"Randall Knife"

W

Wapiti

Joined
Sep 25, 1999
Messages
483
Last night I had the radio on a folk show playing in the back-round while I did some paperwork. All of a sudden I hear the words "Randall Knife" come out of the speaker. I stopped what I was doing, ran over to the radio and turned it up and listened for the next few minutes to a song, that for some reason I had never heard, about a man and his father's Randall knife. I have since found out it is a song by a gentleman named Guy Clark.
Can anyone tell me more about this song? When was did it come out. Anyway, thought it was neat and I would share it with you all, just in case someone out there lives in a cave like me and has never heard it; check it out.
 
The Randall Knife

My father had a Randall knife
My mother gave it to him
When he went off to WWII
To save us all from ruin
If you've ever held a Randall knife
Then you know my father well
If a better blade was ever made
It was probably forged in hell


My father was a good man
A lawyer by his trade
And only once did I ever see
Him misuse the blade
It almost cut his thumb off
When he took it for a tool
The knife was made for darker things
And you could not bend the rules


He let me take it camping once
On a Boy Scout jamboree
And I broke a half an inch off
Trying to stick it in a tree
I hid it from him for a while
But the knife and he were one
He put it in his bottom drawer
Without a hard word one


There it slept and there it stayed
For twenty some odd years
Sort of like Excalibur
Except waiting for a tear


My father died when I was forty
And I couldn't find a way to cry
Not because I didn't love him
Not because he didn't try
I'd cried for every lesser thing
Whiskey, pain and beauty
But he deserved a better tear
And I was not quite ready


So we took his ashed out to sea
And poured `em off the stern
And threw the roses in the wake
Of everything we'd learned
When we got back to the house
They asked me what I wanted
Not the lawbooks not the watch
I need the things he's haunted


My hand burned for the Randall knife
There in the bottom drawer
And I found a tear for my father's life
And all that it stood for
 
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