As a sailor you could easily be caught up in a line [rope] and dragged over board or have your leg or arm trapped. and being able to cut that rope [line] could save your life. A knife is part of being safe and I never gave it up. There is only one rope on a sail boat that is call the boat rope all others have different names and there is many.
Uh huh. The closest might have been something on the order of, "Ken Anderson, put that knife away until recess!"
Of course, and I even found my father's initials carved into the porch of the one-room schoolhouse that he attended, but which I missed by one year, being in the first kindergarten class in the new, consolidated school building, which has since closed also. I also noticed that the initials that his initials were paired with were not my mother's, which would make sense given that she didn't attend that school.
And we all know those carvings weren't done with rulers. I think every little boy in my elementary school had his own pocket knife, and to my knowledge none of them were ever used to threaten or harm another. My dad and grandpa were never without their pocket knives, either. We 'Muricans sure do love our weapons!!
@Beth Gallagher I liked my baseball bat, and spinning a hula hoop about prevented approach of an adversary! Frank
I never really thought of my knife as a weapon since, as a kid, it served only as a tool and as an occasional plaything.
@Ken Anderson Same here. Until I learned about those nasty bayonets, and what they did with them! Frank
I wish I still had my Boy Scout and Swiss Army Knife from what seems to be a hundred years ago. Thing is, all the guys had at the very least a knife to play “mummbly peg” with or a scouting knife of some sort when I was a kid. No one said a word. That said, they might have had something to say about these:
I still have my "official" Boy Scout hand axe (hatchet) but the sheath is long gone. Also have a regular 5" sheath knife I carried as a scout. It was a souvenir brought back from the WW II Pacific Theater.
Me too. After that style of razor knives came out, I started collecting them it seems. I have a couple in the shop, a couple in the house, another in the truck, tool belt, tool bag and the list goes on. Great concept and no need for a stone or steel.
I have dozens of knives, some I inherited and some I acquired myself. Since we used to salvage meat from road kills and poaching when I had children at home, I had numbers of knives for just that. Fishing requires several more, and salmon needs a different knife from trout or halibut. Knives I use for ropes and twine, knives for some types of fencing, utility knives for construction and drywall, and utility knives that are not superior for anything but adequate for many things. My two oldest sons carry Leatherman tools wherever they go.
I have the Leatherman multitool too but it defeats the purpose when I can never remember where I put it. I came across it a few weeks ago, after an absence of more than a year, and now I don't remember where I put the darned thing.