Youngling Carry?

[afishhunter]

Way back in the (mythological/mythical) "good old days" of the pre-1980's or so, Younglings from all walks a life, and economic situations, city or rural, had a pocket knife.
We carried them to school, church, YMCA, the library, camping, fishing, bicycling, and everywhere else. It was legal then. We was intelligent enough not to fight with them, or take pot shots at one another on the days we brought a gun to school for show n' tell.

After first or second grade, the teachers, and school administration took it for granted that all the boys in class had at least one pocketknife in their pocket, and at least 85 to 90% of the girls had one or more in their purse. (girls in jeans or pants was rare in the "good old days".)

The knives I carried from 2nd grade (1962) to graduation in 1974, are long gone.
A Scout/Camp/Demo knife, and a Barlow, similar to these were in my pocket every day from April, 1962 to after I graduated in 1974.
While a Buck 110 did go on my belt starting in 1968/1969, the Scout knife and either a Barlow or large Stockman remained in my pocket. I forget exactly when I got my first stockman. I'll guess for my birthday, between 1966 and 1968.

View attachment 1497244

(Only the Barlow is the correct vintage. However, I seriously doubt it is the same one I had back then.)

Anyway, if you are of the "Good Old Days" or "Baby Boomer" generations, what was your youngling carry?

EDIT:
Concerning the carry of a 110 in Junior and Senior High: Pretty much everyone who was in a shops class had one. I used mine in metal shop, leather shop and drafting, in Jr. High. Wood Shop, Welding, Machine Shop, and Auto Shop in High School.
(Vocational Auto Shop my senior year was great! I didn't have to take my least favorite and the class I did the worst in: P.E., because I was taking a Vocational Shop class. )

 

[Duper]

I am looking at 60 in a few months. I grew up in a small town. Population 3000 max. When I was about 10 my father purchased a pocket knife for me from a local corner store. Some sort of multi-blade acrylic handle knife held on a cardboard display with a small elastic.

My father always had a pocket knife on him as well. Some patina carbon steel with black ebony handles about the size of a GEC 15. Sharpened so many times the blade was half its original size.

I carried that first orange acrylic pocket knife for years. Everywhere, everyday. Got far more use back in those days then any of my knives do now. No one was worried about us getting into any trouble with our pocket knives and no one ever did.

When I got older I bought myself a Victorinox. Same story. Carried it everyday, everywhere. I was the guy in the Computer Room that they came too when they needed a pocket knife.

It has probably been about 15 years since I started “collecting” pocket knives.

I have had a few close calls where my pocket knife was almost confiscated at airports or other government facilities. When I travel there is a pocket knife or two in my stowed luggage.

I am not sure where that first knife went but I hope it turns up someday. We had lots of fun together.

 

[315]

While the 34OT is not the original one I carried, the Camillus scout and 127UH are what I carried as a kid. I don’t remember when I got either, but the Cub Scout knife must’ve been pretty early on in my Scouting years. I know the 127UH came along when I was still in scouts.

 

[Bastler]

This is the only knife that I have left from my youth. I carried it when I didn't want to attract attention.

My favorite was a Kabar fish knife like this one. A friend gave me this knife a few years ago to replace my original that my father confiscated.

I saw my Buck 110 for the last time on my high school principal's desk. Come to think of it, that was the last time I saw my high school, too. They may have let me slide on the knife in school, but there were some other circumstances.

 

[Bigfattyt]

Im only 43. I come from a small town.

As a child, I always had a pocket knife, even at school.

In 4th grade I went to an overnight camp with the rest of my class mates. Cabins, not tents. Being a kid, I naturally decided I needed at least one large fixed blade. I took my dad's heavy camp knife. Thick spine, 10 inch blade, stacked leather handle. Unknown origin, other than it had a Costa Rica stamp on it.

One of the other boys mentioned to a teacher that I had a machete. She came steaming over at a rapid pace all excited. I was sure I was about to get a tongue lashing and in deep trouble.
Instead she asked me if I had brought a machete to camp. I said yes....

She asked to borrow it. Said she forgot to bring hers, and she needed it to harvest some wild tubers.


I figured it was her nice way of confiscating it for the trip.

Instead, about an hour later she came back and handed it to me and said thanks....


Never mentioned it again. Also, never told my parents. She was a cool old science teacher who had traveled the world. Had adventures all over.

Tough to find great teachers who inspire kids now.

 

[Just Tom.]

Oh great, now you’ve done it - started another thread encouraging us to ramble on about days gone by. I’m sure the current crop of younglings would all be rolling their eyes by now if they were here (they aren’t). Anyway here goes:

I believe I am what is referred to as “Gen X” - I graduated from a large suburban high school in 1984. I got my first pocket knife at age 5, and carried one to school daily starting in maybe 3rd or 4th grade. So did most of the kids I hung out with, though I don’t really know how widespread the practice was outside of my circle of friends. We mostly used them to sharpen our pencils- openly in class - and nobody ever had an issue with that. In high school it was not unusual to see a Buck 110 on somebody’s belt.

I don’t remember most of the knives I had, although I do remember a small Old Timer and a Barlow - my dad says he used to buy us Queen City knives a lot. The one Case knife I still have from my youth didn’t get carried much until I was older because it was too hard for little fingers to open. I also had an Imperial jack knife from that time which finally fell to pieces maybe 7 or 8 years ago.

I remember one kid carried his scout knife to school, and later a Swiss Army Knife. My brother had some sort of 2-blade equal-end knife with a butterscotch swirl handle. A lot of kids had various cheap flashy novelty things like switchblades and butterfly knives which were kept at home and not carried.

The rules for knife carry, as told to me by my father, were that anything with a blade over 4” had to be carried outside your clothes (otherwise it would be considered a concealed weapon), and that switchblades were illegal. I am pretty sure the 4-inch rule was not the actual law in my state - it certainly isn’t now. I’m not sure when it became illegal to carry a knife on school property.

Sorry for the wall of text...

 

[JohnDF]

When I was in middle school and high school...
All the "bad boys" carried Buck 110s on their belts.
All us "cow kids" mostly carried Old Timer Jacks and Stockman knives.
I mostly carried the smaller 33OT and 34OT because my Dad hated pocket knives.

 

[abcdef]

Another for the blue Cub Scout.

 

[Trvr]

I'm still under 40 (until May that is) but I grew up in a small, northern Ontario town where hunting and fishing and other outdoor activities were pretty common. I have a few knife memories from a pretty early age, although I don't remember how young I was when I got my first knife (a novelty Canada flag knife).
I remember having a 7 inch lockback at my elementary school for some reason (show and tell maybe). I also remember getting home from school and putting my 34ot in one pocket and my Gerber LST in another. I know I used the sheepsfoot blade of the 34ot to clean up the mortise and tenon joints of a pine storage chest I made in high school wood shop.
My earliest knife that I still have is a Colonial jack that used to belong to my dad. Towards the end of high school, I got a Buck 503. After that I went to the dark side (moderns) for a while.

 

[5K Qs]

Cool thread! I enjoy reading people's stories about knives in their pasts.

My first knife was the Colonial Forest-Master shown below. I don't remember exactly when I got it, so I estimate 1960±1 (I was about 9 or 10, I think). I carried it every day from whenever I got it until I went off to college in September 1969, and then rarely carried a knife again until January of 2014. I always knew where my Forest-Master was, though, during those knifeless years (usually in my desk drawer).



When I was a kid, my friends and I always referred to a knife like mine as a scout knife, but none of us were actually in Boy Scouts. I grew up on a Michigan dairy farm, and the knife was a tool I used every day: cutting twine from bales of hay and straw, opening bags of feed, whittling out little shims of one kind or another, trimming split ends off milking machine hoses, cutting balls of dried manure from the end of cow's tails so they didn't whack you in the face with them, opening oil cans, punching new holes in various belts and straps, cutting up old inner tubes to make "bullets" for our rubber band guns, cutting and sharpening wiener sticks and apple slingers, and on and on. I apparently also occasionally abused the knife, because one of the back springs (on the cap lifter and can opener) is "warped" away from the center liner - about 1 mm gap at its widest point in the center. I probably am guilty of some youthful indiscretion like trying to use the bottle opener to pull a bent, rusty nail out of a fencepost or something. Kind of cool how a little old less-than-4-inch tool can conjure up lots of memories from quite a while ago!

-GT

 

[tongueriver]

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