I'd like to tell ya James, but I can't. I wish I could explain it, but the problem is that I'm not really sure myself. Its the kind of thing you have to experience, then you'll get it or not. Some people may not ever get it, but most will once they try it.
It's like the old VW bug. In the 1960's the ugly little car with the engine at the wrong end, took the U.S. and other countries by storm. By 1967, the bug was one of the most popular selling cars in America. People either loved them or hated them. I loved mine so much I kept it for 30 years. Now, decades after they stopped making them, you still see them going down the road. A fully restored body off restored bug will sell for 20,000 and up.
I think the peanut is a lot like that. It IS a mystique, and that's the thing about mystiques, they are not easily explained. Kind of like VW bugs and UFO's. But I'll try.
When my old man passed on, his peanut was sitting on top of my dresser for a very long time. It was my keepsake of him. Way better than a photo. I'd pick up the peanut and I could see him sitting on a log slicing up a snack, or fishing by the river bank, or a zillion other things. To me, the little peanut was kind of like having some part of dad still around.
Then one day, long after he'd gone, I had an impulse to carry it. I don't know why. I was going off to work, and I dropped the knife into my pocket next to my old Buck 301 stockman. That stockman had been with me over 20 years at that point, and was my go-to knife. I only a couple of knives, I had not yet been bit by the affliction.
Well, that morning, I had to cut off some thin rubber sheeting that was padding the vise jaws on my Bridgeport mill, and I stuck my hand in my pocket and it fell on the peanut. To this day I don't know why, but I took out the little Case instead of my Buck, and sliced right down through the stuff. It was like "Huh, cut right through like butter!" The next day I used the it again, and had another "Huh, little bugger is sharp, cut right though the stuff." Over the next week, I had several of those "Huh!" moments that I did the unthinkable. I bought a yellow handle CV peanut because it was the cheapest one to experiment with, and in spite of some very great hesitation, left my old war horse stockman home.
It was a weird week. At first I missed my stockman. I felt under knifed. I missed the comforting weight of the Buck. But then I got a flicker of the light bulb. The weight of the Buck? The little peanut had done everything I had asked of it, but I missed having this weight in my pocket? I gave it another week, and the light from the bulb got a little brighter. My pocket felt empty, yet when I needed a knife, I reached in and found the peanut under the wadded up bandana ready for use. It was like carrying a very sharp knife without carrying a very sharp knife. It was a neat combination of it disappearing in a pocket until needed, yet when needed it did the job great.
There are other small knives out there, but many, don't have the weird dimension bending of the peanut. Look at a peanut and a SBJ side by side. The SBJ is a much larger knife right? But the tiny peanut has a cutting edge just about the same length as the much bulkier sway back. Same for the barlow. I don't know who the genus at Case who designed the peanut, but he came up with a knife that has the absolute minimum outside closed dimension, but with a main blade longer than most of the similar sized knives. It has cutting ability that is greater than one would think by looking at it closed. But it can only be truly understood by carrying and using it for a length of time. Long enough to adjust to the weirdness of the tool.
Yes there are tiny toothpicks, mini trappers and such but they are relatively late comers to the party. The peanut goes back to the early 1900's, and dawn of our so called modern age. Henry Ford was just putting the world on wheels, Thomas Edison had made music available anywhere with his record machine, and Mr. Bell had just invented the telephone to string us all together. Penmanship was going to hell because now we had the typewriter for business letters. And Wilbur and Orville Wright had just proved man could indeed fly. The modern age was upon us, and lifestyles were changing faster than we could comprehend. People were becoming more affluent and dressed better. Cities were getting bigger, and there was now the dawn of jobs that may not have been white collar, but were a step up from laborer. The skilled worker.
I can only speculate if that somebody at Case came out with the peanut as a knife more suited for the new 'modern age' than the big jackknives, but capable of more real work than a dinky frail built tiny pen knife? But I recall reading that the peanut came out about the time in America where change was happening fast. So who knows?
All I really know is that I love the peanut.
Of course, the mini copperhead is nice too.
Carl.
