I grew up in a culture in which all men carried pocket knives. I remember how I felt like a man when almost sixty years ago I received my first knife. It had Davy Crocket on it. My dad broke the point 
off the blade, I think, to pacify my mom. I immediately found a stick to whittle. I suppose there were men who didn't have a knife in their pocket, but they weren't guys who mattered to me. Most of the guys I knew could whittle. I remember some of my friends, who came from a more urban culture, who were amazed that my dad could sharpen a pencil with his knife, and make it look like a pencil ought to look. Guys trimmed their nails, removed splinters, dressed small game, stripped wire, cleaned fish, peeled fruit, adjusted carburetors, made whistles, cut rope, pruned trees, drove tacks, cut paper, with their knives and bragged about their utility and genealogy. The care which guys gave to their knives could be heard when they told how they had been given it by their grandfather or by looking at it and seeing how half the blade had been worn away by decades of sharpening.
The fact that our culture has changed a lot was
reinforced by the fact that I had to wade through a couple of pages of Swiss Army knives, etc., before I found a picture of a "real" knife. Those multi-gadget devices with their cute red handles are monstrosities that no man I knew and admired when I was twelve would carry. I'm proud to continue that old knife-carrying culture--sort of. I carry a knife most of the time. It looks a lot like the one in the picture above. Unfortunately it has no heritage. I found it. No one claimed it. So I made it mine. It's gotten harder to carry a knife. In the culture I grew up in--one generation off the farm, some still working the soil--a knife was a tool, a very handy, even essential tool. Only in the most extreme circumstances would any of the men I admired regard their knife as a weapon. The only blood their blade ever drew was from their own fingers, when the blade slipped or when what was being cut unexpectedly gave way. My grandfather, a farmer, or my Uncle Mc, who in his years as a disabled vet produced truckloads of smooth curly cedar shavings, wouldn't understand why the TSA seizes pocket knives--I've lost several that way (the little things the recent ruling allows you to keep, they called "pen knives" men didn't carry them). "If this thing crashes you might need your knife." Indeed.
I said I kinda help keep the knife culture going. I had to saw a rope with my dull knife just last night. If my uncle saw me--and he could see such things, though he was blind--sawing on that rope, he would say, "Let me see that, Rooster." He'd rub the blade on his big black oil-stone, and get the blade "presentable." He'd tell me I needed to keep working on it. Yep, I do.
I hope I'm not just an old guy waxing nostalgic, but I think we were a lot better off with men who carried knives--sharp knives--than we are with a state that seizes them.
(Actually, this little essay on the humble pocket knife was not where I started to go with this STTA. I'll get back to my main point tomorrow.)
There is lots of information about the one died so that we could have life at our webpage, covingtonbiblechurch.com. Click on "Life's most important question."
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