- Joined
- Feb 21, 2007
- Messages
- 950
About forty years ago, a young man was struggling to support his family on the meager salary of an assistant city works employee. He was basically the odd-job handyman for a small Rocky Mountain city.
One day, he and his supervisor, an older, more experienced city works employee, went down into the storm drains to clear debris, check the function on the pumps and valves and whatnot, and repair anything that needed fixing while they were down there.
They entered a particular section of the storm drains, which was about the size of a small room, and there was a fixture of some kind or other against the wall. The young man saw something sticking out from the shadow underneath it, bent down, and saw a pocket knife. He said,"Hey, look at that," as his hand reached out, snagged it, and dropped it into his pocket. He looked at it in more detail while they were on their lunch break later, and discovered that it was a carry-worn Camillus Official Scout Knife, the three-bladed Whittler pattern with black delrin scales. He was without a good knife at the moment, and this one was still in decent shape, so it seemed a match made in heaven. It had a small chunk missing from one handle scale, but otherwise, its only wear was from sharpening.
He used that knife for the duration of his time as a city works employee, and then transferred to the City Police Department as an animal control officer. He shot a badger one day that was burrowed under someone's shed and causing problems, and used that pocketknife to skin it before he dumped the carcass in the desert along with some other carcasses from the animal control operations, as that was the SOP for the department in those days. Buzzards and coyotes gotta eat, too, doncha know.
He started whittling with it, since it was a whittler, and created some beautiful things. It lead him to buy some carving chisels, to enable more intricate carvings. This was a hobby that he pursued on and off for the rest of his life.
When his wife told him that she was expecting their third child, he dropped out of college and quit his job with the city to start work for the state as a peace officer assigned to the state penitentiary. His third child and firstborn son was a few months old when he was kidnapped by some prisoners he was transporting who had a .22 pistol they had cobbled together in the prison machine shop. He escaped from them on a dirt road when they slowed to make a turn by throwing himself from the car. They saw him lying in the road and took off. He had landed on his head and suffered a severe concussion and damaged his neck. The prisoners were later apprehended by a state patrol trooper after they high-centered their stolen state car.
He was on limited duty for a year after he got out of the hospital, working in one of the main guard towers, and spent his time when he wasn't actually doing anything at work cleaning guns or working on his wood carvings. During that year, he used an M1 carbine to shoot a violent felon who was trying to escape over the fence. The prisoner's partner gave up as soon as he heard the shots.
The man and his wife continued to produce offspring, stopping at six children. Since he'd been the oldest of ten, the man thought this a very reasonable number. About that time, the officer decided that his faithful Camillus friend was looking tired and worn. The small blades resembled toothpicks, and the sabre-ground main blade was almost unusable because the edge was so thick from being sharpened back halfway to the spine. He saved up a little money from his still stretched-too-tight salary and bought a new stockman pocket knife, placing his old friend in his sock drawer.
One day, his six or seven-year-old first son stole that knife out of his daddy's sock drawer and started carving on his blocks, to be like his daddy. He didn't get far before the knife slipped on the hardwood, and he laid his finger open. His father came looking to see why he was crying, took the knife away and bandaged the boy's finger. He decided that the bloody finger was enough of a lesson and withheld the deserved spanking. However, he also set an age several years in the future, before which the little boy could not expect to recieve a pocket knife of his own.
About thirty years later, the people from church asked that little boy, who now had children of his own, if he wouldn't like to be a Cub Scout Den leader. He consented, thinking of his son who would be in his den, and remembering his own days as a scout and cubscout.
He thought that he should have a real Scout knife and found an old one at a yard sale and bought it for a few dollars. It was a fine tool, a Scout Camp knife , but was not the same thing he had grown up thinking of as a "Scout Knife", because his father's was that old Whittler. He had been 11 or 12 before he realized that there was another definition for "Scout Knife".
He tried to find a Whittler, but the Camillus company had closed, and everyone on the internet wanted more than he was willing to pay for a used old knife that he mostly wanted for nostalgia.
The family took a drive one Saturday to the Council office, a 200 mile round-trip, to buy uniforms and books for the new scout and new scout leader. There was a display case by the register, with scout knives of every description under glass, including new, left-over stock Camillus knives of every model they had made. He looked at them all, including two versions of the camp knife, the whittler, a large lockback, and the "Leader's Knife", a small penknife. He recalled one of his several scoutmasters buying the "Leader's Knife" as a badge of office, grinning every time he pulled it out and showed the boys how small a Scout knife could be and then cleaning fish or shaving a fuzz stick with it. The new camp knives had steel liners, unlike the brass ones on the old one he'd bought at the yard sale, but they were finished very nicely and the cutting blades were at least a third wider than his used one with the re-ground bevels.
But the new den leader still had that scar on his finger and an old, used-up knife in his mind that he'd never convinced his father to give to him nor replaced himself in all his years as a Scout, so he picked through the dozen or so brown-delrin handled whittlers behind the display case, selected one, and added it to the pile of uniform shirts, belts, neckerchiefs, and Wolf Cub Scout books on the counter.
His wife rolled her eyes. "He's got a disease," she told the clerk.
"It's got a long-pull match-strike nail nick on the main blade," he told his wife, "and that company closed up last year. My dad used to have one of these. I gave myself my first cut with it."
One day, he and his supervisor, an older, more experienced city works employee, went down into the storm drains to clear debris, check the function on the pumps and valves and whatnot, and repair anything that needed fixing while they were down there.
They entered a particular section of the storm drains, which was about the size of a small room, and there was a fixture of some kind or other against the wall. The young man saw something sticking out from the shadow underneath it, bent down, and saw a pocket knife. He said,"Hey, look at that," as his hand reached out, snagged it, and dropped it into his pocket. He looked at it in more detail while they were on their lunch break later, and discovered that it was a carry-worn Camillus Official Scout Knife, the three-bladed Whittler pattern with black delrin scales. He was without a good knife at the moment, and this one was still in decent shape, so it seemed a match made in heaven. It had a small chunk missing from one handle scale, but otherwise, its only wear was from sharpening.
He used that knife for the duration of his time as a city works employee, and then transferred to the City Police Department as an animal control officer. He shot a badger one day that was burrowed under someone's shed and causing problems, and used that pocketknife to skin it before he dumped the carcass in the desert along with some other carcasses from the animal control operations, as that was the SOP for the department in those days. Buzzards and coyotes gotta eat, too, doncha know.
He started whittling with it, since it was a whittler, and created some beautiful things. It lead him to buy some carving chisels, to enable more intricate carvings. This was a hobby that he pursued on and off for the rest of his life.
When his wife told him that she was expecting their third child, he dropped out of college and quit his job with the city to start work for the state as a peace officer assigned to the state penitentiary. His third child and firstborn son was a few months old when he was kidnapped by some prisoners he was transporting who had a .22 pistol they had cobbled together in the prison machine shop. He escaped from them on a dirt road when they slowed to make a turn by throwing himself from the car. They saw him lying in the road and took off. He had landed on his head and suffered a severe concussion and damaged his neck. The prisoners were later apprehended by a state patrol trooper after they high-centered their stolen state car.
He was on limited duty for a year after he got out of the hospital, working in one of the main guard towers, and spent his time when he wasn't actually doing anything at work cleaning guns or working on his wood carvings. During that year, he used an M1 carbine to shoot a violent felon who was trying to escape over the fence. The prisoner's partner gave up as soon as he heard the shots.
The man and his wife continued to produce offspring, stopping at six children. Since he'd been the oldest of ten, the man thought this a very reasonable number. About that time, the officer decided that his faithful Camillus friend was looking tired and worn. The small blades resembled toothpicks, and the sabre-ground main blade was almost unusable because the edge was so thick from being sharpened back halfway to the spine. He saved up a little money from his still stretched-too-tight salary and bought a new stockman pocket knife, placing his old friend in his sock drawer.
One day, his six or seven-year-old first son stole that knife out of his daddy's sock drawer and started carving on his blocks, to be like his daddy. He didn't get far before the knife slipped on the hardwood, and he laid his finger open. His father came looking to see why he was crying, took the knife away and bandaged the boy's finger. He decided that the bloody finger was enough of a lesson and withheld the deserved spanking. However, he also set an age several years in the future, before which the little boy could not expect to recieve a pocket knife of his own.
About thirty years later, the people from church asked that little boy, who now had children of his own, if he wouldn't like to be a Cub Scout Den leader. He consented, thinking of his son who would be in his den, and remembering his own days as a scout and cubscout.
He thought that he should have a real Scout knife and found an old one at a yard sale and bought it for a few dollars. It was a fine tool, a Scout Camp knife , but was not the same thing he had grown up thinking of as a "Scout Knife", because his father's was that old Whittler. He had been 11 or 12 before he realized that there was another definition for "Scout Knife".
He tried to find a Whittler, but the Camillus company had closed, and everyone on the internet wanted more than he was willing to pay for a used old knife that he mostly wanted for nostalgia.
The family took a drive one Saturday to the Council office, a 200 mile round-trip, to buy uniforms and books for the new scout and new scout leader. There was a display case by the register, with scout knives of every description under glass, including new, left-over stock Camillus knives of every model they had made. He looked at them all, including two versions of the camp knife, the whittler, a large lockback, and the "Leader's Knife", a small penknife. He recalled one of his several scoutmasters buying the "Leader's Knife" as a badge of office, grinning every time he pulled it out and showed the boys how small a Scout knife could be and then cleaning fish or shaving a fuzz stick with it. The new camp knives had steel liners, unlike the brass ones on the old one he'd bought at the yard sale, but they were finished very nicely and the cutting blades were at least a third wider than his used one with the re-ground bevels.
But the new den leader still had that scar on his finger and an old, used-up knife in his mind that he'd never convinced his father to give to him nor replaced himself in all his years as a Scout, so he picked through the dozen or so brown-delrin handled whittlers behind the display case, selected one, and added it to the pile of uniform shirts, belts, neckerchiefs, and Wolf Cub Scout books on the counter.
His wife rolled her eyes. "He's got a disease," she told the clerk.
"It's got a long-pull match-strike nail nick on the main blade," he told his wife, "and that company closed up last year. My dad used to have one of these. I gave myself my first cut with it."
