My Knife - A True Story, Part 1

I've got this knife, a springy Kershaw blade of stainless steel. There are small chips in the smooth part of the blade; the serrated half looks like two McDonald's bat puppets from commercials in my youth. I found the blade half-hidden in dirt on the corner of Gilbert and Greenwood. Thanks to the knife, I no longer had to use my Buck tool to cut the baling twine around the hay; the Buck tool required two hands, and often times gloves had to be taken off, which was digital (as in fingers) suicide during the winter. But the knife, the knife was wonderful.

Growing up I had lots of knives. Dad used to give them to my brother and I, and we'd whittle a few sticks till they were pointy enough to slide through marshmallows with little resistance, then the knives would sit in our desk drawers until a neighbor got one and told us how cool it was. We even bought pocket knives in Italy once, with an engraving of a gondola ride on the side. I traded that knife to my friend Peter, but I don't remember what I got in return.

The only time I'd ever seriously used a knife before the stable was my summer on the ranch in Wyoming. After seeing how often Vern and Newt used their blades, I went into Cody on a day off. The Yellowstone gift shop was having a special on knives that day, two for one. The first one had a gray rubber handle that curved like a banana, the second had a thick black rubber handle and a blade as tall (from keen side to dull side) as half my palm. I think they cost me nine dollars.

The first blade fell apart quickly thanks to a loose screw that had lost the thread. The second blade, the thick one, became my partner during those days on the ranch. The knife acted as blade, saw, screwdriver, scraper, shovel, and nail cleaner, and once or twice I used it to scrape a splinter out of my thumb. The days spent entirely on the lawn mower were filled with thoughts of how to kill a bear if I had the bad luck to run into one with no weapon but that knife.

I lost that blade shortly after returning from Wyoming. It was the first of many losses that would take me farther and farther from the ranch, and from the best summer I'd ever had.