Pocket Knives

My father always carried a knife in his pants pocket. 

During my childhood, I liked to watch him sharpen the clip blade of his pocket knife. He applied a thin layer of honing oil to his whetstone, and as he held the blade at an angle, he carefully stroked it across the stone till he was satisfied with the blade’s edge. Then he wiped it clean with his handkerchief. 

With his knife he would whittle me a wooden whistle or cut a piece of twine for the kite he’d made. He peeled me an apple with his pocket knife. In adulthood, I realized he contemplated a darker use for his knife. On a dreary September evening in 1989, my parents and I were on a return trip from Knoxville, Tennessee, where we had briefly visited my father’s cousin and his family. I had driven us there earlier in the day, but with Hurricane Hugo threatening torrential rain and dangerous winds, I decided we’d better hurry back home to Marion, North Carolina. 

As we neared an interstate rest area, my father said he wanted to stop. I asked, “Can you wait till we get home? It’s not that much farther.” 

“No,” he grumbled. 

“Maybe we can find a McDonald’s and use the restrooms there,” I suggested, wary of interstate rest areas. 

“No, I want to stop here,” he said, and so we pulled onto the entrance ramp of the rest area. Only one other car was parked in the visitors’ lot, and a grungy young man was walking up the sidewalk to the restroom building. I felt uneasy, especially for my father, who was 71 at the time and would have to be alone in the men’s restroom with the stranger. 

“Hurry and get back to the car,” I urged him. 

When my mother and I had returned to the car, we watched my father heading back down the sidewalk. I noticed he had his hand deep in his pants pocket. 

After he settled in the front passenger seat, I told him to lock his door. “I was worried about you being in the restroom with that man,” I said. 

“I had this,” he said and pulled out his little Case pocket knife. His remark made me sad, knowing he, too, had been anxious. There was a time when nothing seemed to scare him. I wondered if a pocket knife could have really protected him. 

Yet I would come to understand that he was keenly aware of a pocket knife’s capability as a weapon. One day he and I were searching for a document in his dresser drawer when I found a large black KA-BAR pocket knife. 

“That was the knife my uncle Charlie stabbed me with,” he said. His blunt statement surprised me. I was vaguely aware of a stabbing, but the incident had never been openly discussed in our family. I asked my mother about it, and she explained that it happened after my father returned home from World War II. One night, he, two of his brothers, his uncle Charlie, and another man were playing poker at her kitchen table. Suddenly, in a whiskey-fueled rage, Charlie stabbed my father in the hip and seriously injured him. I thought it odd that he had kept the knife that wounded him. 

Through the years I occasionally bought my father a pocket knife for Christmas. He was always pleased with his new knife and began using it immediately. But he didn’t throw away his old one; instead he stored it with others in his dresser drawer. 

After my father passed away in 2006, my older brothers and I divided his pocket knives. Along with a Case whittler and a Boker peanut knife, I asked for the KA-BAR stockman knife that had once belonged to his uncle Charlie. I guess some would question why I, like my father, would want to keep it. 

I wonder if men today carry pocket knives like men of my father’s generation did. Or have such knives gone the way of fedoras that you don’t see men wear much anymore? 

I know I will always treasure my father’s pocket knives and can understand why he was reluctant to let any of them go.