I Have Pants On Too

If you spend your time with the same type of folks I do, and your Slim Jim can't be split open with your teeth, or you can't open the infernal heat-sealed packet your earplugs are in, and you happen to ask, "Got a knife?" everyone within earshot will start digging in their pockets to get you a blade. Thrust upon you will be hands filled with Gerbers, Bucks, and maybe an old school Schrade--all eager to help--along with the standard, "Got my pants on?"

That's just the way it is. I got a few friends, but not many, who carry "tactical" knives for gutting the folks that try to do them harm. They carry a whole different kind of blade. Mean and nasty things I've never heard of, things that you could breast out a turkey or goose with, but probably ain't much good opening a can of beans when you leave your P-38 at home.


My favorite is the "Tanto bladed weapon" that guys brag on. I ain't got one, but every time I hear the word I think of the Lone Ranger's sidekick and the word "Tonto" ("silly" in Castellano) which is what any fetish is to me, even when the lust involves "tactical weapons for close quarters combat". What's the old adage? Never bring your knife to a gunfight?


Sure sure, the devotees will tell you, "I can close twenty-one feet with a knife and slit your throat in half a second!" And they might be right, or not. It might be, that if I see you standing there with a knife in your hand seven yards away, I might just go on and produce a handgun on the off chance that you actually do want to slit my throat--you wouldn't be the first person to think of it I reckon.


Another thing to remember about good old boys and their knives is this: if you're handed an open folding-knife, you had best return it the same way--for reasons I'm not sure of. A friendly dressing down by a buddy set me straight on that. It would be like bumming someone's last cigarette I suppose. It just isn't done, even though I was taught by my quasi-yankee (from Missouri) dad that safety is smart, and folders get closed before changing hands, and fixed-blades get handed back handle first.


Me, I can't keep a knife. Knives are one of the small things that the Universe will not let me own for more than six months. And all the knives I buy (or "borrow" from Brian) are hunting knives--from the diminutive "butthole knife" to the whopper chopper camp knife--or fishing knives which are handy for filleting the meat right off of the annoying rest of the fish.


The most likely to disappear are the little folders with the clip on the side for attaching to the inside of your pocket making the knife a cinch to gall the view screen of your phone into a scarred and unusable wreck...or the back of your hand as you reach for change. My Glock never cut my hand, never even tried, though I carry it elsewhere than my pocket--somewhere not quite in my underwear, but not quite inside a holster either.


Well I didn't mean to digress and start poking fun at knife-toting folks, I just had a thought. The times I've needed a knife and had to get one from someone else makes the phrase, "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers," a way of life for me. But maybe that's part of the "why" I hang out with the folks I do. If I can't get that Brownell's box open, I know someone who can...and if "someone who can" needs some crown molding run or needs a half-inch drill with a sixteen inch long, 3/4" auger bit, I'm their boy.


In the meantime, I'll keep buying the crappy new Chinese Schrades because they remind me of the knives I cut my teeth on as a young man. And I'll keep looking for old, used American-made hunting knives because back in the day, they made them with some magical fancy steel that would actually hold an edge in the face of hide and hair that doesn't seem to exist nowadays. And when they get gone, I'll fret until someone helps me out.

The Chinese attempt to reproduce the Old Timer from my youth that was lost in a woods.