Because sometimes stuff happens.
I was told when I was kid, that when you leave the house in the morning, you never know what will happen before you return home that night. Somethings belong in a pocket, and when I was boy, you were expected to have certain items. A pocket knife was among those items. Growing up in the years after WW2, all men, if they had pants on, had a small pocket knife in one of the pockets. It was as certain as the sun rising in the east. Stuff happens.
There are packages to open, string or twine to cut now and then. And sometimes life can throw a bad situation right in your face. Twice in my life, and I'm a senior citizen, I've had to use a knife to help someone. Once a young girl got her sneaker laces caught in an escalator tread and her foot was trapped and squeezed. A small sharp knife cut the laces and got her foot out with just some painful bruising.
In January of 1991, a car wreck happened right in front of us. An old Datsun/Nissan little thing hit some ice at a high rate of speed, spun out, then hit dry pavement and rolled a few times, coming to rest upside down against the guard rail. The battery, thrown lose by the wreck, shorted out against the oily engine block and a fire started. Lots of greasy thick black smoke. The driver and the infant who was in a car seat, were both upside down in the now burning wreck. Getting the baby out was not problem. Soon as the button was pushed on the seat belt holding the car seat, it released, freeing the infant which I pushed outside to my daughter. The driver was another matter.
She was a heavy built lady, and hanging upside down screaming and thrashing around that she didn't want to die, made it a bit difficult. Even with both thumbs pushing on the release, the belt would not release. At this point I was laying on the ceiling of the car, and I dug out my pocket knife and cut the seatbelt where it went into the plastic housing by the sie of the seat. This dropped the lady on her head, which I really didn't care about at this point. I just wanted to wriggle backwards out of the smoke filled car so I could breath. For the next day and a half, every time I blew my nose, it came our black. I coughed for two days.
Without that old Buck stockman in my pocket, the lady would have died of smoke inhalation at best, or burned at worst. But having a small sharp blade that cut through nylon webbing made a difference. Sometimes stuff happens. That old lady in Boston who stumbled and fell on the escalator and choked to death because nobody had a knife to cut the scarf she had on, was a very unnecessary death.
Aside from the everyday mundane things a knife is sometimes used for, like neatly slitting open a package instead of stabbing it with a Bic pen, or trying to saw it open with a house key, sometimes a knife is needed very badly. Badly, as in nothing else will do at that moment. It doesn't even have to be much of a knife. A little Victorinox classic, a Spyderco lady bug or A.G. Russell's ultimate pen knife will do. It doesn't have to be big, just sharp. But it has to be there to be used. You may go a lifetime and not need it, but if the poo hits the air circulation device, and you need it very very badly, the person you may have to save will be very glad you were there with a sharp knife. Even if you have to do an emergency trach with a pen knife and a ball point pen.
So, a man carries a knife in his pocket to be prepared for those little things in life that we call emergencies. A bandana rolled up in the back pocket can be used for a bandage compress, a small pencil can be used to scribble a quick note, and a knife can be used to cut things that need to be cut. It's not rocket science, just common sense that does not seem common anymore.
I was told when I was kid, that when you leave the house in the morning, you never know what will happen before you return home that night. Somethings belong in a pocket, and when I was boy, you were expected to have certain items. A pocket knife was among those items. Growing up in the years after WW2, all men, if they had pants on, had a small pocket knife in one of the pockets. It was as certain as the sun rising in the east. Stuff happens.
There are packages to open, string or twine to cut now and then. And sometimes life can throw a bad situation right in your face. Twice in my life, and I'm a senior citizen, I've had to use a knife to help someone. Once a young girl got her sneaker laces caught in an escalator tread and her foot was trapped and squeezed. A small sharp knife cut the laces and got her foot out with just some painful bruising.
In January of 1991, a car wreck happened right in front of us. An old Datsun/Nissan little thing hit some ice at a high rate of speed, spun out, then hit dry pavement and rolled a few times, coming to rest upside down against the guard rail. The battery, thrown lose by the wreck, shorted out against the oily engine block and a fire started. Lots of greasy thick black smoke. The driver and the infant who was in a car seat, were both upside down in the now burning wreck. Getting the baby out was not problem. Soon as the button was pushed on the seat belt holding the car seat, it released, freeing the infant which I pushed outside to my daughter. The driver was another matter.
She was a heavy built lady, and hanging upside down screaming and thrashing around that she didn't want to die, made it a bit difficult. Even with both thumbs pushing on the release, the belt would not release. At this point I was laying on the ceiling of the car, and I dug out my pocket knife and cut the seatbelt where it went into the plastic housing by the sie of the seat. This dropped the lady on her head, which I really didn't care about at this point. I just wanted to wriggle backwards out of the smoke filled car so I could breath. For the next day and a half, every time I blew my nose, it came our black. I coughed for two days.
Without that old Buck stockman in my pocket, the lady would have died of smoke inhalation at best, or burned at worst. But having a small sharp blade that cut through nylon webbing made a difference. Sometimes stuff happens. That old lady in Boston who stumbled and fell on the escalator and choked to death because nobody had a knife to cut the scarf she had on, was a very unnecessary death.
Aside from the everyday mundane things a knife is sometimes used for, like neatly slitting open a package instead of stabbing it with a Bic pen, or trying to saw it open with a house key, sometimes a knife is needed very badly. Badly, as in nothing else will do at that moment. It doesn't even have to be much of a knife. A little Victorinox classic, a Spyderco lady bug or A.G. Russell's ultimate pen knife will do. It doesn't have to be big, just sharp. But it has to be there to be used. You may go a lifetime and not need it, but if the poo hits the air circulation device, and you need it very very badly, the person you may have to save will be very glad you were there with a sharp knife. Even if you have to do an emergency trach with a pen knife and a ball point pen.
So, a man carries a knife in his pocket to be prepared for those little things in life that we call emergencies. A bandana rolled up in the back pocket can be used for a bandage compress, a small pencil can be used to scribble a quick note, and a knife can be used to cut things that need to be cut. It's not rocket science, just common sense that does not seem common anymore.
