Lost Little Legume.

J

jackknife

Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
17,639
I once had a nice little chestnut bone peanut. I carried it a lot and it was one of my favorite pocket knives. It opened packages, mail, trimmed chicken livers for catfish hunting, whittled a bit. Then in 2019 it went missing in action. I wasn't sure where the dreadful event happened, but I reached into the pocket and it was gone. Almost in a frenzy I retraced my steps, searched high and low, under the car seat, living room couch, everywhere. It was gone. You have to reach that conclusion when you feel you have truly done all you could in your search for the missing one. You go on with your days, put another pocket knife in the pants and soldier on. But time to time, you can't help but wonder where the little legume went to, and does someone have it that appreciates what a nice little pocket knife it was.

Tine moved on, the pandemic came and went, trips were taken, and life went on. In 2024, our son John had a major catastrophe with his condo back in Maryland, so the wife flew up to Maryland to help him out with he flood in the condo that came from an upstairs unit. The management was good, paid for all John's temporary housing in a hotel, paid for damaged possessions, and all. While the wife was in Maryland John loaned her his car, a 2021 Lexus Rx350. Well, Karen fell in love with the car and John told her to take it. John is generous to a fault and we said no of course not, but John insisted on his mom having the car that she loved, so we drove our 2016 Toyota Highlander up to Maryland and traded cars. (Yes, this is still about a lost knife, hold on.) John works from home a lot and was happy with the Highlander and we regard it as an extravagant gift from a great son.

Few years go by, and one day John goes to adjust the power drivers seat as his wife had used the car and was somewhat shorter than him. Seat won't move. Pushed the switch, no humming no nothing. So John takes it into the dealer and ends up with a not too bad bill for a burned out switch of some kind and the seat now moves. But, he's getting the car and the service guy hands him a small mail envelope and says this was lodged down in the seat structure. It was a chestnut bone peanut.

John says nothing to me, but sends me a little box in the mail, and I open it and inside is a note; "Dad, have you been looking for this?"

My lost little legume no worse for wear had returned home after a long trip under the set of a Toyota Highlander. It was a strange feeling to hold it again, and I question my sanity being so happy with an inanimate object, but it is what it is. It now resides back in my pocket. I'll have to go fishing this afternoon on the river and maybe gut a few pan fish with it.
 
Carl, I'm glad you got your lost Peanut back after it was missing for more than 6 years! :thumbsup::thumbsup:🤓
I always enjoy those "Prodigal Returns" stories, like Jeff mentioned, whether it's prodigal son (or daughter), prodigal dog (or parrot), or prodigal knife.
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- GT
 
Always a happy story! I lost an HDS rotary flashlight to the dreaded car seat once upon a time. Found it a few months later rolling around under my seat. Had to have just wedged in the cushion in some miraculous way that I couldn’t feel it yet worked its way out. That was a rough one.
 
Great story Carl, congratulations my friend :) :thumbsup:

Hey, did I ever tell you the story about my dad's lost wedding Ring?

My dad rarely wore his wedding ring. He worked in a big engineering firm when I was a kid, (after leaving Richards), James Neill Tools, who specialised in blue Eclipse hacksaw blades and industrial magnets, among other things. They were the biggest small tool manufacturer in the world, at the time, outside the US. My dad would keep his wedding ring in the button-down pocket on the left breast of his coveralls (called a 'boiler suit' here). I remember seeing it, it looked like what I think of as a signet ring really. Anyway, one day he lost the ring, and obviously my mother noticed, and words were said. My parents rarely said a cross word in front of me and my younger brother and sister, but my mother definitely wasn't happy. My dad said he was going to put a note up on the work's notice board offering a reward of £5, which was quite a lot of money in the 1960's, and a good deal more than the ring was worth as scrap or in a pawn-shop. My dad and my uncle, who worked with him at the time, and his work-mates, searched all over for the ring, but they never found it, and nobody handed it in. Obviously, losing it was an accident, but the subject would occasionally come up between my parents over the next couple of years. My dad never replaced the ring.

We were poor when I was a kid, and we didn't go away on holiday every year. When we did, it was to the seaside, and usually to a place called Bridlington, which is sort of on the tip of the nose on the 'man's face' on the north east coast of England, if you know what it looks like. Because the furnaces in the steel works had to be allowed to cool down gradually, many Sheffield workers took their holidays at the same time, the last week in July, and the first week in August. These were known as the 'Works Weeks', though I think they are more correctly called 'Wakes Weeks', which is an older term, which probably has nothing to do with the steel industry. During these two weeks, Bridlington, one of the nearest coastal resorts to Sheffield became a sort of Sheffield-on-Sea. Even the local daily Sheffield newspapers would be shipped to Bridlington. Walking along the sea-front, my dad would constantly be saying hello to blokes he worked with. As a kid I just thought he knew a lot of people!

One day, we went down to the beach. Me and my sister and brother would paddle, and look for crabs in the rock-pools. It was a hot sunny day, the kind that goes on forever when you're a kid. I remember we watched a bloke trying to get onto an inflatable 'lilo' in the surf, for what seemed like hours. Every time he got on, he'd fall off, much to our amusement.

We stayed on the beach much later than usual, only retreating when the tide was right up the sand, walking up the hill, prickly with sunburn, and hungry for our evening meal. Usually, we ate at our accommodation, with mum doing the cooking, but as it was late, and we were on holiday, on this occasion, dad said that we could have fish and chips. Us kids had fishcakes, which is like fish and potato, and less expensive than fish, and my mum had cod roe, which she was rather partial to. My dad was going to have cod and chips, but we were so late that they had run out of cod, so he asked for a meat pie.

We got the food wrapped up, with lots of salt and vinegar on the chips for us kids, and walked back along the sea-front. Finding a bench on the promenade, not far from where we had spent the day, we sat down to eat our meal. Mum doled it all out on the newspaper it had been wrapped up in, which was how things were served back here in the sixties. We were tucking into our chips, and my dad took a bite of his pie, and you'll never guess what was inside...:eek:
 
Jack Black said:
Great story Carl, congratulations my friend :) :thumbsup:

Hey, did I ever tell you the story about my dad's lost wedding Ring?

My dad rarely wore his wedding ring. He worked in a big engineering firm when I was a kid, (after leaving Richards), James Neill Tools, who specialised in blue Eclipse hacksaw blades and industrial magnets, among other things. They were the biggest small tool manufacturer in the world, at the time, outside the US. My dad would keep his wedding ring in the button-down pocket on the left breast of his coveralls (called a 'boiler suit' here). I remember seeing it, it looked like what I think of as a signet ring really. Anyway, one day he lost the ring, and obviously my mother noticed, and words were said. My parents rarely said a cross word in front of me and my younger brother and sister, but my mother definitely wasn't happy. My dad said he was going to put a note up on the work's notice board offering a reward of £5, which was quite a lot of money in the 1960's, and a good deal more than the ring was worth as scrap or in a pawn-shop. My dad and my uncle, who worked with him at the time, and his work-mates, searched all over for the ring, but they never found it, and nobody handed it in. Obviously, losing it was an accident, but the subject would occasionally come up between my parents over the next couple of years. My dad never replaced the ring.

We were poor when I was a kid, and we didn't go away on holiday every year. When we did, it was to the seaside, and usually to a place called Bridlington, which is sort of on the tip of the nose on the 'man's face' on the north east coast of England, if you know what it looks like. Because the furnaces in the steel works had to be allowed to cool down gradually, many Sheffield workers took their holidays at the same time, the last week in July, and the first week in August. These were known as the 'Works Weeks', though I think they are more correctly called 'Wakes Weeks', which is an older term, which probably has nothing to do with the steel industry. During these two weeks, Bridlington, one of the nearest coastal resorts to Sheffield became a sort of Sheffield-on-Sea. Even the local daily Sheffield newspapers would be shipped to Bridlington. Walking along the sea-front, my dad would constantly be saying hello to blokes he worked with. As a kid I just thought he knew a lot of people!

One day, we went down to the beach. Me and my sister and brother would paddle, and look for crabs in the rock-pools. It was a hot sunny day, the kind that goes on forever when you're a kid. I remember we watched a bloke trying to get onto an inflatable 'lilo' in the surf, for what seemed like hours. Every time he got on, he'd fall off, much to our amusement.

We stayed on the beach much later than usual, only retreating when the tide was right up the sand, walking up the hill, prickly with sunburn, and hungry for our evening meal. Usually, we ate at our accommodation, with mum doing the cooking, but as it was late, and we were on holiday, on this occasion, dad said that we could have fish and chips. Us kids had fishcakes, which is like fish and potato, and less expensive than fish, and my mum had cod roe, which she was rather partial to. My dad was going to have cod and chips, but we were so late that they had run out of cod, so he asked for a meat pie.

We got the food wrapped up, with lots of salt and vinegar on the chips for us kids, and walked back along the sea-front. Finding a bench on the promenade, not far from where we had spent the day, we sat down to eat our meal. Mum doled it all out on the newspaper it had been wrapped up in, which was how things were served back here in the sixties. We were tucking into our chips, and my dad took a bite of his pie, and you'll never guess what was inside...:eek:
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That's quite the tale, Jack!

I can't top that, but a number of years back, I had a company truck. One of our estimators asked to borrow it over the weekend, as he was hauling some tree branches and such. He returned it the next week. Some time later, he asked if I had noticed a ring in the bed of the truck, as he had lost his wedding ring. I took a decent look in it, and so did he, and neither one of us saw it, so he figured it was long gone. About a year later, I was sweeping out the back of the truck bed, and digging out the crud that gets under the tool box, and what should turn up but his wedding ring. It was floating around in the truck bed for about a year, through rain and snow and work, and never fell out.
 
glennbad said:
That's quite the tale, Jack!

I can't top that, but a number of years back, I had a company truck. One of our estimators asked to borrow it over the weekend, as he was hauling some tree branches and such. He returned it the next week. Some time later, he asked if I had noticed a ring in the bed of the truck, as he had lost his wedding ring. I took a decent look in it, and so did he, and neither one of us saw it, so he figured it was long gone. About a year later, I was sweeping out the back of the truck bed, and digging out the crud that gets under the tool box, and what should turn up but his wedding ring. It was floating around in the truck bed for about a year, through rain and snow and work, and never fell out.
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Wow, that's incredible Glenn :cool: Sorry for the slow reply. I'm afraid my dad never got his back, there was just steak and kidney in the pie ;) :thumbsup:
 
House cleaner has found two knives I thought had disappeared forever, both nice ones. The feeling upon seeing them again is (almost) orgasmic.
 
abcdef said:
House cleaner has found two knives I thought had disappeared forever, both nice ones. The feeling upon seeing them again is (almost) orgasmic.
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We humans are a weird breed. We attach all kinds of feeling of love to an inanimate object all out of proportion to reality. When I backed away from the whole knife thing, I thought I had left a lot of that behind. BUT...not so. For a long time I semi grieved about that little legume, and wondered where it was. When our son mailed it home from Maryland, the feeling I felt was like what you described. A flood of relief, warmth, gratitude to whatever red gods of fate was responsible. Like a long long family member returning from limbo. Weird!

For the past several years I had been living a more spartan life, concentrating on the people in my life that I wanted to make sure were well set up before I run out of wake-ups. But I find I am still into my possessions, if on a smaller scale. Maybe the knife nut gene is just too strong to go out totally, and lays there under the surface waiting to pop out now and then. I still find, in spite of my dedication to SAK's, my hand slipping into a pocket to feel the jigging in the bone, or the smooth feel of the rosewood on my Boker 240 pen, or the worn feel of the stag on the old Hen and Rooster half stockman. And the sight of well patined gray carbon steel with a few odd splotches here and there in the blades with that bright ribbon of sharpened edge running up the blade.

I guess like an alcoholic, I fall off the wagon now and then, and make no apologies for it. it is what it is. We're a weird bunch of folks. But good folks.
 
Good return of the prodigal Carl!

I have two prodigal stories.

The first was during my first year at BYU. We were climbing a peak above campus in waist deep snow, and I had a Gerber Mark I attached to my pack. It disappeared somewhere on that mountain, and I thought it was lost for good. The next spring after the snow melted my brother was on the peak and stumbled across it. Since there are no trails on that peak, both times we took a random route, but both times my brother ended up in the same spot where I had lost the knife.

The second was shortly after we got married. I lost my wedding ring in a city park and couldn't find it. We went home and my wife told the young son of our neighbors that she would give him a McDonalds meal if he found it. He was determined, went to the park, and found it.
 
lambertiana said:
The first was during my first year at BYU. We were climbing a peak above campus in waist deep snow, and I had a Gerber Mark I attached to my pack. It disappeared somewhere on that mountain, and I thought it was lost for good. The next spring after the snow melted my brother was on the peak and stumbled across it. Since there are no trails on that peak, both times we took a random route, but both times my brother ended up in the same spot where I had lost the knife.
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There was (probably still is) a trail from the top of the Y that angles up between Y Mountain and Toadhead. I used that trail a few times, including the time we camped between the mountains in the winter - when someone decided to wake everyone in the morning by firing a .30-.30 above the tent. I was not it the tent, I had leveled a spot in the snow and laid my pad and sleeping bag out there, and watched the clouds move through the moonlight. The rifle still startled me.

I think we took a random route when you lost the knife because the deep snow hid the trail and I think we were just going up the face rather than going between the mountains, or at least that's what I remember. I don't recall why I didn't take the trail in the spring, but it was a fortunate decision with a surprising find.
 
Don M said:
There was (probably still is) a trail from the top of the Y that angles up between Y Mountain and Toadhead. I used that trail a few times, including the time we camped between the mountains in the winter - when someone decided to wake everyone in the morning by firing a .30-.30 above the tent. I was not it the tent, I had leveled a spot in the snow and laid my pad and sleeping bag out there, and watched the clouds move through the moonlight. The rifle still startled me.

I think we took a random route when you lost the knife because the deep snow hid the trail and I think we were just going up the face rather than going between the mountains, or at least that's what I remember. I don't recall why I didn't take the trail in the spring, but it was a fortunate decision with a surprising find.
Click to expand...

I lost that Gerber on Squaw Peak.
 
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