This old knife
When I was a kid, my uncle owned a knife shop. While visiting, he said I could have one and let me pick. The Rambo movies were big then so I picked this survival knife:
I immediately opened it, took the contents out of the handle, played with the compass. Sorted out the matches and fishing stuff in the handle. Dad didn’t want me playing with all that stuff and told me to put it away. I didn’t. So, he took the knife from me. This was in 1982.
Monday night, I met dad for the weekly card game. He asked me to get something out of the hallway closet. While doing that, I saw the knife sitting in there. I picked it up and showed it to dad. And I reminded him of taking it from me. He laughed and sad Well, you’re forty now. I guess you can have it.
November 9th, 2011 at 10:37 am
I can relate. Dad’s gone just last year but he did the same think with a goddawful butterfly knife a year or two before. Awesome.
November 9th, 2011 at 11:05 am
I had the exact same one! I even tried to sharpen it with the crappy little whetstone that was in the sheath. Still couldn’t cut warm butter.
November 9th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Great story. Something to pass on to your children.
When they’re older :).
November 9th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
I had the cammo version. I was about 9 years old and at that point had watched Rambo about 16 times. Spotted the knife on a table at the local flea market. Dad saw the sparkle in my eye and plopped down the whatever-bucks they cost back then. I was obsessed with the contents in the handle. And I’m glad I was. It distracted me from the horribly inadequate cutting apparatus they tried passing off as a blade. I sure had fun cutting twigs with the serrated edge though!
Wow. What a blast from the past.
November 9th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Mine had the compass in the handle…
Had to put a new point on it with a bench grinder after it broke off in a piece of oak, though…
November 9th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
So has he given you the keys to the car yet? ; )
November 9th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Don’t run with it, you’ll put your eye out.
November 9th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
I love this story. I’m sure a lot of people can relate.
November 9th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Just don’t duct tape it to the barrel of your “pre red end” cap gun. It doesn’t work like it does in the movies. 🙂
November 9th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
My dads gone now. But I have the US Navy Knife he was issued when he first went into the USN. Circa, 1936. Plank member of the USS Reed DDS. Then when the Japs and the Krauts started their fractius behavor, back in the navy in 1943. He went into the Submarine service. then out to the south Pacific. He started me sometime in that era.
He served aboard the submarine Hake. He survived.
He loaned me the knife while I was in Vietnam, sent it to me, USPS.
I sat on top of piles of 500 lb bombs in Da-Nang, sharpening that knife, watching the sweating airmen and sweating zips load weapons on trucks day after day. It was returned to him when I got out of that hellhole in 1967. It now resides in my gunsafe along with his .222 Remington rifle and a few other relics from his life.
Precious it is not in todays market. Precious it is in my life. It will go to my son (A US Marine) when I leave this world.
November 10th, 2011 at 12:42 am
@10 [spits over the taffrail] Now that’s a survival knife story.