A Serious Shortage of Dragons

Something To Think About, A Serious Shortage of Dragons:

As far as I can tell, dragons are only good for one thing, to be slain.  And, just trust me on this ladies, dragons ought to be slain by men.  The problem is, for most of we guys, dragons are as hard to find as a four leaf clover in a Minnesota blizzard.   Manly deeds for men to accomplish, in manly fashion, in the company of other men, followed by female accolades for their manly accomplishments are pretty rare.  Sure I sometimes rescue my wife's computer from blue-screen oblivion, and I know that the battle many of you guys daily fight with deadlines, contrary customers and unreasonable bosses is no piece of cake, but true dragon slaying should involves sweat; it's actually a good thing if a bit of blood is part of the adventure--at least there ought to be some danger involved--and after dragons are suitably dispatched there ought to be a sore muscle or two, and a callous that wasn't there before. A couple of younger friends and I just returned from a dragon hunt.  The head of the beast is already on the wall of my mental trophy room.  As dragons go, this was just a yearling.  One would be hard pressed to heat his coffee with the beast's breath, but in these Smaug-less times one must make-do.  I assembled my weapons--compressor, generator, pry-bar, jacks, come-along, log-chain (Log-chain sounds more impressive, don't you think, than just chain?), and, of course, my truck.  My comrades and I met at the appointed time before the dragons lair, and we slew that sucker.  (For those of you who want a literal description, an older friend has an old piece of heavy-duty machinery that is mounted on a trailer.  It is powered by a four-cylinder engine so it is fairly heavy.  Both tires were flat.  We were able to inflate one.  We coaxed the machine onto a flatbed trailer, hauled it to its new location and managed to get it off without turning it over or breaking any bones.)  If only Tolkien were still alive.  While I was washing the dragon stench from my body I thought of how I had enjoyed my little quest.     "The old sage with three younger warriors goes off to battle and comes home successful." It was fun. During the first twenty-five, or so, years of my dad's life he was a farmer.  His career of eating by the sweat of his brow was interrupted by his part in the defeat of the Nazis.  After that he wore a hard-hat, and steel-toed shoes.  He worked outside when it was twenty below.  His job involved trains, huge cranes, and molten metal.  Dead dragons were piled up like cord-wood.  For many of us, though, going to "work" means sitting in a padded chair in a climate-controlled room.  I'll leave you women out of this for a moment.  We guys are seriously in need of dragons to be slain, so much so that some guys go around slaying things that aren't dragons.  In fact they lay waste things that don't look remotely like a fire-breathing serpent. I'm at the end of the appropriate length of something about which to think, so let me just finish this way.  My colleagues and I could have found someone with a boom on a truck who could have picked that machine up, set it on a trailer and taken it off on the other end, without ever breaking a sweat.  Call me crazy if you want, but I'm really glad we didn't.  I can't imagine us getting together next week, slapping each other on the back and saying, "You know, I wasn't sure we'd get it done, but we got that guy paid."  Everyone knows that you can't just pay a hit-man to slay a dragon.  And ladies, even if you can bench-press a refrigerator, if you happen to run into a dragon, please look all maiden-in-distress-ish, and when your guy steps up and sends that dragon back to the pit from whence it came, even if it is nothing more than a dragon-ette, hug his neck, put some extra jelly on his biscuit, and tell him what a prime specimen of a dragon-slayer he is.  Then stand back; the popping buttons could be dangerous. Be watching.  Dragons are rare these days.  When you meet one, don't waste it.  Slay that sucker. It's STTA.

Guys who carried knives:

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.

It's Something to Think About. (http://sttaspots.blogspot.com/ 

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 (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."