A Good Knife is a Good Friend.

A boy needs a pocket knife.  A good one.  One that can be used to whittle, carve and play mumblety peg with.  I guess in this decadent day and age I’ll have to explain what mumblety peg is:  Two boys stand about five feet from each other with their feet spread apart; using their own pocket knife, they toss it blade first into the ground as near one of their own feet as possible.  Whoever puts the blade closest to their own foot is the winner.  Oh, and by the way, don’t ever play this game barefoot. 

My first pocket knife was actually a keychain of sorts.  The chain was attached to a small tin folding knife that was just long enough, and dull enough, to clean your fingernails.  My dad got these by the boatload down where he worked.  This was fine, as far as it went, but eventually my other chums got regular pocket knives.  Many of them were old family heirlooms, passed down from grandfather to father to son, and featured handles carved from deer antlers.  The blades were inevitably chipped and starting to rust, but by golly, they could still cut!  When these superior articles began appearing amongst my peers I spurned the next attempt my dad made to fob off one of those chintzy nail jobs on me.

“I wanna real pocket knife” I mumbled sullenly, scuffing my feet truculently, ready to dodge the inevitable sideswipe.  Surprisingly, the old man took my request sympathetically.  He took me down to Apache Plaza, one of the first shopping malls in the area, and let me pick out a blazing red Swiss Army Knife – with two blades, a screwdriver, and an ivory toothpick hidden in the side.

Those were the glory days for me!  And let me tell you something, you young punks who think you know how to show a girl a good time – even the girls at my grade school gathered around to “ooh” and “aah” over my sporty little number.

But then, while carving on a piece of Ivory soap, my finger slipped and I cut my thumb to the bone.  Off to the doctor’s office to get stitches, and then my mother confiscated my beautiful knife and locked it away forever.

“You’re not gonna cut off all your fingers before you’re even in high school!” she told me firmly.

I finally got my pocket knife back during my senior year in high school, when mom was cleaning out her sewing drawers and tossed it back to me without a word.

I determined that MY own boys would always have a pocket knife of their own, from the moment they were old enough throw rocks at girls.

So each of my boys got a pocket knife on their eighth birthday.  And by their ninth birthday they had all cut at least one digit to the bone and had their knife confiscated by their mother.  And did I put up a fuss and demand of my wife that these sacred emblems of boyhood be returned post haste?

Are you kidding? 

(But all kidding aside, a good, reliable hunting knife is a prerequisite for any successful outdoor experience, whether camping or hunting, and to have handy for any number of emergency situations at home and away.  So make sure you purchase your next knife, or maybe the first knife for your child, from hikingware.com – where quality and competitive pricing are always top priority!)  

Visit us at www.hikingware.com

Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500

www.facebook.com/pages/Hikingware/183290271848107

https://twitter.com/Hikingware

written by Tim Torkildson