knife. Couple of years later, Tactical Knives had an article comparing the Steel Heart to a longer one called the Steel Heart II (and yes, the Steel Heart II was a birds beaked model, just like the original.) Couldn't stand it any longer. Off went my $247 and the wait began.

You know you're a knife nut when you waste your employer's time and resources producing an actual size picture on the copy machine from a magazine ad just to get an idea of what the knife is going to be like. However, when it finally came, it exceeded my wildest expectations. So I just had to order something called the Badger Attack.
After that, things just kinda got out of hand and here I am with a lot of knives, many of which I will never use but can't seem to bring myself to get rid of. There are no lions and crocs left to kill in Alabama, so the knives just lie there and get fondled occasionally.

you know, I really need to build a replica outhouse, complete with replaceable wooden door.
 
Good tale Mike .... enjoyed it a lot :thumbup: Tarzan and GI movies in the Jungle ... must have sold a lot of us kids on knives :D
 
Great story! I remember my dad giving me a lockback folding knife when i was about 5 and turning me loose with it too! Do you still have your original steel heart?
 
Great story, Mike.

It's funny, but the person responsible for starting me down the "mad about knives" trail was my maternal grandmother. I have no idea why, as she was an executive secretary, not an outdoorswoman. For whatever reason, her gifts to me always seemed to be knives.
 
Great story! I remember my dad giving me a lockback folding knife when i was about 5 and turning me loose with it too! Do you still have your original steel heart?

Oh, yeah. That knife will be my heirs', as I will never part with it.
 
Great story Mike . Brings back faund memories . Thanks :thumbup:


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HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS !
 
Great story Mike. I am glad you took that $247 plunge all those years ago. This place just wouldnt be the same without you.

Garth
 
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