When I was a youngin, my grandfather told me about how he use to walk this trail all the time. He said he would set out with a slipjoint and either his bow or a slingshot and just have fun shooting at random stuff. The slipjoint he carried he described in great detain. It had turquois scales and two blades, both the same length. According to him, the last time he walked that trail was when he met my grandmother. They had been dating for a while and she wanted to go for a walk with him so he took her on his favorite trail walk. He says that it was the day they fell in love.
Skip ahead to me being about 13. The trail he walked could still barely be seen in the woods, starting at the back of their yard and going off into the Tennessee forest. My parents had taken my brother and I there for Christmas. Once everyone was done doing Christmas stuff and the day had become boring, I decided to walk the trail. I remember it was freezing outside and a good snow was on. My brother didn't want to go with me. He had just unwrapped a new game system and was having too much fun not sharing. So, I set out alone. I followed the trail as best i could and eventually I thought I had become lost. There were marks carved into the bark on several of the tress on the way out marking the trail and all of a sudden I couldn't see anymore of them. The area I was in was kind of a clearing. I started searching all the trees for markings. After looking around for about ten minutes, I found a marking. It wasn't the usual trail marking. It was a heart carved into the tree with the letters JCH and MCE inside it. Right next to it, with snow clinging on it was a funny looking stick sticking out of the tree. I grabbed it and the snow fell off. It was a slipjoint folder. The scales that were left crumbled as I snatched it out of the tree and the blades were rusted solid in place. They actually looked twice the thickness that they should have been from all of the rust and junk on them. I thought to myself, "Man! This is cool!" My young mind couldn't add things together like that when I was a kid. All I knew was that I had found a really cool old knife. I eventually found some trail markings and after second guessing myself several thousand times, managed to find my way back to my grandparents house. As soon as I got there I ran over to my grandfather to show him my found treasure. He and my grandmother were sitting by the fire. I said, "Papa, check out what I found." and handed it to him. He examined it for a minute and asked, "where did you find this?" I said, "I was out walking the trail and go lost, started looking for markings and found it in a tree." "A tree?" "Yeah. It was stuck in a tree next to a carving of a heart with some letters." He said "what were the letters?" I said, "JCH and MCE." My grandfather looked at me for a second like I had just farted or something. My grandmother smiled and her eyes starting watering up. I said, "What's JCH and MCE?" He said, "Those are our initials. I carved that heart into that tree over 40 years ago. That was the only time your grandmother ever walked out there with me. ...and I've been wondering where the hell I lost that knife ever since. I carried this knife everyday back then and one day it was gone. ...and you say it was stuck in that tree? That is truely unbelievable."
My grandfather sat and marveled at the knife for a while and told my parents all about his courtship with my grandmother and stuff they used to do together back then. Then, he put it in his rifle cabinet, right next to wear my first sheath knife now resides, and there it has stayed. It didn't strike me that much when I was a kid, but now that I'm a grown up and know what its like to be in love and have some sentimental heartstrings and whatnot, it's a pretty amazing little story. To think that the knife stayed stuck in that tree for more the 40 years right where my grandfather left it and then I found it, that's pretty darn cool.
