Quick Steel wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:21 am
treefarmer, That is a very interesting knife I haven't come across before. I too like the engraving.
But..."Happier than a dead pig in the sun." Have not come across that either.
Garry, the history of this pattern says this knife may be as new as 75 years or as old 96 years.
The saying, "Happy as a dead pig in the sunshine" came from an old neighbor that lived in the corner of our pasture back in 1973. His name was Mr. Charlie Weston Carter, born in 1898.
I don't recall hearing that phrase from anyone else but he used it quite often in his colorful conversations. He lived in a beautiful small house that he built with lumber that he and a brother-in-law salvaged from an old barn. Sad thing about it was the barn collapsed and killed his B-I-L and broke Mr. Carters leg at the end of the demolition project. The neighborhood moved all the salvaged lumber to his one acre lot and he put his house together. He dug a well in his front yard with a "water witch". At 13' they hit a spring that kept the water in the well cold enough to frost a glass in the summer time. He taught me how to build a fish/quail trap from chicken wire. He helped me plant my 1st 5 acre corn field. He took us to several churches in the community when we first moved to Washington County, made sure we got started "right".
The west side of his acre was adjacent to a small creek that flows only during wet times. He said the name of it was always "Bee Branch at the head of Flat Creek". Here he used the fish trap during high water times and he also used the same trap to capture lead free Quail in the Fall. One year I had given the high school football coach permission to quail hunt on our little farm. The coach had an old Chevrolet pickup that he hauled his bird dog around in. He always had starter trouble so he would let the old truck idle wherever he was hunting. One afternoon he parked on the bridge over Bee Branch and went up through the woods toward our field to see if he could find a covey of birds. The next day at school, the coach looked me up and said, "Philip, did ya' know your old neighbor is crazy?" "What are you talking about, Coach?, I answered. He said about the time he got to the old man's fence corner, Mr. Carter jumped out of the bushes and grabbed his old bird dog. Coach said the old man had an ax in one hand and my dog in the other! He then told me Mr. Carter asked him,"Do you want this dog in one piece or two?" I laughed when he told this to me and I told him he must have got close to the old feller's quail trap.
I could go on with a several more tales about Mr. Carter but for now he gets the credit for the saying, "I'm as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine!"
Treefarmer
This is the only stamp that it has, "493"
.... Other times I just Sit
This is the only stamp that it has, "493"