I cannot imagine being without a pocket knife. I have had one in my front pocket since I was six. Back then, we didn’t think of pocket knives as weapons. We treasured them as friends, able to accomplish a multitude of tasks. Some of my early memories go back to those first knives. I remember sitting in Billy Richmond’s front yard under two towering oak trees that delivered acorns the size of walnuts. We would get out our knives and gently remove the hood of the acorn. Then we would dig around inside and remove all the pulp. Next, we poked a small hole in the side of the acorn and inserted a twig from the tree. Voila! A little pipe. I suppose I whittled myself hundreds of those little pipes.
I also remember when Billy and I would go to a hillside below the Beckley Flying Eagles football field and dig pieces of soapstone from the clay. Soapstone was soft and we could whittle most anything we wanted on the chunks of soft steatite. Another memory involving our trusty pocket knives was sitting on the porch of our neighbor, Mr. Halstead, as he showed Billy and I how to manicure our fingers by pushing the cuticles back with blade of our knives.
I also remember one year when I was about 10, that I went to Al Cohen’s Pawn Shop and bought Daddy George a pocket knife for Father’s Day. It was about a dollar, and I thought he’d like it because he always carried a super sharp knife. Daddy liked the thought behind the gift, but when he rubbed his finger across the edge, he said, “Son, never buy a knife if the edge isn’t razor sharp out of the case, because you’ll never be able to get it sharp.” That was another pocketknife lesson that I remember to this day.
Through the years, I lost plenty of knives, but I never went long without replacing them. Barlow knives were hugely popular brand back then, and they were good knives, but I was never crazy about them because they were a bit bulky in your pocket. My preference were the more compact Case knives and 1 or 2 blades were sufficient.
Today, I carry a Leatherman tool as my pocket companion. It has a sharp knife, of course, but it also has a small pair of scissors which I use almost daily. I cut my nails with them, and when I finish, as Mr. Halstead taught us, I push back the cuticles with the back edge of the knife.
