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| "Whetstone" by Falmanac |
How do you keep your knives?
Are they all on display under glass? Are they secured in boxes? Are they
accessible to other adult family members? Would they dare?
When I was a kid, my dad
brought home a bunch of old knives discarded by the plant where he worked. They
were pretty worn out. The knives were about the size and shape of a bread knife
without the serrations. Many had the tips broken off, the wood handles had long
ago lost the finish, and they had all been sharpened too many times on some
rough, impatient grinders. He cleaned them up, gave them a proper sharpening on our old swaybacked stone and started distributing them around the house.
They were everywhere, kitchen drawers, the pegboard in the workshop, the toolbox in the basement, the table by the washer next to an ancient corked bottle of laundry bluing, the toolbox in the car, the tackle box, there was
always a knife handy. Were they always the perfect tool for the job? No, but
they were usually good enough.
Am I suggesting you take your
prize collection and distribute it throughout? Heck no. But remember all those
knives you bought during the Great Ozark Trail Rush of ‘24? I bet most of them
are still sitting unopened in a Walmart bag somewhere. Why not get them out and
spread the wealth? Your life will be that much more convenient, and it may keep
folks away from your best knives, a decoy of sorts.
A couple of months ago I was
packing up cartons and cartons of excess inventory using my beloved Vosteed Corgi
when it quietly fell into one of the boxes. If I hadn’t noticed, I may have
lost a sixty-dollar knife, the next day I came to work with my ten dollar “7.5
inch folding knife.” I still take my Corgi to work, but the Ozark Trail lives
there in a drawer, waiting patiently for the hazardous duty.
A little postscript: The
original Ozark Trail was not a path taken by pioneers in covered wagons, but an
early auto road maintained by volunteers, connecting the Ozarks with the
Desert Southwest. And perhaps that’s a good way to think of the brand, fine for
car camping, maybe not the best if you’re setting out for a long jaunt on the Appalachian Trail.
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| Courtesy of Sixgun Siding |
