What are the first things you think of others that don't carry a knife?

Insipid Moniker said:
I tend to presume there is something wrong with people who measure manhood by accessories rather than character.
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I totally agree!!! I'll judge a man by his actions and not his possessions. My Dad was one of the hardest working men on the planet and why he never carried a knife baffled me but what he accomplished with his brain and brawn made me stand in awe.

Paul
 
paulhilborn said:
I totally agree!!! I'll judge a man by his actions and not his possessions. My Dad was one of the hardest working men on the planet and why he never carried a knife baffled me but what he accomplished with his brain and brawn made me stand in awe.

Paul
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Paul, your Dad sounds like he was a hell of a guy. :thumbup:
 
Quiet said:
Paul, your Dad sounds like he was a hell of a guy. :thumbup:
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Thank you Quiet, he still is @ 80yrs of age. His famous story to me and my three brothers was that he was so poor (and he and his family were, twelve brothers and sisters) that he only had one toy---a hammer. He loved to smash rocks and see the crystals inside and one day he mis-struck and broke the hammer...that's when he had two toys---the hammer head and the handle:D

In my post above I didn't mean to infer he isn't here today---just retired if thats what one can call it;)

To this day the man has no concept of moderation when it comes to physical labor.

Have a great weekend my friend:thumbup: Enjoy a cigar if time allows, I just received a box of La Unica 500's---if the weather warms up I'll partake tomorrow;)

Paul
 
I don't really think anything if someone doesn't carry. Although if they need a blade I'm happy to lend one. In my opinion you should always be prepared, but to each their own.
Either way a knife out here isn't going to get anybody's attention, most people that are near me are to busy shooting guns or bows. Hunting season there are people all around or near my property trying to bag a buck.
 
breakdown52 said:
It's just a matter of being prepared. Being prepared tells a lot about your character and who you are.
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While I think there is some truth to this, I am not sure how far to take it.

For example, I'm a knife knut who always carries a knife. However:

I rarely carry a multi-tool, I have a great pocket flashlight but almost never have the need to carry it, and select other tools such as a couple screwdrivers, needlenose pliers, etc, that also only get used around the apartment when necessary.

Therefore, the knife on my belt or in my pocket is the only thing that might, possibly, paint me as "prepared" or at least "more prepared than the vast majority" if you saw me in person.

But because I often don't carry additional tools like the ones I mentioned, I bet a lot of fellow forumites would consider me very underprepared.
 
First time someone says something critical to me about my Spyderco Matriarch Wave I want to open it and tell them it's for picking my nose. If you know what a Matriarch looks like you will understand!
 
John_0917 said:
First time someone says something critical to me about my Spyderco Matriarch Wave I want to open it and tell them it's for picking my nose. If you know what a Matriarch looks like you will understand!
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I haven't googled it, but it sounds like a knife you should get for your mother-in-law. ;)
 
OK, I was just finishing up this thread, thinking I need to unmark the notification of new posts so I wouldn't have to read more of teenagers talking about sheeple and how manly their "blades" make them. I was just thinking that some of them need a good spanking and to be sent to bed when I read your post.

paulhilborn said:
Thank you Quiet, he still is @ 80yrs of age. His famous story to me and my three brothers was that he was so poor (and he and his family were, twelve brothers and sisters) that he only had one toy---a hammer. He loved to smash rocks and see the crystals inside and one day he mis-struck and broke the hammer...that's when he had two toys---the hammer head and the handle:D
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I LOVE IT! That is freaking fantastic! What a great sense of humor, no doubt forged by living in a large family try to make it in the Great Depression and then followed with WWII. Those were some awfully rough times for folks. God bless your father. I miss folks from their generation that just took things in life as they came at them.

paulhilborn said:
To this day the man has no concept of moderation when it comes to physical labor.

Have a great weekend my friend:thumbup: Enjoy a cigar if time allows, I just received a box of La Unica 500's---if the weather warms up I'll partake tomorrow;)

Paul
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I have worked in construction for about 40 years now. Years ago, I noticed that guys from his generation didn't have an "off" switch. They did what needed to be done without whining or complaining. They accepted sore muscles, hurt backs, minor injuries, freezing weather and burning heat as part of the deal. At the end of the day, it was all over and they just started again the next day.

BTW, pretty good cigars. They aren't popular down here like they were at one time, but I used to smoke a fair amount of them in rotation when they were available.

Great post. Love the story, please tell your Dad I'm taking that one to the bank.

Robert
 
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breakdown52 said:
It's just a matter of being prepared. Being prepared tells a lot about your character and who you are.
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Honestly, how prepared does a knife or multi-tool really make you in this day and age? Don't get me wrong, I'm a knife knut, I love 'em and carrying a blade makes me FEEL more prepared, but if I'm honest, the day-to-day advantage of carrying a knife is convenience, not necessity. You know what single item makes me MUCH more prepared to tackle the common difficulties I come across? My smartphone.

With my smartphone I can pull up maps if I'm lost, manage my finances, communicate with anyone I know in a dozen different ways, if I don't know how to do something I can research it and often even find full video instructions. It is the most powerful tool I carry every day because it gives me almost totally unfettered access to information.
 
Having read all the pages of this thread, I realize that a lot of young knife carriers need to grow up. Judging people by insanely dumb criteria like what they carry, or what car they drive, you're going to get a big surprise sooner or later. Never judge a book by it's cover. I did once, and it was a valuable lesson in life. That lesson was Named Jack Sherr----ski. The first generation of an immigrant family from eastern europe.

Jack was the father of the girl that became my high school sweetheart. He moved his family down from NYC for a job in the great government cog wheel in Washington D.C. They moved into the house two doors up, so when his 16 year old daughter needed a ride to school, there I was. Me and my old beat up dented Vespa motorscooter. Vespas were common here in the late 1950's for students and others who just needed cheap transportation. Well, when you date a girl you do get to know her dad. Jack was a little guy, about 5 foot 6 inches and about 135 pounds after a big dinner and a few rolls of quarters in his pocket. But he was one of those depression era guys who also went and fought WW2. I was already a knife knut and didn't now it, and thought little of anything smaller than my Camillus scout knife. It was common for men at that time, the 1950's, to have a pocket knife it they had pants on. A knife was an expected thing. Barlow knives, stockman knives, jacks of all kinds. But Jack, a working guy from the lower east side of NYC back when it was a rough area, didn't carry a knife. Even back then I thought that was a little weird.

But Jack did carry a cutting tool. One of those little bitty keychain size utility type box cutters that had a sliding blade about 3/4 of an inch long, and took replaceable blades. It was about the size of a peanut, really. He used it for cutting twine, opening boxes, whatever. Strange I thought, but each to his own. Over the next few years I saw how handy little Jack was. He seemed to be able to fix things with some foil from a stick of gum and a paper clip. He was like a TV character from decades in the future, who used a SAK for all kinds of things. Give Jack some foil, string, or a bit of black electrical tape that was the duct tape of the era, and he'd fix anything. If Jack had been on the Titanic, he'd have fixed up a way for it to limp into New York Harbor. If the SHTF, I'd want Jack on our side, he grew up poor in a bad 'hood, and knew how to get by in ways that would make the high dollar tactical knife carriers look like one of the three stooges. He was a survivor from a slum.

But Jack's real survival ability came when a couple of inner city thugs from D.C.'s southeast 'hood went to mug him one night as he walked to a bus stop to come home. When he was done with that little tiny box cutter, the thugs looked like they had tangled with Jack "the ripper." They didn't die, but they didn't look so good for the rest of their lives after whatever prison term they saw. They were easy for the cops to pick up, they were the ones staggering down the street with their faces sliced and diced. Jack still wouldn't carry a knife, but he got a lot of milage out of a tiny .99 cent keychain utility knife.

Maybe that guy who doesn't carry a knife knows how to get by without one. Or maybe he has some little cutter on him that he doesn't want anyone to know about. Or maybe he knows how to grab a beer bottle and make a nice little slicer from a piece of broken glass. I know one flint knapper who makes obsidian looking blades from the bottom of a beer bottle. But we can't read or know what's in another mans mind, so it's best not to judge a book by it's cover. Let alone what ego boosting trendy knife he's not carrying.
 
midnight flyer said:
I LOVE IT! That is freaking fantastic! What a great sense of humor, no doubt forged by living in a large family try to make it in the Great Depression and then followed with WWII. Those were some awfully rough times for folks. God bless your father. I miss folks from their generation that just took things in life as they came at them.

I have worked in construction for about 40 years now. Years ago, I noticed that guys from his generation didn't have an "off" switch. They did what needed to be done without whining or complaining. They accepted sore muscles, hurt backs, minor injuries, freezing weather and burning heat as part of the deal. At the end of the day, it was all over and they just started again the next day.

BTW, pretty good cigars. They aren't popular down here like they were at one time, but I used to smoke a fair amount of them in rotation when they were available.

Great post. Love the story, please tell your Dad I'm taking that one to the bank.

Robert
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Thanks Robert:thumbup: I tell him that he is part of "the greatest generation" and he just shrugs his shoulders. Don't get me wrong, if he needed a knife he grabbed his Stanley utility knife either from his tool box or from the workbench. I agree men and women of that era "just worked" they got the job done day after day.

The man taught me the greatest tool we possess is our mind, throw in a little brawn and there wasn't much that couldn't be accomplished. He's a "there's no such thing as a problem, only solution's" kinda guy;)

Paul
 
jackknife said:
But Jack's real survival ability came when a couple of inner city thugs from D.C.'s southeast 'hood went to mug him one night as he walked to a bus stop to come home. When he was done with that little tiny box cutter, the thugs looked like they had tangled with Jack "the ripper." They didn't die, but they didn't look so good for the rest of their lives after whatever prison term they saw. They were easy for the cops to pick up, they were the ones staggering down the street with their faces sliced and diced. Jack still wouldn't carry a knife, but he got a lot of milage out of a tiny .99 cent keychain utility knife.

Maybe that guy who doesn't carry a knife knows how to get by without one. Or maybe he has some little cutter on him that he doesn't want anyone to know about. Or maybe he knows how to grab a beer bottle and make a nice little slicer from a piece of broken glass. I know one flint knapper who makes obsidian looking blades from the bottom of a beer bottle. But we can't read or know what's in another mans mind, so it's best not to judge a book by it's cover. Let alone what ego boosting trendy knife he's not carrying.
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Every bit of it a great story, I just edited to talk about the relevant parts here.... Sounds like a guy no one would want to tangle with (if they started it.)

Sadly I think in this day and age, the hoods would have sued him for inflicting "physical and emotional trauma" and probably would have won. :/

But I agree with everything you've said. I'm only 26 so one of the younger users, but I harbor no illusions.

My own father is rarely without a pocketknife. But even if he never carried, and the rest of the world did, he'd still beat most people in any contest involving hard work, day in and day out. He gets up at 3:30 each morning, and that's just for one of his two jobs, the other of which is his own small business that he's run since before I was born.

Although he is stubborn and we butt heads a lot, he's also extremely smart. Much smarter than I am (and I went to college and he did not).

My father knows how to do a million things around the farm (my parents don't farm their land much but they live on a farm). Some stuff I learned growing up there, but he still knows far more about it than I do. He can fix things that are broken. He can fix and fly his father's airplane. He can build his own airplane. He can fix his truck. He can fix and use tractors. He can fix pretty much anything wrong with their 110 year old house. He collects full size and hand size scythes, has a lot of them. Maybe we should start judging people on whether or not they carry a big darn scythe. ;)

As far as I know he's never had to survive in a wilderness or disaster scenario. But you know what? I am convinced, knife or no knife, that if he had to, he absolutely could. Knife or no knife, he knows life, and knows how the world works. That's what counts.

He probably wouldn't tell you he knows all this stuff, probably wouldn't say he's one of the most resilient guys out there. Probably doesn't even really believe that. But he is. He knows the value of a knife. But he knows the value of a brain most of all. A brain tempered with patience, know-how, and a dash of wisdom that comes from living.

I went to college while he started a business out high school. I don't know a thing compared to him.
 
RedLynx said:
Every bit of it a great story, I just edited to talk about the relevant parts here.... Sounds like a guy no one would want to tangle with (if they started it.)

Sadly I think in this day and age, the hoods would have sued him for inflicting "physical and emotional trauma" and probably would have won. :/

But I agree with everything you've said. I'm only 26 so one of the younger users, but I harbor no illusions.

My own father is rarely without a pocketknife. But even if he never carried, and the rest of the world did, he'd still beat most people in any contest involving hard work, day in and day out. He gets up at 3:30 each morning, and that's just for one of his two jobs, the other of which is his own small business that he's run since before I was born.

Although he is stubborn and we butt heads a lot, he's also extremely smart. Much smarter than I am (and I went to college and he did not).

My father knows how to do a million things around the farm (my parents don't farm their land much but they live on a farm). Some stuff I learned growing up there, but he still knows far more about it than I do. He can fix things that are broken. He can fix and fly his father's airplane. He can build his own airplane. He can fix his truck. He can fix and use tractors. He can fix pretty much anything wrong with their 110 year old house. He collects full size and hand size scythes, has a lot of them. Maybe we should start judging people on whether or not they carry a big darn scythe. ;)

As far as I know he's never had to survive in a wilderness or disaster scenario. But you know what? I am convinced, knife or no knife, that if he had to, he absolutely could. Knife or no knife, he knows life, and knows how the world works. That's what counts.

He probably wouldn't tell you he knows all this stuff, probably wouldn't say he's one of the most resilient guys out there. Probably doesn't even really believe that. But he is. He knows the value of a knife. But he knows the value of a brain most of all. A brain tempered with patience, know-how, and a dash of wisdom that comes from living.

I went to college while he started a business out high school. I don't know a thing compared to him.
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Hey Red, I'll let ya in on something, sons always butt heads with the old ,man. When I was young and dumb, I thought the old man didn't know what he was talking about. Only later in life I learned how dumb I had been acting with very little effort. We think too often how the equipment makes the man, when the truth is all the top rated gear don't mean squat if ya don't have the life experience to put it too good use. Like your dad, he didn't go to college, but he can fix that ruck or build an airplane. He did it by doing. He wasn't studying, he was out there turning a wrench.

As far as wilderness surviving goes, I'd rather go with the guy who knows how to make a fire with a couple sticks or flint and steel than the guy who has the biggest bada$$ed chopper that is fettered on the cover of the knife magazines. Fire is way more important than a knife. Man lived many thousands of years with chert, flint, or obsidian, but fire was what cooked his food, kept the cave warm and provided a mini environment that he could survive a blizzard or harsh winter with. You can open a fish belly to clean it with a sharp flake of quartz if you have to. But fire takes a bit more skill.

As far as surviving life in modern suburbia, where most of us live, how important is a knife, really? It's important to us, because we;re obsessed with knives. But most of society is not, so we are the great tiny minority of knife obsessed people. The majority always looks at the tiny minority with a harsher eye. In truth, 99.9% of the knife knits on this forum could get by in life with a little Victorinox Classic on their keyring. Come on, how often do you really need a knife in modern life? I'm 73 frigging years old and only twice in my life I really desperately needed a knife. Once was freeing someone in an upside down old Datsun 210 that was starting to burn, the other was a little girl got her sneaker lace caught in an escalator tread. Both times a modest pocket knife did what was needed. Any small sharp edge would have done so. But a pocketknife is needed for simp convenience, no doubt about that. A house key can tear open the tape holding a package shut, but a sharp knife is easier to use. And a knife sure makes it easier when I go fishing to cut bait and clean the fish I catch.

But if one doesn't hunt or fish, how often do you need that knife? I know sometimes whole days go by that I don't really need it. And when I do, any small sharp edge will do. It would be nice if the knife knits would admit that sometimes they have to invent a reason to pull out their knife for something. For the millions and millions of people going on about their lives without carrying a knife, somehow they get by. A knife is just not on their radar. But for us, the afflicted and obsessed, we look down on them? Judging someone for not carrying knife is as immature and juvenile as one can get. There's more to life than carrying a knife. Like one poster said, how much money do you have saved up for an emergency? Can you still provide for yourself and family if you are out of work for 6 months?
 
The first thing I think is "that person should start carrying a knife" mostly. Obvious exceptions being the Loco people who I am checking their carry because they look shady.
 
I always think that they haven't found the right one. That's when I start blabbing about spyderco salt I's or cold steel recon minis.
 
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