When I was young, I spent a lot of time stairing at the knife display case while the other kids were looking at toys.
You too, huh?
I think reliving our youth is the ghost behind many of our actions.
When I was a kid, there was the hardware store up the road. It had a very big Case display case, and models of knives I never knew existed. Stocky sunfish, slim trappers, barlow's, stockmen is assorted sizes, pen knives, peanuts, even a sheepsfoot model called the whaler. I was surprised that my nose print wasn't permanantly pressed into the glass.
A few summers ago I relived my youth by taking up cane pole fishing and using a yella handle peanut for my do everything knife. Havn't used a rod and reel since. I did find out that fish guts made a very nice irridesent blue patina on Case CV steel.
These days I look at a old traditional knife like a simple 2 blade serpintine jack, and I think of my Uncle Paul, who carried an unknown quantity of them on his person. In pockets, in a tobacco pouch, all around. Or I see a peanut, and I think of things from my youth that involved watching my dad fix or jury rig some solution to a situation, very often using his little pocket knife to make something or prepare some scavenged material.
I think a great deal of the draw of traditional knives is like cowboy action shooting, fishing with a cane pole, or working on a vintage car or motorcycle. It's a little flashback to a simpler time, when the good guys in the westerns wore white hats, and the issue of good and bad were a little more clear cut and easy to figure out. Today's world is a little too much sometimes, and it's nice to take a little walk down memory lane once in while. Sometimes that can be done just by sliding a hand in a pocket and feeling some nice jigged bone, or whittling a toothpick with a thin sharp carbon blade.
