Great post and great thread. Where we came from is important, as is where we're going.
Our grandfathers, and a good number of our fathers had to work harder than we ever did. It was a different world then, and not as technical. A man used his hands and tools to get through the workday. Those tools included a good sharp knife in a pocket. What that man did was an influence on what kind of knife was in that pocket.
Growing up, I saw very distinctly different knife types carried by the men I knew. Pups learn by watching the big dogs, and human children are no different. I had a little more difference to watch than most kids, because I had a foot in two different worlds. One foot was standing in Washington D.C. in an apartment because my dad was a suit guy going downtown, while on occasional weekends and summers I had the other foot in the Maryland country side and Chesapeake Bay with my fathers family. Very different life styles and very different tools for everyday life.
My dad being a city and suit guy, carried a small two blade jack less than 3 inches closed. It was all that was needed for his everyday life in the city. But dad liked to fish, and camp, so he needed another kind of knife. He kept a cut down machete in his posable bag in the trunk of his car. It handled the heavier duty jobs. But most of the men of that era carried some kind of small two bladed jack or pen.
One neighbor of ours was an ex navy man. He earned his living as a TV repairman and general electronics work. He carried a issue TL-29 made by camillus. He used that knife fro all manner or things because of the screw driver. Having served in the navy during the war, it was where he came form. The TL-29 was his knife. Where we come from can be a huge influence on how we live the rest of our lives. My kids carry different knives and other tools than I do, because they grew up different than I did, and I grew up different than my dad. It's called evolution. My grandfather was a poor Irish fisherman from the west coast of Ireland, and he had to work much harder to establish himself in a new land with new rules than I ever could have handled. His choice of cutlery changed when got there, from a huge sheep foot sailors knife to a stockman.
Those older guys did something pretty amazing. They first survived a great depression, and then went right on to fight a vicious and unprecedented world war. You had farm boys from Kansas fighting in little jungle islands in the South Pacific and New Jersey print shop workers wading ashore at Normandy and fighting their way to Berlin. That's one heck of a place to come from. I knew several of the men who did that, and they all held onto the knives they carried through it all with a tight grip. They came from a rough road, and the tools that they survived with were with them the rest of their lives. My Uncle Charlie carried a TL-29 for the rest of his life. Don't even try to get him to replace it. When his old one was completely wore out, it was replaced with a new one.
Where we come from molds up into who we are. No matter if an office cubicle worker or ranch hand, what we do and what we've experienced is what makes us. And sometimes we have to change and evolve as we go through life. We may start out with a scout knife and end up with a stockman. Or even a peanut. It all depends on where we are. We may have come from someplace, but we have to live where we are now.
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and carry a couple large Opinels and an old Cutco lockback that is indestructible. The times I most feel the pull of what Mike originally posted about is when I am out on the water.